by Malcom, Anne
Something that was a lie.
Because when something was too good to be true, it was always because it was a lie.
I shrugged, it took everything in me to make it nonchalant. “Your life, your decisions.”
He made a face of frustration and crossed the distance between us. “No, it’s not my life anymore, Emma,” he said. “It’s ours.”
The blow hit me like all the other ones he’d been flinging since he’d turned up on Lexie’s doorstep. I couldn’t keep pretending they weren’t hitting their marks, wearing me down.
I was too fucking tired.
“Why are you doing this to me, Wyatt?” I asked, voice little more than a whisper. “You go from telling me you don’t want to be in our lives, disappear into a whisky bottle and what I’m guessing an ocean of pussy, come back after your bender with a change of heart and expect me to change mine?” I was throwing the words like knives. “When are you going to get it? We’re not gonna work.”
His eyes were hard. “You’re wrong.”
I waited. He only stared. “That’s it?” I said. “No more long speeches, monologues about how I’m wrong?”
“Nah. I’ve got months with you before our baby comes. I reckon it’s time enough to prove just how we’re gonna work.” Erotic promise was tangled in his words as if he could sense how turned on I was by his overall proximity, no matter how pissed I was.
I actually leaned in, to do what, I didn’t know. But thankfully Lexie saved the day.
“Emma! You’re here, I’m so ready to shop,” she shouted, bursting into the room looking flushed, her husband watching her ass as he walked in behind her.
It wasn’t true love unless the guy watched your ass while you walked away from him.
Her eyes darted between Wyatt and me, most likely noting the fact I’d all but leaped away from him the second she’d jerked me back to my senses.
He was grinning wickedly as if he knew just how close I was to surrender. And it would always be that with us, fight and surrender. Wyatt was war.
“We don’t have to go shopping if you’re not done...talking,” she said, smiling.
She’d gotten over her snit with Wyatt and had obviously decided now she wasn’t going to get Killian to murder him, it only made sense to get us together.
Because she’d found her happy after with the biker who checked out her ass, who gave her a baby, who looked at her like she produced oxygen, she wanted to share that feeling around.
Like I said, people in love were assholes.
I scowled. “We’re done.” I made a point to put finality into my voice.
* * *
“Jesus, we can’t even go in for a coffee without the hoards,” I said after Killian had hustled us back into the SUV, our hands full of drinks covered in whip cream. Well, mine was covered in whipped cream. Lexie was a health freak so hers was a scary shade a green and looked far too good for you to actually taste good.
She sucked at her straw. “You know that it’s like this,” she said. “You’ve been out with me before. I can’t say you get used to it.” She glanced out to the mob who all but chased the car. “No one should get used to it, because it’s insane. But it’s the price we pay for living our dream. And dreams never come free.”
“Yeah, dreams usually come with a tasty side of reality that all dreams are nightmares,” I muttered. “That’s gonna be me once the baby news gets out.”
“Likely,” she said, not trying to pretend that the news wasn’t going to get out. We were all intent on keeping it secret for as long as possible, but it was inevitable. I was already trailed every now and then because I was known to be a close friend of the band.
But they usually got bored with me when they realized that I was worthless.
What was inside my uterus was not worthless. It was priceless to me, but I’m sure there was a dollar amount on the story and whoever broke it first.
I thought on that check Wyatt gave me. There was a dollar amount on everything, I guessed.
“Killian hates it,” she said.
“Jee, a bunch of leeches followin’ my wife, leerin’ at her and looking for angles so they can post upskirt photos for a bunch of perves to jerk off to, why the fuck would I hate it?” he put in from the front seat.
Lexie grinned. “It’s only when we’re here that it’s the worst,” she said. “In Amber, we’re normal.”
I snorted. “No matter where you are, you’re not normal.”
She rolled her eyes. “Have you thought about moving before the baby’s born?”
“What?”
