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Every single person at the table turned to the man beside me and stared.
I looked at the intensity on all of their faces, blinking slowly and lazily as I took them all in.
Every single one of them, Banner included as he all but leaned around me to stare at Coffey, were all so intently focused on him that it made a chill skate down my spine.
“I’ll go fix it,” he promised, then shoved at Autry.
Autry got up, but instead of sitting down in his place, he walked with Coffey outside.
I turned around, and no longer did Coffey have everyone’s attention. I did.
CHAPTER 17
Being a functional adult seems a bit excessive.
-Simi’s secret thoughts
SIMI
“Um,” I forced myself to say. “What’s going on?”
Nine pairs of eyes blinked in unison.
It was the one to my left, Duke, the eldest in the group, who answered.
“His blood sugar is out of whack,” Duke answered. “You didn’t remember that?”
I opened my mouth to say no, but then a snippet of conversation between him and me came back to me.
“I’m a type one diabetic. From the moment I could walk, I had blood sugar issues. It wasn’t until the last five years or so when I got my pump that automatically injects me with my insulin that I’ve been able to live a somewhat normal life.”
“Oh, yeah.” I winced. “Guess I don’t have them all after all.”
One of the ones to my left snorted, and I looked that way.
Whittaker grinned wickedly at me when he caught my attention.
“Likely, you will keep thinking and saying that, then you’ll get another one,” he said. “Do you remember how you conceived, at least? I feel like that one might be the most important.”
I thought back to how our child was conceived.
His hands. His mouth. His cock. His…
Yes, yes, I did remember.
I blushed furiously, causing the table to laugh.
To change the subject of my child’s conception, I turned to the group and gave them all eye contact before saying, “Does that happen often?”
“Often enough,” Trig answered as he finished off the last of his drink. Water. Boring water. All of them had gotten boring water but Banner, who’d had a Dr Pepper with me.
“Luckily, only in the last six months to a year, actually,” Crew answered. “He got that pump about three months before our last mission together. Used to, he’d have to stop in the field with his handy dandy blood glucose monitor. Then we’d have to figure out where the hell to put his insulin.”
For the next ten minutes, they talked all about the times that Coffey would need insulin to bring his glucose down or food to bring it up, so much that it actually freaked me out a lot.
But then they started talking about the miracle of his little machine and how it only gives him alerts when there’s a malfunction with it or he’s out of insulin and in need of changing a pod of some sort.
I was patiently tapping my fingers against my lap, wondering if I should go out and find him, when their attention went over my head.
Seconds later, that familiar body slid into the booth beside me and crowded me into his side.
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, malfunction. Had to change it.”
As if that explained everything.
Later, when we were alone, he would be telling me everything so I could be as concerned or as unconcerned as the men at the table that knew him better.
Which actually kind of smarted a little bit.
It was sad that the men knew him better than I did.
I wanted what they had.
“Cool,” I managed to say.
He caught my fidgeting hands and pulled them into his lap, keeping them in his one large palm and curling his fingers around them to keep them still.
I leaned in and rested my head against his shoulder, feeling something hard and lumpy on it.
Before I could get alarmed at what it was, he said, “That’s the thing that tests my blood and holds the insulin,” he explained before I could ask.
“Oh,” I said. “I wish they had something like that for migraines. Swear to God, I would pay billions for that if they had a way to stop that in its track, testing it before it became a problem.”
“You get migraines?” Noble asked. “Me, too.”
I nodded. “Debilitating ones. Ones that make me dizzy and fall off silks, and now I’m not allowed to get higher than three feet off the ground when I’m having one because of one teeny-tiny little incident involving falling twelve feet onto my head.”
“One teeny-tiny incident,” Noble snorted, emphasizing what I’d said. “If they’re anything like mine, I can see why your family forbid you to get up there. I can barely walk a straight line, let alone get higher than three feet off the ground.”
That’s when I became aware of the hands that were holding mine so tightly.
