The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(81)

“Fuck you, Graham. If nothing else, you owe me a goddamn explanation. My wife has been smashing things for a week because she’s so furious with you, and she’s spending more nights at Keeley’s place than our own. I mean…what the hell were you thinking?”

I run a hand over my face. I knew Keeley would tell Gemma, and Gemma would tell Ben…I just never really considered how bad it would sound. Every single person who hears about it, even my own mother, will tell me I’m a fucking asshole.

And I am. I’m a fucking asshole, and there’s no way to even apologize for it sufficiently.

“I messed up,” I tell him. “It was her worst fear, having someone fight her for custody, so she’s never going to forgive me. Just stay out of it.”

“Graham,” Ben says, leaning forward, his elbows pressed to his knees, “you need to tell Keeley why you did it.”

“She already knows why I did it,” I spit out. “She came across as someone who couldn’t raise a child and I made assumptions I shouldn’t have.”

He swallows, clasping his hands between his knees. “That’s not what I meant. You’ve got to tell her about all the shit that happened with Mom.”

I freeze. We do not speak about the months after my dad died. Colin and Simon don’t remember them, and it’s too hard for my mom to discuss. If I’m being honest…it’s too hard for me too. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit,” he says, not unkindly. “I know you remember it, and it’s why you’ve looked so goddamned haunted any time someone mentions the baby to you. We’ve both tried to keep it in the past for Mom’s sake, but you can’t tell me that it’s not what made you panic and get that agreement drawn up.”

“That was more than two decades ago,” I reply stiffly. “I’d have to be insane to let something that happened two decades ago still influence me.”

He shrugs. “Maybe you are a little insane. Maybe we both are. You think that whole thing hasn’t fucked me up a little too? What set Gemma apart for me is that the girl is made of steel. I’ve never, not once, worried she’d crumble under pressure.” He smiles for a moment. “I have, obviously, worried that she’d kill someone under pressure, but that’s a different sort of fear.”

If the whole fucking city fell into the San Andreas fault, Gemma would be the first person you’d find clawing herself out of the rubble. She’d step on your shoulders to get there too. But she’d make sure Keeley and my daughter got out, so I don’t mind.

“Keeley isn’t Gemma, though,” I tell him quietly. “She’s not Mom, but she’s fragile in her own way.”

“Everyone is fragile in their own way. But when you find the right person, you don’t want to run from it. You want to take care of her and throw yourself on every grenade the world launches just to make sure she’s safe.”

I sink my head in my hands. That is how I feel, about Keeley, about the baby. It’s what’s made all this so hard—I did this to protect our child, and I’ve wound up hurting her and her mother in ways that might last forever.

“She isn’t going to forgive me,” I tell him. “I wasn’t what she wanted in the first place and she’s never going to forgive me.”

I’ll never forgive myself either, but I guess that’s nothing new.





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43





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KEELEY





I am staggering through my days.

I want to curl into a ball under a blanket and eat ice cream until it all feels bearable, but I can’t. I have a horrible job to get through, day after day, and a baby to prepare for.

Gemma, Mark, Paul, and Jacobson are godsends. Gemma checks on me multiple times a day and convinces Jean to cancel the surprise baby shower she’d planned. Mark helps me set up a 529 plan and a savings account and shows me how much to set aside next year for a nanny.

Paul and Jacobson push Graham’s mattress against the wall when the rest of the baby furniture is delivered and politely suggest I let them know if I need help “moving anything out.”

When they leave, I stand in my daughter’s room. I thought I’d feel better, seeing everything in its place, but with the mattress against the wall and no splashes of color anywhere, it’s all a little grim.

I don’t want to be like my mom—trying to buy us a better life with money I don’t have—but looking at this room simply makes me feel like I’ve failed.

I guess I’d probably feel like that anyway, though.

“You look like shit,” Mark tells me when I bring him his breakfast.

I laugh. It’s kind of nice to have someone refusing to skirt around the obvious truth. Just like Graham did, I think, and then I’m sad all over again.

“I’m thirty-six weeks pregnant. I’m supposed to look like shit.”

“Tammy says—” he begins and I tune out the rest. Mark has found himself a lady friend who is slightly less homeless than him. She lives in one of the tents over on Venice Beach and was, once upon a time, a dispatcher until her child overdosed and her husband left and she found herself in bad shape financially. A series of hard blows at the wrong time…I can see now how that would make you just walk away.