“What’s up?” I asked.
He gestured toward the open door at my back.
“Nice tactic there with telling him Reggie is your wife. He’ll hopefully rethink coming back,” he said, so far from the truth that I wanted to laugh. I didn’t. But barely. “I got a call from one of the residents that I have looking out for Reggie’s place. She said there was some man here working on her door. And since I was already in the area delivering a repo, I thought I’d run by and see if it was anyone that was supposed to be here doing maintenance,” he drawled.
I grimaced and started back up the steps.
“I heard that her place was broken into last night,” I said. “I already replaced the back lock, put a couple of window alarms on her windows, and put a new knob on this door. I’m working on a deadbolt now.”
“Her place was broken into?” he barked. “When?”
“Last night, apparently,” I answered. “I didn’t hear about it until this morning. And if the furniture that was by the door was any indication, instead of calling either one of us, she just shoved a big chair and a hutch against the front door and went about her night.”
Travis cursed underneath his breath.
“I’ll talk to her,” he grumbled sounding angry.
“I have to go drop these keys off.” I paused. “You can come with me.”
Travis’ eyes gleamed. “Does she know that you’re here right now?”
Our parents didn’t know that we were married.
Our parents also didn’t know that, eight years ago, I’d sold my soul to be able to keep her close to me, in any capacity at all.
What they also didn’t know was that I was in love with the girl that would rather set me on fire than ever marry me.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t expect it to be a pleasant experience.”
Travis threw his head back and burst out laughing. “I’ll go. This should be fun.”
For him, anyway.
***
“She gonna come out here?”
Travis’ question would have had me smiling had the question not been one hundred percent legitimate.
I’d told the nurse that’d gone inside my name, not Travis’.
There was a high possibility that she wouldn’t come out for me.
“I…” I trailed off when the doors of the NICU swung open.
Seconds later, Reggie was squealing in excitement and throwing herself at her father. Her father caught her up in his arms and crushed her to him tightly.
God, how I wished she’d do the same to me.
Travis set her back down onto her feet and let her go, pushing her away from him slightly so he could glare at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you had your place broken into last night?” he asked.
Reggie’s accusing eyes swung to me, anger written in the aquamarine of her eyes.
I held my hands up in surrender, her new keys dangling from one finger. “It wasn’t me. Well, kind of. I wouldn’t have told him at all but he showed up as I was installing a new lock on your door.”
I extended the key to her, and she took it as if it was a ticking time bomb.
“I put in new locks on both the front and back door. Also, a new deadbolt. Window sensors, and I kicked that little asshole off of his spot.” I pinned her with a look. “How long has that drug dealer been dealing right there?”
Reggie wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“He didn’t actually used to do it right there until I said something.” She sighed. “Then he moved it closer to my place. But since he seems to know everyone in the apartment complex, I thought it better to just leave it alone. As for dealing? I just assumed that was what he was doing. But since plenty of officers liked to roll up in the apartment complex, I assumed they knew what they were doing and were just trying to catch him in the act. Why?”
I gritted my teeth, angry that she had to deal with a little prick like that drug dealer.
I held my tongue. Barely.
“If you ever have any other trouble, I want you to call me. Like what happened there last night,” I tacked on, knowing it would piss her off.
“I wasn’t going to ever call you if I could help it,” she muttered.
But just as she was about to continue, the elevator doors behind us whooshed open, revealing the very last person that I ever expected to see.
Out of more habit than anything, I’d been turned so that my gaze was aimed at the elevator so that I could see who got off, making sure that I always knew who was coming at me.
Which was why I saw the exact moment that Eerie saw me and realized exactly who I was.
She was dressed in scrubs, but she didn’t wear the same purple ones that Reggie was wearing, meaning this wasn’t her usual floor.
She came to an abrupt stop right outside the elevator doors, her eyes wide and fearful.
Fearful?
What had I ever done to make her scared of me?
If anything, I should be the one fearful of her. I wasn’t, of course, but she’d been the one to make my life a living hell when we’d been dating, and then tried to make it out to be my fault.
A blank mask settled into place over Eerie’s face, and she held her chin high as she skirted around all of us and headed for the sinks outside the NICU to wash her hands. Moments later she was gowned up and in gloves as she waltzed through the doors as if she owned the place.
It was only when she was inside the NICU that I said, “What the fuck is she doing here?”
Reggie cleared her throat.
“Umm,” Reggie said. “She has a baby inside.”
I blinked. Then blinked again.
She’d done it.
I snorted.
“When I said that she couldn’t use our shared embryos, she’d said that she would find someone to do it, even if it cost
