The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(72)

He comes in late. I stumble across my room in the dark, half-asleep, wanting to see him and check on him and maybe tell him all the things I fell asleep thinking. He’s standing by the sink, drinking a glass of water. His Adam’s apple—which is actually just thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx—bobs as he drinks.

It’s my favorite thyroid cartilage in the entire world.

“Hey,” he says, looking up, frowning. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

You can always wake me, Graham. I want to see you. I miss you when you’re gone.

I’m not telling him that. Especially when he looks so wary, the way I do when I know a guy is about to say too much and I’m thinking please don’t do this. Don’t profess your feelings when I’m about to ask if we can take a break. “It’s okay. How’s Colin?”

He runs a hand over his head. “Not great. He thinks she’s got cold feet.”

The old Keeley would come alive at drama like this. I’d race to the counter and climb on a stool, placing my chin in my hands as I said, “tell me everything!” I’d pry and pry, doing my best to get Graham to admit he doesn’t like Mandy, or to reveal something shady Colin did that brought this on. I’d suggest Mandy is cheating, and he’d accuse me of enjoying other people’s tragedy too much, which is completely true and about which I would be wildly unrepentant.

But the realizations I’ve had over the past day or two about myself and Graham have thrown me into internal disarray. I find myself tongue-tied, a big tub of awkward as I try to find a path between being the old me and being the girl who begs a guy to like her back.

“The crib’s being delivered Friday,” I say, struggling to meet his eye. When have I ever struggled to meet someone’s eye? “They left a message. Can you let them in?”

He stills. “I’m actually leaving for New York Friday. Did they give you a window?”

“New York?”

He never goes to New York. He’s been here for months without going back once, but suddenly now a visit is a necessity?

“I have a few loose ends to take care of, and as we get closer to your due date it’ll be harder to go.” He’s looking off to the left, which is a sign of evasiveness. I learned this from Criminal Minds, not med school, so it’s definitely true.

And what loose ends? With technology, no meetings actually have to take place in person, and the only loose ends I can think of that demand a face-to-face are personal ones. Is it Anna? And is he doing this for closure, or is he doing this because she’s a loose end he might want to pick back up, now that the end is in sight?

God, did sleeping with me make him realize how good he had it with her?

My mouth opens but I can’t think of a way to ask without sounding like a jealous harpy.

“Go back to bed, Keeley,” he says softly. “It’s late.” Even hearing the word bed fall from his lips is a turn-on for me.

My gaze lingers on him for a moment, and something shifts between us. His eyes are suddenly hazy in a way that looks a lot like interest. But he’s turning toward his room before I can even say a word.

Maybe I can pretend I’m going into labor so he misses his flight. That, to me, sounds like an entirely reasonable way to handle this situation. And a lot easier than admitting I don’t want him to go.





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37





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GRAHAM





“We’ve got a problem,” says Ben on Tuesday, and I want to put my fist through a wall.

I’ve got enough problems as it is, thanks. My second-in-command just quit, which means I’ve got to leave for New York in the morning rather than Friday afternoon…at the exact moment when it feels vital that I stay here and get shit straightened out with Keeley. I could see it on her face last night—she is ready to pull the plug on our arrangement. The crib’s coming and she needs me out to get the room ready, and what the hell happens then? It feels like my life is about to implode, and I don’t need more Tate family bullshit on top of it all.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Colin and Mandy broke up, and the idiot told Mom already.”

Fuck. Tate family bullshit it is.

Colin was a newborn the first time things in our life went sideways, and he wasn’t around the second time because his departure was what made them turn that way. It was the incident that would eventually help him straighten his shit out, but running off with a girl when he was eighteen and getting thrown in a Colorado jail seemed like the end of the world at the time, especially to our mother.

She never wanted him to know how badly she fell apart. Maybe we should have told him anyway.

“Is she okay?” I ask, pinching my nose. Keeley and I need one normal evening, just to get us back where we were. I have to at least tell her I’m leaving in the morning.

“Of course she’s not okay,” Ben says. “She’s blaming herself. Walter wants her to check in somewhere and she’s refusing because she wants ‘to be there for Colin this time’. Can you go see her? I can’t get back to California until Thursday.”

I agree, of course, because the idea of my mom suffering is unbearable to me. She’s already suffered so much, and most of it was my fault.