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I always figured the devil would come for me one day.
No one ever told me she would look this good.
“She’s in her room, by the way,” Bee chimes in as she walks back past the kitchen on her way to the exit. “She’s been a little down all day.”
“Down?”
Bee shrugs. “I asked. She didn’t want to talk about it.”
Before I know it, I’m on my feet and charging toward Wren’s room. I don’t even care about the knowing, smug look that Bee throws my way.
This time, I remember to knock.
“I’m okay, Bee, really. Just need a little space.”
Space? Fuck that. I push my way into her room, proving once again that nothing good comes from knocking.
She looks up from the small scrap of blue fabric in her hands and freezes when she sees me. “Oh. It’s you.”
I walk over to the window seat and sit down opposite her. Something’s off. Her shoulders are hunched and her eyes look swollen, like she’s been crying.
“What’s that?” I ask, gesturing to the fabric in her hands.
She passes it to me silently. It turns out to be a little blue blanket. Hand-knitted, if I had to guess, judging from the uneven, clumsy stitching.
I venture a guess. “You made this?”
“No. Rose did.” She glances to the side, where a bunch of empty boxes have been stacked. I recognize them as the boxes I’d used to move Wren’s stuff from her old apartment. “I was organizing a couple of things in the walk-in when I came across that.”
I hate seeing that look on her face, but silently, I feel this strange sense of victory. She’s finally decided to unpack.
I look down at the blanket. It’s so small. More like a handkerchief than something for a human. “It won’t go to waste,” I remind her gently.
Wren smiles through her unshed tears. “It just feels so unfair. This baby was never meant to be mine.”
I shift uncomfortably. Tell her, asshole, demands an angry voice in my head. Tell her the truth. Tell her what happened to Rose.
It’s not the first time I’ve ignored that voice. It’s not the hundredth or the thousandth time, either, and it won’t be the last.
Because I just can’t fucking bring myself to do it.
“‘Meant to be’ is one thing, Wren. ‘What is’ is a different thing altogether.”
She rubs a hand on her stomach absentmindedly. “It’s funny: Mom was always convinced that I would be the first one to have a kid. I suppose, in the end, she wasn’t wrong.” Her gaze drifts from the window to me, barely seeing anything in front of her. “It’s weird to think she won’t be here when I give birth, either. I’ll be alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” I rumble fiercely. “You’ll have me.” Her eyes brighten with surprise. “And Bee.” The light in her eyes dims just a little bit.
She takes the blanket from my hands. “As far as the world is concerned, this baby won’t be mine at all. It’ll be yours and Bee’s.”
“Only temporarily.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “What does that mean?”
Fuck. That wasn’t meant to come out. There’s more trust here than there once was, but this isn’t about trusting her; it’s about protecting her. She doesn’t need to know the unsavory details of how my world functions. Nor does she need to know the lengths I will go to to get what I want.
“It means that this will work out. You just need to trust me.”
She frowns. “Dmitri?—”
