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Her eyes pierce him.
Co
She inhales sharply. “Ne faites pas ça.” Don’t.
Co
She tries to glance at us, but he forces her head straight at him, making her come face-to-face with whatever she’s been hiding.
Rose has trouble surrendering and letting him win this long, drawn out game. Her eyes glance down at the spilt tequila, and he puts his hand over the top, telling her no. I finish my taco and grab my water, taking a large swig.
Co
I spit out my water.
Just like that. One word. Enceinte. And my cover is blown.
Fucking fuck.
They both turn their heads to look at me. For fuck’s sake—my brother gapes like I’ve grown horns, and Lily might as well be catching flies with her mouth.
Co
“Why are you fucking looking at me like that?” I ask defensively, backtracking. My efforts are useless. It’s Co
“Vous savez pourquoi.” You know why. He keeps shaking his head like he can’t believe this. Maybe he’s upset that he got something wrong. That he misread me. That I’ve been fucking overhearing his dialogs for years. All of the above, once again.
My muscles harden, and Daisy puts her hand on my leg underneath the table in comfort. I lace her fingers with mine and then nod at Co
“What?” Lo says. He leans back like a hurricane just knocked into him.
Rose glowers at me. “Go choke on your water again.” That is an insult usually reserved for Lo.
I flip her off and she does the same thing in return, which is an awful fucking rebuttal to the middle finger. It’s not like I’m asking her if she knows how to do it too.
I’d love to remove myself from this whole awkward situation, but we’re stuck at the same table together, forced to deal with serious issues that we’ve kept from each other.
Lo has his hands on his head, his eyes darting between me and Rose. “You both take birthday surprises to a new fucked up dimension.”
Rose blinks back tears. No wonder she’s been emotional this whole trip. I’ve rarely ever seen her cry, and she’s shed probably more tears in the past two weeks than she has in the past five years.
“Christ,” Lo says, realizing this too. He cringes, looking a little guilty. She’s been hormonal, obviously going through something, and he’s picked on her a lot. I mean, she didn’t even fucking tell Co
But their relationship—that’s just how they do things, I guess. I wouldn’t know unless I was in their heads. I’d rather a girl scream at the top of her lungs and throw things at me, telling me she’s pregnant than spend months solving a mystery.
Co
She holds her breath. “No.”
He frowns. “Seven?”
She shakes her head once.
He looks fucking pissed. He rubs his lips to hide the emotion, but I see the hurt and anger pulsing in his eyes. “Eight weeks?”
She glares. “Ne me regardez pas comme ça.” Don’t look at me like that.
They glance at me with agitation, realizing I understand them now.
Rose sighs heavily, reaching for her water.
“What’d they say?” Lily asks.
“I’m not getting into it,” I tell her.
Rose says, “You’re mad, Richard, that you were off on your numbers. I’m sorry you weren’t right—”
“No, darling,” Co
“How long have you known?” she asks quietly.
“When you had a flat tire, I was almost positive. Your GPS was set to the gynecologist, and you purposefully had a fight with me the next day so I’d sleep on the couch. I figured the doctors confirmed what you already knew, and you were too stubborn and afraid to tell me.”
Lo frowns and looks at Lily. “You knew?” She had been in the car with Rose.
She nods, her shoulders turned into her body. “Moral support.”
Co
Rose sits stiffly, and her chin trembles. “This wasn’t the plan. I’m not thirty-five yet.”
The waitress returns, cutting into possibly the most bizarre way a pregnancy can be a
“Ready to order?” she asks.
“We need like ten minutes,” Daisy tells her.
She nods, her eyes lingering on Daisy’s scar before she disappears. I can’t tell if the waitress recognizes us or not, but Daisy ends up resting her head against my arm. I comb my fingers through her hair.
“You’re not aborting the baby,” Co
“I know,” she retorts, fire coming back to her eyes. “You want a lineage. Eight kids, I remember.”
“We’re married,” he says. “We have billions of dollars. We may be young, but we can be the best parents. You just have to trust that you’ll be a great mother.”
I’ve seen Rose around kids. She’s about as maternal as a fucking brick wall, her nose curling in disdain when a baby cries or acts out. But I do know one thing—when she loves someone, she invests her whole fucking heart and time into them.
After a long stretch of silence, Rose says softly, “I thought about getting rid of the baby.”
Co
She swallows hard. “Lily talked me out of it.”
Lo kisses Lily’s temple. I think we’re all glad Rose didn’t choose that option, even if she thought about it.
And I would feel worse for Co
“I just…” Rose lets out a deep breath. “I figured that I had a couple of months before my body started to really change. Two months to ignore the fact that my world is going to flip upside down and a creature is going to grow inside of me. Give me that.”
He smiles. “I did, darling.”
“So,” Lo says, holding his water, “how exactly do two geniuses accidentally get pregnant?” He sips his drink in amusement.
Rose starts putting her frizzy, wet hair in a sleek pony. “Why don’t you answer this one, Richard? You’re friends with Satan’s spawn.”
Lo laughs. “I think you’ve mistaken me for the ‘creature’ growing inside you.”
Co
“We have unprotected sex,” Co
Rose points at me at this. Fuck. “You better be wearing a condom with her.”
My face hardens. I already told her I’d be safe with Daisy. They all need to chill the fuck out. “That’s none of your fucking business, Rose.”
Daisy ends up saying it anyway, just to appease her sister. “I’m on birth control.”
“So was I,” Rose snaps. “And I never missed a day.” She prides herself on this fact.
“Then what the fuck happened?” I ask, extending my arm in confusion.
“Birth control is only ninety-nine percent effective,” Co
Rose smacks him on the arm for that comment, and he grabs her wrist and kisses her deeply. She melts. I stop fucking watching.