I tell myself I’m dressing up in an attempt to scare the hospital staff away. In reality, I may or may not have dressed up with the prospect of seeing Grainger.
“Go on, suge,” Beast encourages, pushing the door in.
Grainger is more or less sitting up on his own, his head thrown back in the pillows. He’s frowning, which I guess is a good sign? He looks … poisonous, rather than weak or comatose.
With a deep inhale, I toss my glossy black hair over one shoulder and strut into the room, purposely letting my footsteps fall loud enough to rouse him. Cade lifts his head up suddenly, blinking at Beast before swinging his gaze over to me.
I pause beside him, and we stare at each other.
It’s awkward. It’s really fucking awkward.
Why can’t I just crawl on him and kiss the life out of him the way I did to Sin?
“Gidge,” he says warily, his voice husky and broken. Grainger struggles to clear his throat, and I do my best to blink the images of him getting chest compressions from my mind. I looked up the statistics of survival for someone who’s been resuscitated. Long-term survival rates aren’t great, even after initial success.
“Cade,” I reply, swiping my tongue across my lower lip. It tastes waxy, like the lipstick I smeared across it earlier. With a small curse, I reach out and run my nails over the back of Cade’s tattooed hand. I spent the morning filing and painting them, so it’s a substantial improvement over the ‘post bomb blast and fight to the death’ manicure that I had before. “It’s nice to see you—” I almost say alive. The word catches in my throat, but I make myself breathe past it. “Awake.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty fucking hard to kill,” Grainger growls out, and then he coughs a little and shakes his head like he’s shaking off a wave of dizziness or nausea or something. The first thing on my mind when I saw him was the pregnancy, but my emotions are far too raw right now to bring that up.
He lifts that umber gaze of his to mine, and I frown at him, but I don’t move from where I’m standing.
“Who is Raelynn Grainger?” I blurt, and he goes completely still.
“Did you meet her?” he asks, his voice strange and distant. His face is dark with stubble, but even though I can see that he’s in no state to get up just now, the fire is there in his eyes the way it always is. From what I hear, he threw his food tray at the wall earlier over a disagreement with a doctor. You’d think this asshole would be more grateful to the staff for saving his life, but … Cade really hates being told what to do. Almost as much as I hate it.
“No. But the hospital’s … whatever, social worker or something, she mentioned her.” I pause there, waiting for an explanation. I can’t help the nervous butterflies in my stomach. It never even occurred to me that one of these men might have like, an ex-wife or something. Or maybe even a wife that they never divorced … Ugh.
Luckily for me, Grainger puts me out of my misery after only a minute of contemplation, like he’s deciding how much of himself he wants to share. I’m not going to give him a choice: if he wants to be with me, he’ll tell me everything. We’ll have no secrets between us.
If he wants to be with me, of course. Because I feel like he has yet to commit either way.
“Raelynn Grainger is my mother,” he explains, looking me over with a gaze that’s entirely inappropriate for the hospital setting in which we’re standing. If he had enough energy, I bet he’d flip me over on that bed and rut into me until I was begging for this pregnancy to be his.
Gross.
I sneer at him, even though the thought is mine. It’s a defense mechanism that I’m trying to weed out, but it’s especially hard around someone like Cade who makes life difficult by simply breathing. I’m so relieved right now that my knees feel shaky and yet, I’m scared to show him how much I care.
I need to break that habit, that fear of rejection.
“Mom wasn’t interested in seeing you?” I ask, and he laughs at me. It’s a harsh sound, and it’s echoed with that distant huskiness that reminds me of how close he came to death. Should I really be insulting him here? I know that quips are our thing, but … he almost died, and I felt myself falling apart.
I love him, and he knows it.
He loves me, and I know it.
He’s been saying as much to me since the very first time he whispered, I’ve always hated you, Gidge, just before claiming my virginity with a hard, deep thrust.
