The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(47)

“Okay. But I want my goddamn muffin.”





We go to Buy Buy Baby after he shoots down my suggestion that we start at Saks.

“You can’t even walk into Saks for less than a grand,” he says. “Their cribs are probably made of white gold.”

“We’re not going to find a Silver Cross stroller in here,” I mutter as we walk to the doors.

“Knowing how expensive your taste is, that’s probably for the best.”

Inside, we are greeted by an employee who hands me a mind-numbing list of “suggested items” and gives Graham a scanner so all our choices will be saved in their registry system.

“This can’t all be necessary,” I say under my breath. “My God. Even the bathing section of this list has twenty things on it.”

He glances at me. “We have plenty of time.”

“Maybe we don’t. Your aunt had a story—”

He laughs. “My aunt has a story for everything.” He places his hand on the small of my back. “I’m not going to let this get fucked up, okay? I promise you…by the time this baby arrives, we’ll have everything we need.”

I feel my shoulders settle a little. I don’t trust myself with any of this. But I do trust him.

We begin to scan things I didn’t even know existed until today: infant tub, diaper genie, bottle warmer, nursing pillow, window car shade, video monitor. Will he stay long enough to help me get it all set up? The odds of me correctly putting together a diaper genie or connecting the monitor to my phone are close to nil.

“I think we should find out what we’re having,” I whisper as we look at the strollers.

I see both hope and worry in his eyes. “You’re sure? I thought you wanted to be surprised.”

“I’m sure.” I’m still scared, but when I look at him, I know he’ll make sure things work out. And there’s enough we don’t know without adding gender to the list.

He reaches into his wallet and removes the envelope—he’s been carrying it around all this time, which is sort of sweet—and hands it to me. I take a deep breath before I tear it open.

Girl.

We’re having a girl. I stare at it, blinking back tears as he stares at it too.

He swallows. “Well, then,” he says, his voice a little rough.

I could make a joke right now, throw out yet another dumb name I don’t actually like, but I just can’t. We’re having a girl, and I already love her.

And God, I don’t want to mess this up.





That night, I fall into an exhausted, troubled sleep and wake gasping. I stumble out to the living room, and turn on a lamp, needing to escape my thoughts.

I’m curled up on the couch with my phone when he opens his door, blinking at me in the dim light. He’s wearing shorts but no shirt, and his abs ripple as he walks. My gaze falls to that happy trail of his, just below his belly button.

Fucking Anna Tattelbaum.

“Why are you up?” he asks.

I set the phone down. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I had a bad dream and was too upset to go back to sleep.”

He hesitates. I’m certain he’s going to shrug and go back to his room, but instead he comes and sits at the end of the couch, arranging the blanket so that it’s covering my toes. I’d be better off if he’d cover his bare chest because, Jesus, he looks so good right now.

“What happened in your dream?”

I frown. It’s going to sound ridiculous to him. “I dreamed I put the baby in the oven.”

He makes a startled sound—some combination of a cough and a laugh. “What?”

“I put her in the oven. It’s not like I was sitting there thinking, oh, putting the baby in the oven sounds like a good idea, I think I’ll go for it. I just arrived at work and remembered I’d done it. And then I was terrified and couldn’t get home fast enough, and I was running and I—”

I can’t even continue to describe it. The whole thing was so terrifying.

“And you felt absolutely powerless,” he says quietly, wrapping a hand around my foot.

“Yes,” I whisper, “exactly.”

“It’s a lot…to go from being only responsible for yourself to being entrusted with a human life.”

“I can barely take care of myself. Who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to entrust me with a baby?”

He laughs. “Well…no one.”

I kick him. “And here you were doing so well for a minute. I almost didn’t hate you.”

He laughs again. “Almost?”

“I don’t want to do this alone,” I whisper.

He squeezes my foot. “You’re not.”

“But you won’t always be here. You’ll go back to New York, and then what?”

He frowns, biting his lip as he hesitates. “I’ve still got plenty of time,” he says after a moment, which is when I realize I was hoping for something else, hoping he’d say, ‘I’ll stay as long as you need me.’ Or better yet, ‘I’m not sure I plan to go back.’

But he hasn’t said that. He does plan to go back. And when did it become the case that I didn’t want him to?

“Look…I get it,” he says. “This is terrifying. And there are so many things that can go wrong, and you have no control over what happens. It’s why I was so determined not to have kids—because I didn’t want to go through my whole life feeling—” He stops, his tongue darting out to tap his lip before he looks away. “I just never wanted to bring things into my life I couldn’t afford to lose. But Keeley…you’ll get the hang of it, I swear. We both will.”