Even though we were at Luke’s place, she had no problem answering the door and smiling wide at the pizza delivery guy.
Five of the women broke off and started to pull in pizzas, walking them over to the table that we were surrounding. Reggie stayed at the door and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet, handing it to the man.
I made a mental note to pay her back later, because she physically looked a little green at having to hand it over.
I was sure that the others would’ve offered had they not still been peppering me with questions.
An hour later, once the women were back in the kitchen drinking wine and chatting, conversation once again switched back to me.
“Rowen just texted me and said that she’s dug up quite a bit of research,” Dax said as he put his phone back into his pocket. “She’d like to have a meeting with you and your lawyer Monday to discuss a plan of attack.”
I felt a wave of relief hit me.
The more hands on deck I had for this, the better.
I had a feeling Eerie wasn’t going to be nice about this in the least. If she’d been planning on being nice, I wouldn’t have a kid at all.
A kid that was so fuckin’ small.
“Do you have a picture?”
I blinked at the man sitting beside me.
“What?”
“A picture. Of your kid,” he repeated.
I blinked.
“No.” I winced. “Today, I didn’t even think about it. Fuck.”
“I bet your girl does,” Malachi said.
Then, before I could reply, he was up and moving out of the den, making his way toward the other room. He was back moments later with a fresh beer and a scowl on his face.
Somehow, conversation turned to our tubing adventure last weekend and Sammy and Louis cursed.
“I still feel bad,” Louis muttered.
Sammy concurred.
“The one and only regret I have is her losing her ring that day at the river and not going back to look for it,” I said to the man at my side. “Fucking pisses me off that I’ll never be able to find it.”
There was a moment of silence as Malachi frowned into his beer.
“That was a rather calm part of the river,” he started. “The current was barely flowing.” There was a pause. “We could go dive for it. See if we could find it.”
And suddenly, that sounded like the best idea ever.
“Just say when,” I said. “I don’t know that river. I’d never been before then.”
Malachi looked as if he wanted to throw up for a second as he said, “I used to go there a lot as a kid. I know it like the back of my hand. The next time we have two days off, I’ll go with you. I even have access to the diving equipment. I have a buddy that lives down there and does this for a living.”
“He does it for a living?” I asked in surprise.
Malachi nodded. “I used to go with him when I was a kid. You have no idea how much money he makes off of that.”
“Obviously enough to make a living,” I joked.
Malachi laughed. “You got me.”
“All right, boys,” Luke Roberts said. “I know that you’re ready to get out of here. Let’s finish up.”
Chapter 17
Shhh. Just shhhh.
-Text from Reggie to Nathan
Reggie
“I’m sorry, but what?”
Nathan looked at me with amusement.
“I said,” he repeated, “that I’m tired and I want to go to bed. Are you coming with me?”
I licked my lips in nervous anticipation.
Today would be night two that I was ‘officially’ married to Nathan Cox.
And I wasn’t sure what to do or say.
Last night I’d gone to bed on my own.
Tonight, I would be going to bed with him awake.
“Ummm,” I hesitated. “Sure.”
I mean, there was no way around this, was there?
He’d find out eventually.
Going slowly to his bedroom, I took a look around at all the crap that was piled high in all corners of Nathan’s bedroom.
I had suitcases on the left side of the room, nearest his side.
How did I know it was his ‘side’ of the bed?
He had water bottles. Lots of them.
In fact, if I had to guess, I would say there were at least twenty of them in total. And almost half of them had like a half a sip taken out of them.
My eye twitched.
In fact, it took everything I had not to walk to his side of the bed and sweep them all up before taking them straight to the trash.
Seriously, what was so hard about finishing one bottle of water before getting another one?
Biting my lip, I went to the suitcase that I thought had my bathroom stuff in it and laid it out carefully on the floor before unzipping it.
The moment that it was unzipped all the way, I realized my mistake.
This wasn’t the suitcase that had all my bathroom stuff in it.
This was my Nathan suitcase.
When I’d been packing up my place, I’d sent Nathan out of the room while I’d hurriedly cleaned up everything that was his before shoving it all into my suitcase.
Except, I hadn’t planned on him being in the room when I opened it.
Because there wasn’t just a ‘few’ things of his that I’d somehow procured over the years.
There was an entire fucking suitcase full, bursting at the seams.
And it’d just exploded all over his bedroom floor the moment that I’d opened it.
I stared in worry as he slowly took in all the t-shirts that I’d stolen from him over the years.
And the sweatshirts.
Oh, and there were quite a few pairs of socks.
He bent over and picked up the baseball jersey that he used to wear in high school.
“You know,” he said as he stared at the offending object. “I had to pay eighty bucks in high school because I didn’t return this.”
I bit my lip.
“Your dad paid for it,” I countered. “I remember.”
“My dad paid for it originally,” he agreed. “But
