Page 141 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
“See!” Reba calls out, jerking the phone around in her excitement. “I told you. It ain’t me you should be concerned with.” She glances at me and lifts her chin in that saintly way of hers. “I have God on my side.”
“Well then, what am I supposed to do?” I ask, humoring the pair of them. I mean, who else can I talk to about this shit? Sure as hell can’t call up Dena, Chardou, and Amiya. How about Johnny R. and Johnny K.? Think they’d understand after that bad dope I fed them? “Sin promised to be mine, by the way. Beast is marrying me. Grainger is … well, you can lead him with sex like a horse with an apple. But Crown? Crown doesn’t want to give me his ring or his house or his heart.”
“You want all four of them?” Grey queries, but not in a judgmental way, more like he’s contemplating the situation the way he always does. He stares wistfully into the distance, at something I can’t see, and then reaches out, plucking a glass full of red wine off a nearby table. “Interesting proposition. You would’ve been better off marrying me.”
The edge of his mouth quirks up, and my chest gets tight. There’s a chance that he’s right, that marrying him could’ve worked out very well for me. But that’s something we’ll never know. There’s an equal possibility that the club would’ve taken the mafia down and dragged me right along with it.
“If Crown—this is the man named Calder Reid, the Vice President, yes?—if he doesn’t love you enough to accept that you need things done a little differently, then that’s his choice. Let him go. To be fair, you are asking a lot of him. Maybe he simply needs more than you can give?”
Grey gives sound advice, but it hurts. Goddamn, it fucking hurts so bad.
Especially because I already know that he’s right.
“State your intentions clearly, give the full truth always, and if it doesn’t work out, it wasn’t what you needed in the first place.” Grey taps his fingers against the side of the wineglass. “By the way, since I won’t get a chance to say this later, congratulations on your upcoming nuptials.”
He sounds sad, but whether that’s because he really did like me or some other reason, I’m not sure.
“I miss you, Grey,” I tell him, and he offers a melancholic smile in return, meeting my eyes through the screen.
“I miss you, too, Gidge. But don’t worry. One day, we’ll rule the city together from opposing thrones.” He lifts his glass in salute as Reba kisses the phone screen.
“I’ll be in touch after the wedding,” she says, and he nods.
“Will do. Stay safe, you two.”
The call ends and Reba hands me my new phone, the one I’ve been very careful not to reveal to Cat. After the wedding, I can flash it around all I want, and Cat won’t be able to say a damn word without having one out with Beast.
“Did that help?” Reba asks, and I nod.
It did.
But I’m still not giving up this goddamn bedroom.
Crown can pry it from my cold, dead fingers for all I care.
The morning of the wedding, I wake up early, like before the sun is up early. My skin is soaked in sweat, and it occurs to me how odd it is that I’m in another man’s house, in another man’s bed, on my wedding day.
None of the guys slept in here last night, but they were close, just like always. The world right now is far too dangerous to leave me alone for a second. I sit there for a while, my hands in my lap on Crown’s comforter, and I think about Beast. Catcher Coffey is his name, actually, a name that I’ve always loved the sound of.
He’s still the right choice as far as politics go. Even if I suddenly changed my mind, it’s far too late for that. But … I don’t want to change my mind. I’m okay with this. It isn’t a step I ever thought I would take, but now that it’s here, it doesn’t seem quite so scary.
The only parts of this whole thing I’m afraid of are the other three men in the equation.
I’m not ready to give them up.
I swing my legs out of bed and pad across the hardwood floors toward the door. It creaks slightly as I open it, but in the most pleasant of ways, the soft murmur of a house with history. It thrills me yet again that Crown bought this place with me in mind.
Way to prepare for the life you want instead of getting complacent with the life you have.
Crown is in his own room—rather the room he relegated himself to after relinquishing the master to me—with the door cracked. He’s awake, on guard duty most likely, and working on polishing a sleek black handgun with a rag.
