“My fire is a part of me; it can’t be stolen, borrowed, or bargained for,” I tell him, licking my lower lip as a pleased flush takes over me. It feels suddenly like there’s too much space separating us, so I move around the table and take a seat on the coffee table. “Just because I don’t try to rip your balls off when you come in the front door doesn’t mean—”
“You’re pregnant,” Grainger tells me, the words grating past his lips in a rush. “Fuck, I’ve wanted to tell you that for days …” He trails off, swiping his hand over his face as he studies me to gauge my reaction.
Crown didn’t tell Cade that he told me … that fucker.
I look down at my lap for a moment before lifting my gaze back to his.
“It’s mine.” He says it like it’s pure fact.
I let out a scoff, intending to stand up and move away when Grainger reaches out and snatches my wrist, yanking me off the table and onto his lap. He groans right away, like he’s in pain, cursing up a storm as I sit there and cock a brow.
“Idiot,” I murmur, but it’s said with affection, my hands sliding over his shoulders. That draws that intense focus of his right back to me.
“Why are you not freaking the fuck out right now?” he demands as I roll my hips against him, just to see his reaction. He grits his teeth, clamping his hands down on my pelvis with an ironclad grip. “Look at me, Gidge.”
“You don’t know that it’s yours,” I repeat for the hundredth time, and he laughs at me. I wish he wouldn’t. He needs to take it easy, but knowing Cade, that’s unlikely to happen. “It could easily—”
“It’s mine.” He stares back at me with this confident surety that makes me want to scream. I could strangle this man. “We made a baby when we fucked in that church; it’s probably the anti-Christ,” he jokes, reaching into the pocket of my jacket like he’s looking for something. Cigarettes, probably.
“Pregnant women can’t smoke,” I say dryly, and Grainger scowls at me.
“You seem awfully calm about this. Makes me suspicious as hell.”
“Crown told me already,” I say, before this conversation goes too far to come back from. Grainger goes very, very still, and I can see that wild anger in him rising to the surface like a storm.
“He did what?” Cade hisses, pausing at the sound of the front door opening and angry footsteps pounding down the hall. Crown appears a moment later, staring down at his sergeant-at-arms like he might take care of the strangling for me.
“What the fuck, Grainger?” he snaps, eyes flicking to me again before returning back to his fellow Daybreaker.
“What the fuck is right,” Grainge grinds out, pushing me aside and standing up to face off against his VP, as if he could actually take him in the state he’s in. “You told her. You fucking told her when you knew that I wanted to do it. You son of a bitch.”
Crown looks at him impassively for a moment before turning back to me.
“He wasn’t supposed to leave the hospital for four more days; he checked himself out.”
I stand up, fury overwhelming me.
“Cade,” I warn, but he barely looks at me. Instead, he moves toward Crown like he wants to put a knife in him.
“How dare you take that moment away from me,” he hisses out, and I see this getting bad—and fast. All of those times that Crown warned me off Grainger, that was jealousy brewing hot and violent between them. For some reason, it’s these two that seem to clash the most out of any other combination between the four men.
“Gidget and I had our own shit to work out,” Crown says, but like the words are being pulled from him like teeth.
Grainger tosses me a look that I return with a furious one of my own.
“You checked yourself out of the hospital? Why would you do that?” I’m so frustrated right now that I could spit.
“I wanted to be here,” he says, turning to look at me with an almost empty expression. “My place is here.”
With you.
I wish he would say that. I don’t know why. I guess I’m just fucking nuts. That’s not something Cade Grainger would ever say. But it’s implied, right?
“What good does that do any of us if you’re dead?” I say, trying and failing to keep my voice that of an ice princess who doesn’t care about anything.
For years, that’s exactly who I’ve made myself be. This cold, cynical bitch that hates everyone and everything. But it’s been a lie all along. All one need do is peek into my memories from two years ago to see that I clearly suffered a mental break and shut my emotional side down.
