Brutal Game (Flynn and Laurel #2)(28)

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” she said again, and he chuckled. “I like the shape.” Not a circle—a softly rounded rectangle.

“It’s a cushion cut,” he announced with an overdone know-it-all air.

“The jeweler tell you that?”

“Yup.”

“It’s beautiful. Like, beautiful.” She slid it out. The band was simple and slender, nicely balanced with the size of the stone. She turned it this way and that, watching the lamplight dance in the facets, feeling woozy to imagine she could wear this. All she had to do was say the word.

Not yet. Not until there was enough room inside her for all the joy that moment deserved to inspire. She slipped the ring back into its little slot, sad to shut it away in the dark.

“How’d you know my size? Anne?”

He nodded. “She snuck in and stole one of your rings.”

“Which one?”

“Silver, with a blue stone in it.”

She smiled. “Clever little sneak.”

“I didn’t tell her about the pregnancy,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have imagined you would.”

“You gonna tell her?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I will. She knows me too well not to notice I’m having a hard time.”

“You call in sick to work, I hope?”

“I have tomorrow off, so I’ll play it by ear. The distraction might be welcome.”

“You said you want to feel it all.”

“I do. But I don’t want to wallow in it, either. I just want to make sure I don’t half-ass this…this mourning, or whatever this is. I don’t want to white-knuckle my way through it, keeping manically busy, or cover over it with alcohol, or try to sleep through it. It deserves to be felt.” She paused, feeling like some hippy-dippy weirdo.

“Whatever you need. I’ll keep this f*cker safe until you’re ready to make its acquaintance,” he said, flashing the box then burying it back inside his coat pocket.

“Deal.”

She studied him for a long time. He looked different. Perhaps it was the comparably girly setting, atop her full mattress as opposed to his king, on her turquoise comforter, in a room with regular-sized windows and a normal-height ceiling. He looked new. Handsome in a softer way than usual.

He was an attractive man, she thought, but not everyone’s cup of tea. He didn’t have a charming smile—more a cocky smirk—and his hands were rough, same as his accent and his words and his kinks. Many women would prefer a polished type, dazzling and pedigreed as that diamond, or perhaps one as smooth and dignified as onyx. Flynn was brick, blunt and abrasive and honest, with hard edges and common good looks as plain as his speech. His body was ridiculous, though. It was a nice balance. A model-handsome face capping a physique like his would look like a caricature.

For the briefest moment, she wondered what it might have looked like. Their child.

If he gets his way, I’ve got all the time in the world to find out.

“You want to be alone?” he asked, perhaps mistaking her silence for distance.

She shook her head. “No. I want you here.”

“Good.”

“I want you to spend the night, if you want that too.”

“I wanna be whatever you need.”

“You always are.” And what she needed right now was a strong pair of arms holding her, keeping her together even as the ground seemed to be crumbling away beneath her feet.





8





“Something to drink while you wait?”

“Water’s fine.” Flynn looked past the waitress to the restaurant’s front windows. He thought to tack on a tardy “Thanks” just as she turned to walk away. His etiquette was rusty, and his mood wasn’t helping.

The place wasn’t fancy, just a little Sicilian hole-in-the-wall at the edge of the North End. The food was phenomenal—he’d been here before with Laurel—but the napkins were paper and most of the entrées were less than twenty bucks. Still, if he wasn’t ordering off a board tacked above a row of registers, it felt strange.

He checked his phone. Five after. Not like Laurel to be late, but also not like Laurel to spring a last-minute date on him. They hardly ever went on dates, probably only once or twice a month. They’d been on precisely zero the past few weeks, and if he was honest, he wasn’t really in the mood. But Laurel had sounded so excited over the phone, there was no way he could’ve said no.

The period following the miscarriage had been rough. He’d done his best to be whatever she needed, but as often as not, she hadn’t seemed sure of what that was. She’d been clingy one moment, cool the next, acting as though she’d rather be away from him but denying that she did. Even when he’d seemed to be doing exactly what she needed, he’d felt lost.

She’d caught him just as he’d been leaving work today, wanting him to meet her at six. He’d been hoping to go to the gym instead, but he’d dutifully gone home and showered off the plaster dust and dressed in his least beat-up jeans and the black sweater she’d given him for Christmas, ran a cloth over his only dress shoes. Glancing around, he figured he passed, even if he felt like a rhino perched on this spindly wooden chair. Even if he was the only patron with stitches bisecting their left eyebrow. Or any other body part, come to that.