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Ghost tipped his head back and sighed. “Fuck, I broke my wrist when I was about five years old and then my elbow when I was eight.
“I broke my ankle playing basketball.” Ryder put down his empty beer bottle. “And I can’t even remember all the times I had to get stitches from doing dumb shit.”
Knox rested his ankle over his knee. “Oh yeah. My poor mum. Between me and my brothers, we should have gotten a frequent customer discount at the hospital A&E.”
Ryder laughed cynically. “Just think of what you have to look forward to with Brady and Emerson, Sid. Double the fun.”
I didn’t mean to speak, but I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out, “Not if you’re keeping an eye on them properly.”
All the joking stopped, and the room got quiet.
Ghost was looking at me with his unnerving stare. “There’s no way you can prevent a kid from ever getting hurt. Unless you bubble wrap them and never let them go anywhere or do anything.”
Sid agreed. “Kids get hurt. It happens. You just have to teach them not to be so much of a dumbass that they do something really stupid.”
I swallowed down the acid that had risen had the back of my throat. “Kody fell off the table.”
Everyone was studying me now. Ryder punched my shoulder lightly. “You’re not blaming yourself for that, are you? Kids climb shit all the time.”
My knee began bouncing nervously. “I wasn’t watching him.”
Sid swiveled his head to look at me, his eyes wide with shock. “Lacey was watching him.”
“Lacey?” Knox’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You mean our Lacey?”
“There’s no fucking ‘our Lacey’. She’s mine.” I growled out the reply before I could bite my tongue.
The room grew deathly quiet again as four pairs of eyes landed on me. I jumped off my stool and began pacing. Shit, I was losing it.
Sid shook his head in disbelief. “Is that why you’ve been such a sad sack of shit these last few weeks? Did you fucking blame her, and she dumped your ass?”
“Wait, you guys were together?” Ryder looked just as confused as Knox.
“They were together all right,” Sid confirmed. “I happened to catch the very naked evidence of that. And if I had to bet, I’d say that Bash was in love with her.”
Knox threw up his hands. “Mate, what the fuck? What’s going on?”
I glared at Sid with clenched teeth. He wasn’t making this any better. “We had a thing for a bit, but we’re not together anymore.”
“Because of Kody’s accident?” Ghost prodded.
I wanted to escape. This was the last thing I wanted to discuss with my friends. “Fuck, that was part of it, but we were never an actual couple. We were doing this friends-with-benefits thing while we were married—“
A collective shout of surprise went up from my friends. Ah, fuck. My big mouth.
Sid’s bellow of surprise drowned out the others. “What the fuck! You two are fucking married?”
Even Ghost looked surprised. “Whoa! What do you mean by married?”
I rubbed my temples. “We got married in Vegas. That night after your birthday party. You fuckers all went home with your wives and girlfriends and left me all alone. Apparently, I got married to Lacey.”
Ryder’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Only you, Bash. You pull babies and wives out of thin air.”
“You’ve been married to her all this time? Wait, does Kaylie know about this?” Sid asked.
The cat was already out of the bag, so there was no point in keeping any more secrets from my friends. “I don’t know. Lacey didn’t want anyone to know. We were just going to quietly get a divorce, but then we decided to be friends with benefits until the divorce went through and things got complicated.”
“You’ve been fucking her since Vegas? You are so gone, mate.” Knox chuckled.
