The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(16)

Jesus, of course I’m not drinking. Did he miss the part where I said I was a doctor? Has it escaped his attention that if I’m living in this very nice—albeit messy— apartment I must be doing something right? I’m also taking vitamins and choking down green juice and salad every day, but I’m not going to waste time defending myself. And since he’s going to think the worst of me no matter what, I might as well have some fun with it.

“We’ll see about the drinking,” I chirp. “All bets are off when I go to Coachella. I get so thirsty.”

“You’re not seriously going to Coachella…with all the pot fumes and cigarette smoke you’ll breathe in? What if you accidentally take an elbow to the stomach, or get trampled?”

I return the cream cheese to the fridge. “FYI, getting trampled would kind of be an issue, pregnant or not, medically speaking.”

He ignores this, suddenly focused on the purse I’ve slung over the chair beside him. “If you’re actually a doctor, why do you have a closet like a Kardashian? And how the hell did you buy an Hermes bag on a resident’s salary?”

“It was a gift.”

He stiffens. “Anything that expensive is an ‘arrangement’, not a ‘gift.’”

I slam the knife down on the counter. “What, precisely, is that supposed to mean?”

He doesn’t answer because we both know exactly what he was trying to imply.

I nod at the door. “Time for you to leave, Graham.”

He hesitates before he rises from his chair. “I’ll call you.”

“Don’t feel compelled,” I reply, as the door shuts behind him.





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10





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GRAHAM





I thought the answers would quell the panic in my chest, but I have the answers and a full night of sleep, and I only feel worse.

I mean, of all the people with whom to be producing a child, something I never wanted in the first place: a woman who eats popcorn in bed, seeks financial advice from the homeless, is being “gifted” shit worth thousands of dollars, and who still doesn’t seem entirely sure she even wants the kid.

There’s a piece of me that thinks it would be better not to know, but better for whom? Not our child, who’d then be raised by Keeley alone, with no supervision. She probably thinks she can let him sleep in a pile of designer dresses in her closet and feed him Skinny Pop when he cries. Maybe she’d ask “Mark” to check in on the baby during the workday if she was feeling extra responsible.

And how the hell am I supposed to fix anything when I live three thousand miles away?

When I get back to Newport, my mother grins at me from her seat at the kitchen table. “Someone had a late night,” she teases, undeniably pleased. She’d begun to worry I’d always be alone, something I’d assumed as well and was fine with. Trust Keeley Connolly to fuck up every one of my carefully laid plans.

I cross the kitchen to the coffee pot. If I admitted where I’ve been, she’d be thrilled. She’d dance across the kitchen, then hire a skywriter to shout it to the rest of Newport. But I’m not going to tell her she’s got a grandkid on the way when I have no fucking clue what Keeley’s going to do between now and the next time I see her.

“Anyone special?”

“No, Mom. It wasn’t a big deal.”

Her smile wavers and I get a sudden glimpse of the worst days of my childhood. And possibly a glimpse of my kid’s childhood too.

I won’t fucking stand for it.

I tell my mom I need to pack. I’m already calling my lawyer by the time I hit the stairs.

“I need you to write something up for me,” I tell his voice mail.

Maybe Keeley isn’t the same as my mom, but she might be even worse.

And I’m not fucking living through that again. Neither is my kid.





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11





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KEELEY





I arrive at the office, waving half-heartedly to Trinny at the front desk.

She winces, and I already know what she’s going to say.

“Your schedule is packed. Dr. Fox had something come up.”

Ugh. I’m nearly through the backlog, but my days are just as long because Dr. Fox and Dr. Joliet seem to have a lot of shit that just comes up, always to my detriment. And maybe if they knew I was pregnant they’d stop doing it, but it’s still early in my tenure here and they already don’t seem pleased. There have been comments about my attire—my cardigans would be more flattering if belted, apparently—and there are vague complaints about the way my new patients aren’t thrilled with me. Why would my patients be thrilled? They thought they were getting a well-known doctor and got dumped on the one who’s still wet behind the ears.

I can’t say I’m thrilled either. I’m putting in as many hours as I did as a resident, and they somehow feel longer. At least at the hospital, my day was exciting. There were burns and lumps and deformities. There were blisters the size of my hand and the occasional cutaneous larva migrans. Now, my day is always some version of the same thing: “I’m breaking out” or “I don’t like these lines”. Psoriasis is as exciting as it gets.