Page 37

But he did.

It lingers, this ghastly, unspeakable thought that Stella was taken because of me. Pace didn’t put it there. It’s been haunting the corners of my mind since I watched her on Pace’s monitor, driving into North Side and never returning.

Turning back to my suitcase, I zip up the sides, more determined than ever to get some space. This isn’t a place of creation. It’s a fucking palace of destruction and it’ll destroy anyone and anything inside its walls.

“It’s pretty nice here,don’t you think?” I pat my face dry and analyze my skin in the bathroom mirror. Ugh. Everyone talks about the pregnancy glow, but no one talks about the persistent acne. “I’ll even pretend I didn’t see you hiding guns all over a few hours ago.” I squeeze a glob of toothpaste out on the brush and shove it in my mouth.

My fight with Pace still burns angrily in my chest, but I’m resolved to ignore it, letting the familiarity of West End and Royal Ink’s loft apartment soothe the wound. Crossing into the territory earlier that afternoon had meant Nick and Remy patting down Lex for weapons and finding too many. They were unhappy about it, but I convinced them to let him keep most of them.

Maybe Pace hurt me, but he did it with the truth.

Nowhere is safe for me.

Which means nowhere is safe forus.

After a long moment, Lex’s flat voice rings out from the bedroom. “There’s only one room.”

Sighing, I spit into the sink, staring into my own reflection. “I know.”

There’s a long pause, and then, “The couch will be fine.”

“Lex,” I start, the words garbled around the toothbrush, “this is stupid; just sleep in the bed with me.”

It’s been a month since the attack, and even by Lex’s own metric, I’m cleared for just about anything. But he treats me like spun glass.

Or rather, he treatsthe babylike spun glass.

Lex strolls into the bathroom, shirtless and in a pair of pajama bottoms that hang low on his hips. His chest is coveredin a scattering of light auburn hair, with a darker thatch that runs below his belly. He’s wearing his glasses, peering down at the back of a pill bottle. “I think you should add one of these to your daily supplements.”

Distracted by his—Jesus,everything—toothpaste slides down the back of my throat, and I gag.

“Ver!” He drops the bottle on the counter and rushes over, one hand on my back, the other on my stomach.

“I’m fi—acgh-ne.” I gag again and then spit out the toothpaste in the sink.

Lex turns on the water and I bend, scooping water into my mouth with my hands. Coughing a few more times, I finally get it together. When I look up again, my face is red, and the concern he’d shown before has darkened into something sharp and complicated.

“What?” I ask, wiping my mouth on the handcloth. “I’m fine.”

In the mirror, his eyes dart down. “What are you wearing?”

Following his gaze, I pull at the big T-shirt I found in the back of the closet. “Oh, this?” It’s faded and worn, an oversized, black Forsyth Fury shirt with a growling bear on the front. “It’s super soft and big enough to cover our little head of lettuce here,” I say, referencing this week’s produce-to-baby scale.

I search his eyes as he spins me around, putting my back in the reflection of the mirror. Expressionlessly, he points to something there. “It has Perilini’s name on it.”

I crane my neck and see the peeling letters. “So?”

“So…” He meets my gaze, brows crouched dangerously low. “I know we have this little truce, and you think it’s fun that we’re all playing nice, but you don’t belong to them, Verity. And when a woman wears a man’s shirt,withhis name on it, there’s an implication.”

“Oh, for the love of—” I just can’t help it.

I laugh.

That dark eyebrow-crouching grows more severe with each snorted chuckle. “This isn’t a joke. Who you belong to in this town means something.” It isn’t until I see the tendon straining angrily in his neck that I swallow down my amusement.

I lift my shirt, revealing the ever-growing swell of my belly. “I think this is a bigger implication of who I belong to. One I can’t take off.” His gaze roams the taut, pale skin of my stomach, and his jaw tenses. There’s this spark of fire in his eyes that grabs me like a fishhook, right between my thighs.

Goodness gracious.