“Somewhere quieter...even Amber! You love it there!” She squealed, her eyes lighting up. “We could be neighbors. Mom would die.”
The thought was tempting. Inviting. The little town by the ocean owned by the big biker gang both Lexie and Mia had married into. Despite its dirty past, it felt clean. Safe. Pure. It was quiet. An ideal place to raise a kid. And the thought of my baby growing up surrounded by kids, by family, it was more than tempting. It had me wanting to go and look up real estate listings right this second.
“Calm down, I like being able to hear,” I muttered, forcing myself to keep my voice even. “I don’t know if I could live in a small town,” I said honestly. “I’ve always been a city girl. I like cities. They’re loud, violent, dirty. Full of fucked-up people who came to live dreams and got nightmares instead.”
Lexie raised her brow. “Yeah, I can see why you want to stay.”
I raised my own brow back at her. “Come on, could you honestly imagine me in some small town, baking cookies and talking to my neighbors like some kind of monster?”
Killian chuckled.
“No,” Lexie said honestly. “But who says you have to do that?”
“Um, that’s what everyone’s supposed to do when they move to small towns with white picket fences.” I sucked on my drink, savoring the sweetness.
“And since when have you ever done anything that you’re supposed to?” Lexie countered. “You can paint the fence black, ignore your neighbors—but not if it’s me—and do what you’ve always done, live life your way. And then, when you get back to work, you can travel to whatever weird places you go to knowing the baby is safe with family. You’ve got a lot of built-in babysitters in Amber.” She squeezed my hand. “Just think about it?” She knew better than to push me, but her eyes were wide and hopeful.
“Ugh, fine,” I relented. “Now can we please go shopping for baby shit with a thousand paps following us like normal people?”
She grinned. “Sure.”
My phone rang and I looked down, sighed and put it to my ear. “What?” I demanded.
“That’s not a nice way to greet the father of your child,” Wyatt chastised.
I rolled my eyes. “When the father of my child is likely calling to ask me if I’m okay, mimicking the last two texts he’s sent me then yes it is,” I snapped.
“I know the paps are followin’ you,” he said, voice tight and all prior teasing gone. “I fuckin’ don’t want them near you. Putting you in danger.”
I glanced out the window. “They’re going to be the ones in danger,” I muttered. “Don’t you have better things to do than ask me if I’m okay every five minutes?”
“Nope, the only thing I’ve got to do is make sure you’re okay,” he countered. “Well, that and convince you to marry me.”
My stomach dropped and I almost spilled my frappe all over myself. Luckily I hadn’t been taking a sip or I would’ve choked on it. I was already choking on the words Wyatt had just casually spouted over the phone.
“Romantic proposal,” I said flatly once I regained my facilities.
Lexie’s head snapped up. “Proposal?” she mouthed.
I waved my hand at her.
“You don’t do romance like normal people, Em,” he said. “You’re more likely to think me punchin’ that guy earlier is more romantic than some bullshit proposal with rose petals and champagne.”
I
hated that he knew me so fucking well.
“That’s never going to happen, Wyatt,” I told him after a beat.
“I’m willing to bet against that.”
And then he hung up.
And I found myself smiling.
“Why aren’t you together again?” Lexie asked, watching me closely, inspecting the rare smile in proximity to a conversation with Wyatt.
I wiped it off my face. “Because it’s too complicated. Too dangerous.”
She raised her brow. “You’re going to have a child together, that is both complicated and dangerous.” She paused. “Plus, you also love him.”
“I loved him. Past tense,” I corrected. “And it was only for a hot minute until I learned what an asshole Wyatt is to be in love with.”
“Everyone’s an asshole to be in love with.”
“Says she with the perfect husband,” I scoffed.
“Did you forget the four years of misery that he put me through—that I put us through,” she corrected, “before we got here?”
She glanced to Killian whose eyes were zeroed on her.
I had not forgotten that.
No one could forget that.
