The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(75)

“Lucky’s pregnant,” Daisy whispered in bed, one night toward the end of January.

“I know, Will told me. Said the condom broke over Thanksgiving.”

“Lucky doesn’t want to have it.”

“And Will does.”

“It’s the exact opposite of what I expected. I thought she’d be the one to…”

“So did I.”

She sighed, moved closer up against Erik’s back. Her fingers played with the charms on his necklace. “I guess it’s one of those things where you think you’ll feel one way, and then it happens, and it’s all different.”

“I think it’s the shooting,” he whispered. “Life is so tenuous. Lucky’s afraid of it and Will wants to fight it.”

“You’re right.”

“I feel terrible,” he said in the dark.

“I feel helpless.”

“Nothing we can do. Except just be here. Be ready to do what they need when they need it.”

A week went by, a week of tense, whispered conversations and the sound of tears through thin walls. Will was spending nights alone at Colby Street. Jay Street felt immobilized for war. Poised and braced, balanced on a single eggshell. Wolves paced on the horizon, primed for the hunt.

Erik woke up one night, not to tears or wolves, but a warm thickness in his blood, a pleasantly familiar feeling in his lap. Daisy had a hand down his sweatpants, stroking a very cheerful erection.

“Good evening,” she whispered against his temple.

“What’s up,” he said, his eyes closed.

“You.”

“How ‘bout that.”

“This is impressive.”

“Thank you,” he said, his voice still slurred with sleep. “I worked a long time on it.”

She was pushing his pants down his hips, and pulling him toward her. “You should put that in me.”

“I should, right?”

“Yes.”

They rolled. She was pulling her own clothes away and aside. Half asleep, he took her by the waist and languidly worked himself into her heat. Her breath left her chest with a dry little puff as her butt settled into his lap. Sweetness radiated off the nape of her neck.

“I love when you wake me up,” he murmured. He slid his hand under her shirt, filled it with one warm breast. She sighed and pushed further back into his lap.

And then a startling noise from outside their door, a knocking into the wall. A human sound. They flinched a little, then froze in the embrace. Daisy looked back over her shoulder guiltily. Erik put a finger to his lips.

Footsteps. Another thump. Silence.

More silence.

Erik touched his fingertip to Daisy’s lips. She drew it into her mouth and pushed back hard on him. He started to move in her again. Throwing out the hook, looking for her edge. Hot, wet, squeezing pressure all around him. Sugar. Skin.

Noise again, just beyond their door, and now a cry.

“Daisy.”

Daisy pushed up on her elbow, looked over at the door. “Luck?”

“Daisy.” Louder. Urgent. An edge of panic.

“Stay here,” Daisy whispered, pulling her shirt down and her pants up and hurrying out. Erik sat up, strained to hear something even as the sound of his own quickening heartbeat filled his ears.

“Oh my God. Erik, help me…”

He exploded out of bed, tying his own pants, tripped over something as he burst into the hallway. Daisy came flying out of the bathroom. “She’s having a miscarriage. I need to get Will, stay here with her.”

“Wait.” But she was down the stairs and seconds later, the back door slammed. Erik stared at the floor. The drops of blood on the scuffed wooden planks. A trail leading to the bathroom. His heartbeat grew louder, heavier, a sledgehammer against the inner wall of his chest. He had to go in there. He had to.

Do it. Now.

Blood like a constellation of stars across the white-tiled bathroom floor. Lucky sat on the toilet, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, hunched over, her face in her hands. Erik reeled back, hesitating. This was a bathroom. A private, insanely intimate place of bodily function and his entire instinct screamed at him to get out of here and leave the lady alone. Don’t embarrass her.

But this was Lucky. The same Lucky who got down in the blood on the stage floor and saved Daisy’s life.

Erik knelt down on the lilac shag rug and gathered her into his arms. She was weeping. “I changed my mind.”

“I got you, Lucky. I got you, hold onto me.”

“No, please, I changed my mind. Don’t let it—don’t let it happen, please, I changed my mind.”

But then a slow and steady dripping in the water beneath her, and she screamed against Erik’s shoulder, not in pain but in despair. Her whole body contracted desperately, trying to hold it back, hold onto the baby.

Erik yanked a bath towel from the rack, wrapped it around Lucky, hiding the bowl and her legs, trying to shroud this in some kind of dignity. He held her tight, she hung on his neck. It was too late.

“You gotta let it go, honey,” he whispered against her hair. “Let it go, Luck, hold onto me. Hold onto me, I got you. Let it go.”

Her body relaxed in his arms, he felt her surrender. Another cascade of drips, muffled beneath the towel, and Lucky buried her face in his neck, moaning like a wounded animal.