The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(77)

We do manage to talk, a little. I tell him about the way Dr. Fox is trying to force me out and how I’m not sure if this is even the kind of dermatology I’m interested in. He tells me about Prescott, the dick who is leaving to manage a competitive hedge fund, and how he thinks Jody, the new second in command, will rise to the task.

Most of our conversations are slightly less intense, of course. I haven’t changed that much.

“I like the name Blossom for a girl,” I muse.

“She can’t be secretary of state with a name like Blossom,” he argues.

“She’s got half my DNA, Graham. She was never gonna be secretary of state anyway.” I smooth my hand over my bare stomach. When I’m lying on my back as I am now, I can’t even see my legs anymore. “I don’t think I look that pregnant. There was a model in Australia who had a baby when she went to the bathroom and never even knew she was pregnant. All her clothes still fit.”

He chokes on a laugh. “Keeley, when was the last time you could claim that all your clothes still fit? You’ve been bragging about your new breast size pretty much since I got here.”

I cup them. “Aren’t they amazing? I hope that part sticks around.”

I wait…for him to say he hopes it does too. Or to say it doesn’t matter to him. Something to allude to what happens after the baby is born, when he’s in New York with the elegant Anna and I’m here—sleep-deprived, covered in spit-up and quite possibly a B-cup again.

But he just laughs.

Which I guess is okay. Your first weekend as a couple isn’t the time to have a whole “where is this headed?” conversation under normal circumstances. Then again, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be thirty-four weeks pregnant with his kid either.





On Sunday afternoon, we leave the apartment for the first time all weekend to attend Gemma’s barbeque, which I now regret agreeing to. He’s flying out of LAX tonight, and it’s a flight he will need to make.

“One hour, right?” he asks when we pull onto their street.

I tug him toward me for a kiss. “One hour. I’ll pretend I’m going into labor if I have to.”

“I’m honestly surprised you haven’t already played that card.”

I laugh to myself without mentioning where, exactly, I considered playing it.

The men are gathered near the grill and the women are standing by a long table spread with food, the exact kind of thing I never wanted to be a part of. Is this who I’m about to become? In a year or five, will I be saying things like, “it’s wine o’clock!” while spending summer afternoons talking about travel soccer?

Maybe.

The kids run across the yard, barefoot little idiots, yelping and laughing, and I know I’m going to want my daughter to be part of this. I’ve already changed so much about my life for this baby and standing here I realize…those were just the first steps of many.

I find Drew and Tali sitting off in a shaded corner with their slumbering babies.

“Look at you,” says Drew with a laugh. “Who’d have thought you’d wind up here last January? I’m so relieved.”

I assume she’s talking about how I wound up with Graham rather than Six, but I don’t recall her ever suggesting I shouldn’t be with Six last winter.

“Relieved?”

“I heard an earful about that weekend from my husband, believe me,” she says. “But all’s well that ends well, right?”

They start talking about something called “Ferberizing”, which apparently involves letting your baby cry herself to sleep and which I already know I won’t be able to do, and then Tali weighs the benefits of a preschool where they teach Chinese versus one where they hang out in the woods and only play with “toys found in nature”. A year ago, I would not have been able to imagine a more boring conversation, but a year ago, I couldn’t imagine loving anyone so much more than I love myself.

I look across the lawn to Graham, who’s at the grill doctoring a burger for me. I’m pretty sure I now love two people way more than I love myself. He looks at his watch twice, which makes me laugh, and I cross the yard to him.

“You’ve got to stop checking the time,” I say near his ear.

He hands me a plate. “I have to leave for the airport in four hours, Keeley. And I don’t want to spend those hours talking about draft picks.”

Actually, neither do I. I can think of way better ways to spend it.

The two of us take our plates to the table and eat while we watch the kids running around on the lawn and parents dealing with babies. I’m starting to realize how demanding even one child can be. Any time Tali and Hayes’s baby needs something, there’s shuffling and a discussion and one of them rummaging through a diaper bag while the other holds the kid. Drew’s husband now has their son over his shoulder, because she needed a break.

“It helps,” I say quietly, “having a father around. It’s a lot to do on your own.”

It’s more subtle than saying, “I think you should stay with me for good, person I’ve only been coupled with for forty-eight hours.”

“That’s part of why I need to be in New York this week. I put my condo on the market a while ago. It goes to settlement on Tuesday.”