The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(78)

I’m back, I type, nothing more, and then I hit send. His obligation is done and so is mine.

I reach the showers and have just closed the door behind me when he calls. “How did it go?” he asks. “There weren’t any issues?”

“It was just peachy,” I reply. “I’m getting in the shower here so—”

“Drew, wait,” he says with a sigh. “I’m so sorry about how that all happened. I know you meant well and—”

“It’s fine,” I interrupt. “Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson. You’re the only one allowed to pay a surprise visit. So I guess in five years or whenever the hell you’re free to travel and willing to be seen with me, I’ll just wait for a knock on the door and drop all my plans.”

“You can’t be serious right now,” he says. “Do you have any idea how much danger you put yourself in? Do you have any idea—”

“Please stop,” I say. My throat aches with the desire to cry. “You made it abundantly clear when I was there that I was nuts to have shown up and I definitely don’t need to hear it all over again. More to the point, this is done. So you don’t need to worry about me anymore.”

“Drew,” he says hoarsely, “don’t do this. I know it’s a messed-up situation, but I’d give anything to—”

I’d give anything to—. Those are the words that bring me up short. I’ve heard that before. It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now.

“No, Josh, you actually wouldn’t give anything, because if that was true you’d be here. And if that was true, you’d be willing to tell your family and you wouldn’t have hidden me from your colleagues. Let’s call a spade a spade: you’re not willing to give up a fucking thing.”

And then I hang up, block his number, and get into the shower where I cry like a child for a very long time.





A nurse ushers me back to Tali’s room. She, of course, is gorgeous and radiant, smiling wide when she sees me.

Only Tali would look this freaking cute right after giving birth. Hayes sits in the corner, still in scrubs, holding a baby so tiny in his arms she hardly seems real. There is something soft on his face, something I saw there on the day he and Tali married. He flashes me a quick smile but then his gaze is on the bundle once more, so besotted with tiny Audrey he can barely stand to look away.

“You poor thing,” Tali says. “You just landed, didn’t you? You look more exhausted than I do.”

“I wanted to see her before I sleep for a thousand hours,” I reply. “How’s the vagina? How ruined is it on a scale of one to ten?”

Hayes shoots us a quick, alarmed glance while Tali laughs. “I wound up needing a C-section, so I imagine things are intact,” she replies. She turns to her husband. “Hayes, you have to share the baby.”

Hayes gives her a sheepish grin and rises with the baby in his arms. “Do you want to hold her?” he asks.

I blink uncertainly, looking from him to Tali. Does anyone really trust me with the baby?

"I don't know," I say. "I've never really… She’s so small."

"You'll be fine," Hayes says.

I wash my hands and sit before he places her in my arms. She’s the most darling human I have ever seen in my life, with her tiny rosebud mouth pursed, sucking in her sleep as if she's dreaming of being fed. Her fingers are impossibly small, clutched into tiny fists, and I feel something unfurl inside me as I look at her. "She's perfect," I whisper, and to my horror, my voice cracks.

Hayes glances over at Tali. "Do you think she's hungry?" he asks. "She's doing that sucking thing with her mouth."

Tali smiles at him adoringly. "You worry too much," she says. "I assure you she will not just forget to eat."

He takes the seat beside her and their eyes meet. For a quick second, it’s as if they’re the only people in the room. I used to claim that I didn’t want what they had, that I didn’t want a little girl like the one in my arms, but it was simply that I thought those things were impossible for me.

And it turns out I was right.

But it hurts a lot more now than it used to.





46





JOSH





She’s blocked my calls. I have the insane impulse to get on a plane and beg her back, and I fight it every day. She could have gotten killed coming here the way she did, and if she had, it would have been my fault. Just like it’s my fault that she got hurt by this whole thing. I knew better than to start this, and I certainly knew better than to continue it.

I get through work every day, but my heart is no longer in it. I find myself wishing I’d never gone into medicine in the first place, simply so that I wouldn’t have come, so they wouldn’t need me to stay.

I’ve told the director of operations I need out, and he asked me to give him a year to find a replacement. It’ll take every day of that year. We just had another bomb threat yesterday, one of our guards was shot this morning and a refugee camp to the south was attacked while I was in Hawaii. No one with an ounce of sense would choose to come here now.

So…a year. It will be too late to win Drew back by then, but what was I going to do anyway, under the circumstances?