“I hope you know what a week without you means.”
She doesn’t respond in any way except to pin her gaze to mine for a long minute. The way her chest rises and falls as her breathing picks up tells me everything I need to know.
My wife wants what I want just as much as I do.
Nitro’sPOV
8:15 a.m.
Tatum
Renee is having a moment. This may take longer than I thought.
Me
What kind of moment?
She switchesfrom texting to a call, which I answer immediately. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“I’m going to put you on speaker so Renee can tell you herself.”
There’s silence for a beat and then my niece says, “Congratulations. You’re going to be a great uncle or whatever it’s called when your niece has a baby. And prepare yourself to take me in because Greg is probably going to leave me now that I’m pregnant.”
I frown at what she says as well as the level of stress I can hear in her voice. This is so unlike Renee who is always calm, always in control. “Greg’s not going to leave you.”
She doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she carries on like she didn’t hear a word of what I said. “This is all Roe’s fault, FYI. She got me drunk and I forgot to take my birth control. After my husband leaves me, and I lose my job, and I birth a baby I have no clue what to do with, and I have to throw my twenty-year plan out the window and figure out how to write a new one that includes said baby and no income to speak of, I will be moving in with you and Tatum. You guys will feed us, clothe us, shelter us, and do anything else that babies require, and if any of your people bring Jäger near me again, I will pour it all down your throats until you choke on it.”
I like Renee’s husband but that fucking twenty-year plan of his needs to be trashed.
“Greg’s not going to leave you,” Tatum says softly.
“He is!” Renee’s voice turns into a high-pitched wail. “When he gets home from Melbourne tonight, he’s not even going to unpack his suitcase after I give him the news.”
“Right,” Tatum says in her take-charge tone. “I’m going to make you a coffee and then we’re going to talk. And I’m going to remind you of just who your husband is.”
“I know exactly who my husband is,” Renee says.
“I think you’ve forgotten,” Tatum says, “because if you did know, you’d know there is no way Greg Washington would ever walk out on his pregnant wife. He’s the same as Nitro and would never abandon the woman he loves.”
“You don’t know him like I do,” Renee says. “You don’t know how committed he is to that fucking plan of his.”
This is the first time I’ve ever heard Renee say anything negative about their plan. “I thought you were all in on the plan,” I say.
“I’m all in on my marriage. I’m all in on my career. I’m all in on paying off this house and building a life with Greg. But that plan needs to be torn up because it fucking keeps me awake at night.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because it’s so fucking stressful worrying over whether we’ll hit every date we’ve scheduled things for. There are barely any allowances built into it for when situations arise that will push things back.”
“Like a baby,” Tatum says gently.
“Yes!” I hear terror in Renee’s voice. “Like a baby!”
“Do you want this baby?” I ask.
The terror clings to her voice. “That’s not the right question, Nitro.”
“Itisthe right question,” I argue.
