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Sloan sighs and wilts, some of her anger disappearing, though pieces of it remain like smoldering embers. “I know, Beck. I know you care. I just… Shit, I just wish you knew you didn’t have to prove yourself all the time. You’re enough as you are. That’s all I want: you as you are. That’s enough for me. It’ll be enough for our baby, too, okay?”
I swallow hard. I’m tempted to tell her I love her. I think we might need to hear one of us say it, but instead, I pull back, lace my fingers with hers—the ones on the hand that didn’t just break a guy’s jaw—and we walk out. Together. For now.
At least until she figures out she can do better than a thug like me.
48
BECK
It was supposed to be a nice dinner. Sloan and I in front of a roaring fire, on a night where the moon was bright and the stars were twinkling and it was me and her celebrating being me and her. That was what this dinner was supposed to be. Amoment.
Instead, it’s raining. I can’t build a fire because the flue is clogged with a bird nest and I forgot to tell Karla to call the guy to clean it. There’s no moon and if there are any stars left in the world, they’re hidden away from us tonight.
Worst of all, Sloan and I are barely talking, and I have no idea why.
It started when we woke up this morning. She was in the bathroom heaving and I walked in and asked her if she was okay.
“No, asshole, I’m not okay. I’ve just thrown up my left lung. But if you stick around, maybe you can see me heave up the right and know it’syourfucking fault.”
Some mornings, she throws up; some, she doesn’t. I always ask if she’s okay. Today is the first time it’s annoyed her to this extent.
“I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“Yeah. Enjoy the kitchen because…” And she didn’t finish because the right lung had just decided to make its debut.
By lunch, we were almost back to normal. But we never quite made it back to us. “You want a salad for lunch?”
I only asked because, every day for the last five or six weeks, she’s ordered a salad and enjoyed it. But today, when I asked, she gave me the evil eye. “Why would I want asalad,Beck? Because I’m putting on weight and my jeans won’t snap closed?” She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her shirt and blinked back her tears.
Then it started raining. We’re in Seattle, for God’s sake; it rains three hundred days a year here. So it shouldn’t have felt quite so theatrical. But it did. More and more lately, it feels like the world is conspiring to make our lives as hard as possible.
The point is that, when we finally make it to the table and dinner is already made and waiting, Sloan looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, and I don’t know how to bridge the yawning chasm between us.
The worst she can do is tell me to go fuck myself, right?
I start to say, “Sloan…” But then the doorbell rings. Sighing, I stand and go answer it.
But when I see who’s on the other side, my mouth flops open to the floor.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” In all the years I’ve lived in this house, I’ve never invited this son of a bitch over.
But Bobby “The Bloodhound” Daniels is on my doorstep.
“I’m here to see my son,” he says, all breezy and nonchalant like this is an everyday kind of thing. I’m still struck stupid, so he brushes past me and saunters into the house.
The little boy in me has no idea what to do. But the angry man in me is about to set this whole fucking place on fire—so long as I get to seal my dad inside of it and watch him burn to ash with the rest of my things.
Those feelings intensify when he beelines it to Sloan and smiles down at her. “Evening, sweetheart,” he croons. “You?—”
But the rest of his words die when I chase him down, grab him by the front of his shirt, and slam him into the nearest wall. I’m seething, raging like a fucking Viking, holding him so high his toes barely graze the floor.
His face is hot with shame and surprise. Not that I give a damn. This embarrassment is the price he pays for raising an ox for a son. For making me fight when I was a kid. For making me learn how to take a punch and not giving a fuck when I cried myself to sleep at night because I was tired of being beaten just for the right to eat dinner.
He holds his hands up. “Put me down, Beckett.” He says it like it’s a curse word.
Grimacing, I drop him back onto his feet. He straightens his shirt as my breath reluctantly eases back to something approaching normal. But my fists remain knotted tight as he drops into the nearest chair at the dining table.
“I’ll ask again: what the fuck are you doing here?” I move closer to Sloan so she knows I’m not going to let him near her.
