Page 37
Story: Princes of Legacy
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.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182