And no one could forget that Killian came back into Lexie’s life around the same time a murderous stalker almost took her life from her.
Lexie ripped her eyes from her husband and back to me. “You two need to get your shit together,” she decided. “This is not gonna be like Ross and Rachel where they have the baby, dance around each other for like two years, make themselves and everyone around them miserable, and then you’ll almost move to Paris and it’ll be a thing.” She waved her hand.
“I don’t want to move to Paris,” I said. “I don’t like the food—apart from cheese and croissants—and the people are rude.”
“Well, not Paris then some other country, the specifics aren’t important. It’s the Ross and Rachel situation we’re trying to avoid.”
“You do realize that Ross and Rachel aren’t real, right?” I asked. “They built up all that tension for a storyline.”
She gasped. “You take that back!”
Killian chuckled again, pulling up to the curb.
“Oh look, we’re here,” I said, glancing at the needlessly pretentious looking baby store. “Can we raincheck the Wyatt or Ross and Rachel or whatever the fuck this conversation is to...never? I’ve got to go and pick onesies for a baby I have no fucking clue how to raise.”
Lexie raised her eyebrow. “You can’t escape this, Emma.”
I pointed to my belly. “Well aware.”
“You know I mean Wyatt.”
And I hated that she was right.
* * *
“I can’t believe a fucking onesie costs that much,” I muttered, staring at the bags Killian was placing on the counter of the beach house. Because I couldn’t possibly carry bags of baby clothes from the car to the house.
Lexie laughed. “Oh, that’s nothing, just you wait. Kids are expensive.”
“Yeah, being alive is expensive as fuck, I guess,” I said, regarding the collection of bags that had cost hundreds of dollars.
I didn’t know why I was complaining, I was happy to spend it on my kid. Sure, maybe not on stupid onesies Lexie made me buy because they were “so cute” but on anything they needed which I didn’t get as a kid. Warm clothes. Enough food. That sort of thing. And I had the money. I didn’t exactly live cheap, I liked makeup and boots, but I didn’t live the rock star lifestyle either I flew around the world, mostly business class—this was before the private jet—but not on my own dime, the business paid for all of that. And if it didn’t, I’d be coach all the way. I spent money on shit that I’d have for a while, my apartment, my car, my furniture. Good health insurance. My savings account was healthy, and my one extravagance was expensive champagne, that was always in the fridge for emergencies. Now, the thing I had in my fridge for emergencies was Pedialyte to replaced fluids after vomiting all day.
I could more than afford to spend fifty bucks on a onesie that my kid would grow out of, in like a minute.
“It’s gonna be so much better once you find out the sex,” Lexie said, pulling items out of bags at random. “Then we can really go shopping.”
I looked at all the bags. “This wasn’t really shopping?”
Killian grinned at me. Well, did his mouth twitch thing. “Have you even met Lexie?”
Wyatt came into the room, eyes first softening, touching me—I hated that such a simple look gave me a little belly flip—then moving to Lexie, or more precisely, the forty dollar booties Lexie was holding.
“Isn’t this adorable?” she asked him.
“I thought you were goin’ shopping,” he demanded, voice rough.
“Um, where do you think we got this from, genius? We didn’t find them on the street and decide to bring them home like you did with your last eighteen girlfriends,” I snapped as he approached and snatched the booties, fingering them in his tattooed hands.
It did something to me, seeing the way he touched them, with a strange kind of reverence. Kind of like how he’d laid his hand on my stomach a week ago.
He snapped his head up. “No, shoppin’ for girl shit, makeup, shoes.”
I raised my brow. “I’ll venture a guess to say Sam’s shoes are girlier than mine.”
Lexie giggled.
“And what does it matter what we were shopping for?” I added.
“It matters because if it’s baby shit, you shouldn’t be paying,” he said.
“They frown on you walking out of the store without paying,” I replied. “Actually, I think they call it stealing. And call me crazy, I don’t want to have my baby in prison over a forty-buck pair of booties.”
