Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(113)

“What?” Lo says. He leans back like a hurricane just knocked into him.

Rose glowers at me. “Go choke on your water again.” That is an insult usually reserved for Lo.

I flip her off and she does the same thing in return, which is an awful f*cking rebuttal to the middle finger. It’s not like I’m asking her if she knows how to do it too.

I’d love to remove myself from this whole awkward situation, but we’re stuck at the same table together, forced to deal with serious issues that we’ve kept from each other.

Lo has his hands on his head, his eyes darting between me and Rose. “You both take birthday surprises to a new f*cked up dimension.”

Rose blinks back tears. No wonder she’s been emotional this whole trip. I’ve rarely ever seen her cry, and she’s shed probably more tears in the past two weeks than she has in the past five years.

“Christ,” Lo says, realizing this too. He cringes, looking a little guilty. She’s been hormonal, obviously going through something, and he’s picked on her a lot. I mean, she didn’t even f*cking tell Connor. She made him figure it out.

But their relationship—that’s just how they do things, I guess. I wouldn’t know unless I was in their heads. I’d rather a girl scream at the top of her lungs and throw things at me, telling me she’s pregnant than spend months solving a mystery.

Connor rotates a fraction to look back at Rose. “You’re five weeks along.” He just states it, not as a question.

She holds her breath. “No.”

He frowns. “Seven?”

She shakes her head once.

He looks f*cking pissed. He rubs his lips to hide the emotion, but I see the hurt and anger pulsing in his eyes. “Eight weeks?”

She glares. “Ne me regardez pas comme ?a.” Don’t look at me like that.

They glance at me with agitation, realizing I understand them now.

Rose sighs heavily, reaching for her water.

“What’d they say?” Lily asks.

“I’m not getting into it,” I tell her.

Rose says, “You’re mad, Richard, that you were off on your numbers. I’m sorry you weren’t right—”

“No, darling,” Connor tells her with conviction. “I’m upset because it took you this long to talk about it. I thought you would have conceded a month in.”

“How long have you known?” she asks quietly.

“When you had a flat tire, I was almost positive. Your GPS was set to the gynecologist, and you purposefully had a fight with me the next day so I’d sleep on the couch. I figured the doctors confirmed what you already knew, and you were too stubborn and afraid to tell me.”

Lo frowns and looks at Lily. “You knew?” She had been in the car with Rose.

She nods, her shoulders turned into her body. “Moral support.”

Connor glances at Lily cautiously before setting his gaze back on his wife.

Rose sits stiffly, and her chin trembles. “This wasn’t the plan. I’m not thirty-five yet.”

The waitress returns, cutting into possibly the most bizarre way a pregnancy can be announced. At a Mexican restaurant. With a tequila shot standoff. In French.

“Ready to order?” she asks.

“We need like ten minutes,” Daisy tells her.

She nods, her eyes lingering on Daisy’s scar before she disappears. I can’t tell if the waitress recognizes us or not, but Daisy ends up resting her head against my arm. I comb my fingers through her hair.

“You’re not aborting the baby,” Connor tells Rose.

“I know,” she retorts, fire coming back to her eyes. “You want a lineage. Eight kids, I remember.”

“We’re married,” he says. “We have billions of dollars. We may be young, but we can be the best parents. You just have to trust that you’ll be a great mother.”

I’ve seen Rose around kids. She’s about as maternal as a f*cking brick wall, her nose curling in disdain when a baby cries or acts out. But I do know one thing—when she loves someone, she invests her whole f*cking heart and time into them.

After a long stretch of silence, Rose says softly, “I thought about getting rid of the baby.”

Connor’s face stays unreadable. “I know.”

She swallows hard. “Lily talked me out of it.”

Lo kisses Lily’s temple. I think we’re all glad Rose didn’t choose that option, even if she thought about it.

And I would feel worse for Connor if he didn’t already know everything beforehand.

“I just…” Rose lets out a deep breath. “I figured that I had a couple of months before my body started to really change. Two months to ignore the fact that my world is going to flip upside down and a creature is going to grow inside of me. Give me that.”

He smiles. “I did, darling.”

“So,” Lo says, holding his water, “how exactly do two geniuses accidentally get pregnant?” He sips his drink in amusement.

Rose starts putting her frizzy, wet hair in a sleek pony. “Why don’t you answer this one, Richard? You’re friends with Satan’s spawn.”

Lo laughs. “I think you’ve mistaken me for the ‘creature’ growing inside you.”

Connor raises his hand to quiet them. Rose looks ready to pelt my brother with the contents of her purse. There’s probably a canister of pepper spray in there.