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when are you going to get it? She was never ours. She’s always been his.”
She might not be ours in any true sense, but she’s still meant for us and us alone.
“What’s wrong with your face?” I snort. “You and I both know there’s nothing wrong with my face, Princess. God broke the mold when he made this one.”
Her head pops up over the pillow barricade. “Stop shaking the mattress!” I grunt as I violently adjust. “How is it shaking? I feel like I’m drowning in quicksand, Christ.”
But I can’t blame any of them. It’s this parasite inside of me.
Wicker Ashby is so many terrible things. He’s a liar. A womanizer. A bully. A spoiled brat with knives for words. For all I know, he’s an actual murderer. This is Forsyth, after all. But all that knowledge never prepared me for another horrible facet of him. He’s also a cuddler.
He engulfs me so entirely that the thought of ripping myself away actually seems unpleasant. None of Wicker’s lies are as awful as this one.
Wicker can’t hurt me there. I’d never let him.
“You’re a second away from losing that pitiful excuse of a dick.” He thumbs the corner of his mean grin. “Finally admitting you want my dick?” “In a jar,” I grind out. “On my mantle.”
Maybe I’m actually still dreaming. That’s the only way to explain Wicker Ashby on his knees before me,
Wicker is good at what he does, and what he does is this: A single glance turns my bones to gelatin.
He can reject me over and over, but I know who is going to ultimately win this low-burning battle between me and Whitaker Ashby. There is no other option. It has to be me.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Wicker was worried about me. Since I do know better, I understand that he’s worried about himself.
The only thing in this palace that’s worse than being pregnant is not being pregnant.
Pawns, I realize. That’s all we are to him. My mother, me, his sons…
“The other houses are given a woman to fight for, to keep them in line, so their King has a string to pull.
But East End isn’t a house of animals. We’re creators. We create beautiful things, like this palace. Or this garden.” He nudges one of the tangled vines with the toe of his shoe. “We also create destruction. We create pain. We create power.”
“He needs to trim up for Mother’s Day,” Father sharply insists. To Wicker, he explains, “You’re escorting in four events that weekend, and I won’t have you looking like some beast. They like you to be lean and unthreatening.” The table rattles as Wicker slams down his fork. “Am I your whore or your prestige athlete? You can’t have both.” “You’re whatever I damn well say you are!”
It’s almost like she’s having his baby instead of ours. If it were up to him, we’d have no part in it whatsoever.
“If I had to spend one more night listening to you puke up that milk…” Her incensed gaze snaps to him. “Yes, I imagine not waking up to your face every morning will take care of the nausea.” Wicker’s eyes burn with a vicious smirk. “And maybe without you hanging all over me every night, I’ll actually get some rest.” Her jaw drops. “Me hanging all over you?!”
My brothers and I made a pact, and those are taken seriously between the three of us. Trust and loyalty are all we have—because we sure as fuck aren’t bound by blood.
Sleeping with Verity isn’t an honor like Father thinks it is. It’s a test. And there’s nothing I hate more than failing one of those.
I’d never seen that before—people being put back together instead of taken apart.
There’s power in healing.
I wonder if it’s part of the reason I wanted to be a healer. Not to prove them wrong, but to be on the other side of that door—someone who fixes instead of breaks.
Rufus Ashby, as always, holds the keys to my life, and I’ve had no option but to bend to his will. I will not be a doctor who heals. I’ll be an instrument that suits the needs of a King and his territory.
“Verity ‘Backstabber’ Sinclaire? You can’t be serious. She wants us even less than he does! She betrayed you as much as she did me!” “It’s not about her,” I snap, but before I can elaborate, I feel another presence in the room behind me. “She’s carrying our baby.”
Father being the first person to hold that baby. To see it all covered in amniotic fluid. To wipe its eyes. To be the first thing it sees of this world. It makes me want to kill someone.
“It’s ours,” Pace says, perfectly mirroring my thoughts. I agree, “We created it, and I’ll deliver it.”
“We’re not leaving,” I decide. It’s kind of like when I chose medicine. It wasn’t some grand epiphany where the heavens parted and granted me clarity. It just is.
don’t know what it is about this girl that strips me down to the barest parts, but I know that I’m desperate to beat it.
because suddenly she’s a liar. She does fight back.
“Maybe if you took the vitamins—” “Finish that sentence,” she growls, “and I’ll find something in this bathroom to stab you with.”
I mean for her to grab the lip of the counter, but instead, she places each hand on my shoulders, her green eyes wide and wet as I crouch down. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
For the first time, I look at her and am seized by the notion that my baby is in there. Right beyond this skin and muscle and sinew. Right there. My throat sticks with a dry swallow as it comes down on me all at once. I’m staying for this.
How does that happen? Why do I think of it in there and feel both filled with purpose and utterly fucking lost?
My eyes jump up to hers, caught off guard by the realization I’m framing her belly with my palms. And she’s caressing my hair.
I wonder if Pace feels this responsibility, too—that whatever is in her belly is worth killing for. Maybe that’s why all he does anymore is watch. Maybe this fear gripping my chest has been chasing him for weeks. This fear that we’re not enough.
I think about what it would’ve been like to have this girl sitting in the stands for me all those years while I tended goal. What it would have been like to come home to something soft rather than my father’s incessant criticism and disappointment.
“Wick’s going to lose it when he sees you in that.” She rolls her eyes. “He gets mad about everything.” Mad isn’t the right word, but I’m not about to tell her how it’s really going to make him feel.
I know one thing for certain: he can’t know the way I covet her.
Because most of all, he can’t know that I care about anything other than the health of the fetus.
but here I am, thinking unreasonable things. Like the three of us running away, but taking her with us, all the while knowing with complete certainty that Father would track us to the ends of the earth to get her back. I know it because I feel the same.
If she ran, I’d chase her down, and nothing could stand in my way.
“Nervous?” she asks as if she’s reading my mind. “About what?” “Being a father?” I look at the spot on the ground, the carpet slightly worn from the pressure of my knees. I was nervous last night. Today, I’m fucking terrified of this child being raised by the monster that just left this room.
“what makes you think you can make me?” His jaw tics. “You don’t want the answer to that question.” “No,” I decide, jerking my chin, “what I want is for you to go get that cushion.” Pace’s brows knit up tightly, his eyes pinging to the chair. “For what?” I smile prettily. “For your knees, of course.”
OBSESSED WITH HER
“You’re overplaying your hand, Rosi.” “And you’re under-licking my cunt.”
This is about driving a wedge between these men—it’s about me taking control.
But my shit is that you’re under my goddamn skin. I want to be done with it. Done with you. There’s no treatment for this. There’s no group on campus where I can go to talk about the insatiable need I have to fuck my Princess, and that urge is worse than jonesing for a hit of Scratch.”
but deep down, you want to be a good girl, don’t you?” What I want is to rip his eyes out so he can never watch me, or anyone else, ever again.