“We’re not exactly close,” Cade admits, almost reluctantly, looking me over. His jaw clenches at whatever thoughts are going through that pretty head of his. He swipes that inked hand over his hair and cringes as the tubes in his arm jiggle around. “What are you waiting for, sweetheart? An invitation? Get the fuck over here.”
He reaches out a hand, and I take it, climbing over him but making sure that most of my weight is on my knees and, as I sit back, resting on my calves. I place my hands on my thighs as Grainger runs both of his over my hips.
Fuck.
Fire lances through me, and I end up shifting toward him without even meaning to. There’s a pull between us that’s damn near impossible to resist. It’s always been there, from that first moment he said I looked like a damn vampire, and I felt a rise of emotion that I interpreted as hate.
Looking back at it now … the attraction was instant.
“You dressed up for me,” he breathes, eyes half-lidded, voice a little bit stronger than it seemed when I first walked in. Prideful, too. Excited? Eager? Maybe even a tad wary. “And fuck if it isn’t working. I want that sweet cunt of yours so bad I can taste it.”
I close my eyes for a moment, lifting up a hand and putting it gently against Grainger’s chest, just to feel his heartbeat. He stiffens up, but he doesn’t stop me. We don’t talk much either. Considering that we’re both ornery assholes, it’s probably better this way.
I’d much rather speak to him through body language.
Grainger squeezes my hips so hard that my breath releases in a throaty purr. I shift and try desperately not to put any weight on him. I don’t know what he looks like under that hideous hospital gown. It’s already slipping down his shoulders though, revealing finely sculpted pecs, rounded biceps, swathes of ink.
I force my gaze back to Cade’s face.
He wants this.
He wants it so bad, he can taste it.
“And if I did dress up for you, what then? Maybe I dressed up for myself.”
He scoffs at me, and I smile. But just a little.
“You’ve never been tamable, Gidge. It’s one of the things I’ve always liked about you. You do whatever the fuck you want, everyone else be damned.” He yanks me just a bit closer, and I give him a warning look.
“I won’t be able to sit here forever,” I tell him, my heart racing. If one of the nurses sees me like this, I’m going to get in trouble again—and for all the right reasons, I’m sure. I shouldn’t be sitting on someone who almost died just two days ago. “Just say it. You have to say it, Cade. I can’t read minds.”
“You know what I heard when I thought everything was over?” He slides his left hand up a little higher, holding onto my rib cage. His other hand digs tense fingers into my hair, gripping me with a possessiveness that both excites and irritates me. “When I was certain I was already on my way to hell? I heard your voice.”
Chills skitter over my skin, but I’m also not sure that I believe him.
“Stop feeding me lines,” I warn, but then Grainger grabs my face and closes the distance between our mouths. His filthy lips steal over mine, making me dig my nails into the tops of my leather-clad thighs.
“It’s true. I fucking died on that table,” he hisses against my mouth, his own smeared with a tease of my purple lip color. “What sort of a moron would I be if I kept lying?” Grainger tightens his grip on my hair, keeping me close. “We’ve gotten more than our fair share of second chances. Don’t you think?”
I swallow hard, but he’s right. I know he’s right.
Either we agree to give our relationship a proper go, or we say good fucking riddance and be done with it. And I am nowhere near ready to do that. Not after almost losing him. If anything, it’s made this decision a relatively easy one, my intimacy issues be damned.
Grainger smirks at me, releasing my hair, but I can read the overwhelming surety in his face like it’s tattooed on. I don’t believe it for a second though. He’s unsure. He’s only that cocky because he doesn’t know what I’m planning on doing, what my marriage to Beast means, if his brother-in-arms is even willing to share; he’s overcompensating.
That, and neither of us has brought up the pregnancy just yet.
