“Mallory, yo?—”
“I know,” I seethed as I turned on where Chloe was tucked close to Thatch’s side at the dining room table, still eating breakfast. “I died. I get it. None of you will let me forget. But I’m not dead. I’m fine—clearly. And I’m more than capable of refilling my own water.”
“You done?” Thatch asked on a low growl, his eyes narrowed in warning.
Before I could remind him that they’d been smothering me and wearing on my nerves for days, Chloe added, “I was just going to say your bandage is falling off,” with one of her blinding smiles, as if that fact and my snapping at her was something shecould still find joy in. She gestured to her neck, then to me. “I thought you might want to know.”
Oh.
Even though everyone had stopped to watch the exchange and look at me, I glanced to the side, where I could feel a certain pair of eyes on me, and found Gray standing deep in the kitchen, watching me with that same worried, assessing stare.
He mumbled something to Briggs before heading toward me, arm outstretched as he whispered, “Come on.”
“I can take care of it,” I told him, even as I let his arm slide around my waist and turn me to go in the opposite direction.
“I know,” he said in a voice that was too soft and too careful for Gray. I hated it.
Biting back another round of words that I would probably regret later, I kept my jaw clenched tight and stealthily smoothed down the bandage on my neck as he led me toward the hall and into the bathroom we’d been using. But once the door shut behind us, I pulled from his hold and turned on him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said what I did, but everyone?—”
“Peach, I know,” he muttered as those eyes once again met mine. Still full of worry, but this was deeper than before. “I see it—I didn’t before, but I do now. I see what we’re all doing to you, and I’m sorry. But try to take a step back and think about what it was like for them...what it was like for me.”
I just stared at him, waiting for him to continue, because I knew he was about to.
“They all sat in the hospital for the better part of a day, waiting and praying that you’d pull through.” He reclaimed the step I’d taken and added, “You died in my arms, and even after they’d saved you, I was forced to watch as you slipped farther away. That does something to people.”
“But I’m here, and I’m fine,” I claimed tightly.
Gray’s head bobbed slowly as he once again wrapped an arm around me, pulling me closer as the knuckles of his free hand brushed along my stomach. “The doctor said the baby was doing fine before you were released, but I watch panic cross your face every few minutes when you touch your stomach, like you’re afraid sheisn’t.”
Fear gripped at my throat and tears burned the backs of my eyes in an instant. “That isn’t the same.”
“It is,” he gently argued.
“I can’tknow,” I cried out just as heavy tears built and fell, because I was still crying all the time, apparently. “You can see me. You can talk to me. I have nothing to know. There’s just—there’snothing. Lainey’s weeks behind me, and she was showing everyone her little bump, and I don’t—there isn’t—there’s just nothing, Gray.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he assured me as he pressed his mouth to my forehead. “Just give it time. Told you, she’s a fighter. She’s fine.”
A sound somewhere between a sob and laughter tumbled from my lips. “You have to stop referring to it as a girl. You’re going to be upset when we end up having a boy.”
“Peach,” he mumbled in a way that had my entire body sagging against his as tension fled me, because it was such a Gray way of speaking—all wry amusement in that deep, rumbling drawl—and I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed hearing him speak that way.
“The fact that this is our reality at all, and that youwantthis?” he went on as he continued tracing lazy patterns along my stomach. “Mallory, for so long, I was sure this wasn’t in my future—inourfuture. So, I don’t care what we have, I’m just happy. But I have a feeling it’s a girl.”
I let him hold me for a few seconds longer before admitting, “Sometimes I’m still not sure. About wanting this,” I added,almost as an afterthought, and felt him draw in a slow breath like he was preparing to argue, but he never said anything. Just waited. “I don’t know anything about pregnancies or children, other than what my dad always drilled into us about them.”
Gray didn’t need to remind me that anything my dad had said had been wildly inaccurate and awful. I knew that.
Still, when you’d grown up knowing something, it was hard to get out of that mindset.
When he remained silent and strong, holding me to him, I needlessly told him, “I don’t know how to be a parent.”
“You do,” he countered.
A self-deprecating sound left me. “I really don’t.”
“You were dying, and you were more worried about the baby than your own life,” he informed me, then repeated, “You do.”
“That has nothing to do with...w-with actually taking care of a baby,” I stammered, once again pulling from his grasp and waving a hand through the air. “That doesn’t mean I’ll know how to feed it o-oranything.”