He gaped down at the little shoes he was still clutching. “These were forty bucks?”
“Says the man with the hundred-thousand-dollar car,” I snapped. “Perspective.”
“I’m coverin’ this shit from now on.” He nodded to the bags on the table. “I’ll call Mark, get him to give you a credit card to use.”
I heard Killian suck in an audible breath.
Yeah, that was a man who knew what a misstep Wyatt was taking.
Probably because he’d learned the hard way.
Right about how Wyatt was going to learn.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I hissed, folding my arms. “I don’t need your money, I thought we made that clear. And I certainly don’t need the insult of you getting your fucking manager to get me a credit card and turn me into the kept pregnant woman like you’re so insistent I become. You know what you can do with that credit card, Wyatt? You can stick it—” I paused. “No, wait, I’ll let you decide which orifice you shove it down, as long as it’s not in my direction, I don’t give a fuck.”
I snatched the booties and shoved them in a bag, gathering them all up in one scoop. Both Wyatt and Killian moved.
“I swear to fuck, if either of you try and carry these bags to the car for me, I’ll scalp you both,” I hissed.
Killian held his hands in surrender, grinning.
Wyatt gritted his teeth.
And I stomped off.
Carrying my own fucking bags.
And another blow from Wyatt that he didn’t even know he’d landed.
Somehow that made it all worse.
Chapter Ten
“You didn’t have to come.”
“Of course I fucking did.”
I sighed. Wyatt had turned up at the doctors around the same time I was pulling in. Luckily, I’d chosen an expensive, and ultra-discreet office in Calabasas for this very reason. Though it was just wishful thinking around the time I registered here, because it was before Wyatt even knew. But it didn’t matter what his reaction was going to be, the mere fact I was keeping his baby meant I needed to be somewhere discreet and away from cameras.
And for a hefty fucking fee, I became a patient at the clinic that treated some of the most famous people in Hollywood. It was wor
th every cent in the moment Wyatt folded out of his car without the trail of photographers he usually had behind him. I’d barely recovered from shopping with Lexie, and I was still shaken with the knowledge that it would be my life soon enough.
I hadn’t even bothered to argue about his presence or even acknowledge him. It was petty, but he didn’t try to make conversation as he fell into step with me. He just opened the door, waited while I registered, and dripped hotness all over the damn place. We didn’t see anyone but the receptionist, there was no pesky waiting room full of coughing sick people and screaming children. No one to spot the way Wyatt put his hand on the small of my back as we were led into a plush exam room.
“It’s just an ultrasound,” I continued, the first words I’d spoken after he’d given me my privacy to get situated on the table. “I’ve had one before. All by myself. I don’t need you here to hold my hand.”
“You informed me if I tried to hold your hand you’d break the bones in my fingers so I could never play bass again,” Wyatt informed me dryly.
“I meant metaphorically,” I snapped.
“You seemed pretty serious.”
“About the bone breaking part. Not the part about you needing to hold my hand,” I hissed.
Wyatt grinned, a real grin like the one his seventeen-year-old self had worn when we first met. I wonder if seventeen-year-old Wyatt would’ve smiled at me like that had he known he’d be standing in a gynecologist’s office with me and his unborn, unplanned child seven years later.
“I think you secretly wanna hold my hand more than you wanna break it.”
I jostled uncomfortably on the paper beneath my bare ass. “Wanna test that theory?”
He regarded me. “I’ll play it safe on this one since I’ve got a kid to put through college now.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause otherwise you’d have to sell one of your Lambos to pay for it. Plus, my kid isn’t going to college if they don’t want to. Actually, I’d prefer them not to. It’s a farce created by the government to put people in debt and to promote an outdated class system that people with money can buy intelligence at Ivy League schools,” I snapped. “And if our kid does decide to go to one of those places, I’m quite capable of putting him or her through college.”