Page 79 of Lavish

A beat passed.

“Fine. But listen, I’ve been researching, and I think she needs to?—”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

I leaned my head back against the seat. “I mean, I am not indulging whatever hyperfixation you’ve developed this week. Noelle and Gigi will encourage that shit, but not me. Laurene is six months pregnant, not a Fabergé egg. Leave her alone and let her grow your baby.”

The silence stretched. A gravel crunch told me he’d pulled up to their house.

“I already caught her sneaking Turtles in the laundry room last night,” he said, as if confessing a felony.

I didn’t even try to hide my disdain. “Let me get this straight. You are panicking because your wife—who is carrying your child—wanted something sweet?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”

“Itisbad, Reese. It’s deranged.”

A flicker of something warm curled in my chest. I didn’t like howhumanhe sounded. How familiar. Howmuch like me.Because deep down, beneath all his neurotic panic, was someone terrified of doing it wrong. Of failing the people he loved.

Iknewthat feeling.

I was sitting in it.

Still parked. Still not ready to go inside and face Miles, who was probably barefoot and comfortable and sipping something expensive, like he hadn’t just been forced into a marriage with a woman who was already planning contingency exits.

“I just—” Reese’s voice faltered. “I want to make sure she’s okay. I want to get this right.”

“Want to control the uncontrollable?” I murmured.The pot calling the kettle black.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“It’s not control,” he finally said. “It’s…ensuring I get the outcome I want.”

“Are you sure I’m the only one you can talk to?” I asked. “What about a therapist?”Please keep talking, Reese…

He didn’t answer again. I stared up at my condo, at the glowing window upstairs—my office.Ouroffice now, because Miles lived in there.

“You could always talk to Laurene,” I added, quieter this time. “Have you tried that? Clearly your daddy issues are coming out to play.”

“Says the one whose family has mommy issues?”

A pause. Then, begrudgingly, “Touché.”

“Did you talk to Miles yet?” Reese asked me.

“Not since this morning, why?”

“Nothing,” he said, then immediately started talking about cribs again, cutting me off.

The call with Reese came to an end too soon. It was comical watching him turn into a mother hen and freaking out over this pregnancy more than Lu had. But I knew my niece was in great hands.

I couldn’t stay in the car forever, so eventually I dragged myself out, and through the front door. I hadn’t lived with anyone since I’d moved out my parents’, and this… It was still an adjustment.

“I’m home,” I said, and I paused.I’m announcing I’m home?

“In here, honey,” Miles said, and I headed to living room and called out to him.