“Anyway, don’t answer me now. Just … think about it. You know I want you. It’s out there. Now it’s your problem. You decide what to do with it.” He sighs and leans back into the pillows, closing his eyes and pretending as if he’s just relaxing with his woman on his lap. In reality, our interaction’s sapped the last of his strength. He just can’t stand the thought of being vulnerable, so he hides it well.
The hospital gown has now sagged all the way to his waist, and I can see multiple bandages across the center part of his chest. If anyone has a right to feel vulnerable right now, it’d be Cade.
I move to climb off, and he actually squeezes my ass.
I toss an awful look back at him.
“You don’t deserve an entire girl to yourself anyway; you’d drain her dry.”
“You’re the vampire here, doll,” he tells me, opening his eyes back up just in time to match the dirty smile that’s curved over that obscene mouth of his.
I turn around to look at Cade, finding that intense gaze of his sweeping over me. It wouldn’t hurt to wonder if, in the past, some of our attraction had to do with circumstance.
After all, Beast was right: forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.
I wasn’t allowed to have these men; they wouldn’t allow themselves to have me.
The setting matters, too, right? Like, motorcycles and leather and darkness are all very erotic, sexy things. But this? Standing in a bright sterile hospital room with a million unknowns spread across the sky like storm clouds, Grainger in a hospital bed, the soft shush and beeping of the machines monitoring him.
All of those other things are stripped away; it’s just us in here right now.
Even more than that, it’s raw as hell. It’s … tender in a way I’ve never experienced before.
I decide to change the subject before the atmosphere thickens any further.
“Did you hear about Gaz?” I ask, because I don’t have any fancy words or pretty prose to feed him or myself right now. I’m coming undone on the inside. It’s for the best; it’s what I needed. But it’s also the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, opening myself up to both love and pain.
Because in order to get the former, you accept that the latter is an inevitable part of the equation—especially when Cade motherfucking Grainger is involved.
Grainger adjusts himself a little, trying to sit up and then cursing. He squeezes his hands into fists on the sheets, digging his fingers into the bed and gritting with frustration. It’s like he’s royally pissed off at himself for being human.
“I heard.” His voice is starless, a night that’s black and endless, crawling with dark things with even darker intentions. “I should’ve fucking killed him sooner.” Grainger puts his hand over his face and breathes into it.
“You were hamstrung by Cat,” I say, trying to comfort him, which is just, like, weird? Me, comforting Cade goddamn Grainger. Whoever would’ve thought? “By me, even more so. If I’d just killed Grey, things might’ve gone down a hell of a lot differently.”
Grainger drops his hand into his lap, studying me like he’s never seen me before. It’s as if a veil’s been lifted, one that he placed over his own eyes. He isn’t looking at me like something that should be resisted. No, instead, he’s staring at me like something that should be consumed.
“I hope Crown remembers where he buried him so I can take a piss on his grave,” Grainger growls out, reaching up to swipe a thumb along the edge of my jaw. “Leave it to you to almost die on your wedding day.” He withdraws his hand, watching me warily, with a tightness to his face that disguises the real emotions hiding underneath that pretty scowl. “I’ll be home soon,” he assures me, but I’m not entirely certain that’s true. “Then we can talk this out more.”
Talk.
And I know exactly what it is that he wants to talk to me about. This pregnancy. The arrogant surety that the baby is his. Ugh.
“You think you’re capable of that?” I quip, drawing back just enough so that he can’t keep touching me. If he does, I’ll soon find myself incinerated to ashes on the floor. “Talking things out? That doesn’t seem like your style. Why don’t you lay out a line of coke and snort it with a sixteen-year-old girl?”
Grainger scowls at me, but his eyes track my movements as I head for the door, pausing as a nurse slips in and gives me a look. This is not the same nurse from before and, now that the swelling’s receded just a little and I’m dressed up like a proper club princess, she doesn’t look at me with pity anymore.
No, there’s fear in her eyes that I decide not to antagonize.
See, I’m growing up fast, aren’t I?
My eyes meet Cade’s, and his go to the nurse’s before shifting back to mine.
“I love you,” I tell him, and his jaw clenches tight, but I don’t wait to see if he’s going to answer me. I don’t care if he does.
I slip into the hall and close the door behind me, putting my back against it.
Beast is waiting for me.
I look up to find him watching me, and my heart breaks into pieces beneath the intensity of his stare. He escorted me down the hall to Grainger’s room when I got here, but that’s the only interaction we’ve had since Crown broke the news to me.
You married me knowing I was pregnant with another man’s baby.
This is soap opera level shit right here.
That or … it’s like love in its purest form. Nothing else matters except that we’re supposed to be together. Do I believe in that shit? I want to. But if I allow myself, will it break me?
Probably.
“Sin wants to see you,” Beast tells me, his voice carefully neutral. He sounds like he’s holding back; I recognize it in the tightness of his shoulders, the way he seems almost disturbingly calm when he’s anything but.
“Right.”
I take off down the hall before I’m forced to acknowledge the attention, finding Sin waiting for me. He’s sitting up, and his color is much improved from the last time I was here.
A grin takes over my lips as I end up in his lap again. He grunts, but he puts his arms around me anyway, letting me kiss him with a fervor that makes me want to wiggle on his lap. If only …
“I might be able to go home this weekend,” he says, his mouth as stained with lipstick as Grainger’s. I swipe the color away with my thumb. “Whatever that means.” Sin reaches up to tousle his blue hair.
Back to the farmhouse. Or to my Gram’s place.
That’s what he’s asking.
I decide to shift the subject to an even more agonizing one: the pregnancy.
It’s sort of a time sensitive subject; I can’t bury my head in the sand and ignore it.
For all the reasons that I wasn’t ready to talk about this with Grainger, I feel like I should talk about it with Sin. Partially because Grainger is so damn convinced that he’s the one that got me pregnant. He’s the one I gave the tests to, that I shared that emotional moment with in the kitchen. He told the others, but he hasn’t told me yet.
I feel like he’s the one that needs to bring it up.
Sin is like … easy rationality in an irrational world. He’s never told me what I wanted to hear, just the truth—whether I like it or not. The other three, I imagine, might romanticize the idea of having a
child with me. Sin wanted to eject me as far and as fast from club life as he could. He won’t talk me in or out of anything for his own benefit.
“Crown told me,” I admit, and I decide that in the future, group discussions are in order. It’s fucking agonizing to drag these things out person by person. But hey, it’s a learning curve.
The whole idea of considering other people’s thoughts and feelings is new to me. First off, I never gave a shit what Cat or Nellie wanted because they never gave a shit about me. As for my sisters, I was the youngest and so that sort of responsibility never fell on my shoulders.
Now, here I am with two huge issues that need working out: the pregnancy and the sharing.
Beast said he might not be inclined to share.
So what the fuck does that mean?
What do I do if that’s the case?
The only way I’m going to find out the answers to my questions is to figure out how to talk things through with these men.
Sin grimaces, resting his hands on my hips. He knows what I’m talking about, even if I’m being vague.
“I figured you wouldn’t be happy,” he remarks, but in a carefully neutral sort of way.
I push my hair back with both hands and stare down at him. He said that once he had me, he was never letting go. But does this change things? Should it?
Not for the first time, I wish that we’d had a normal—at least for us, anyway—reception. I wish Beast and I had been able to dance all night, and fuck until morning, and I wish that stupid test was negative.
But wishes don’t get things done.
Actions do.
I should know: my list of unfilled wishes is longer than Beast’s dick—and trust me, not many things are.
“I’m not, and I’m still processing it.” I scrub at my face with both hands and try to breathe through the sudden rush of anxiety. Until just now, it hadn’t hit me. It’s hitting me now. Hard.
I feel panicked, jittery, both trapped and wildly free at the same time.
Sin takes my hands away from my face and forces them down into my lap.
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