“I thought you’d call her your best friend.”
“Kendall my friend, Prez my best friend.”
“What’s Meggie?”
Sighing, Mortician eyed her, not trusting her not to have another goddamn breakdown. He remained quiet and shrugged.
“She’s perfect, right? Perfect wife. Perfect life. Perfect children. Perfect strength. I’m not jealous of Kendall, but I am of Meggie. No matter what she goes through, shealwaysstands tall. Stays strong. She never ever breaks. Why? How can she move forward? Forgive Outlaw? Overcome almost losing her son and her daughter in the span of weeks?”
“Why don’t you ask her? I don’t have the fucking answer.”
She swiped at her tears. “You do,” she said, her green-brown eyes blazing. “It’s because of Outlaw and because ofyou.”
“And her,” Mortician told her. “Meggie find it in herself to adapt and to adjust and to overcome. Me and Prez can only guide her. We can’t make her accept more bullshit than a fucking pasture sees in a goddamn year.”
Instead of responding, she asked, “how do you feel about me?”
Exhausted, Mortician walked to the sofa and sat. “Do it fucking matter? The bigger question is how the fuck you feel about me?”
“I love—”
“Don’t. Just fuckingdon’t. A woman who love her husband don’t put him through what the fuck you keep handing me. The same fucking shit ten goddamn times over and never a fucking resolution.”
She picked up a seashell and threw it at him. A snow globe. A crystal anchor. Each piece she threw at him represented fuckingmoney. He was going to have to pay forhermotherfucking damages becausehe’dbeen the fucking jackass who wanted to take her away.
When she cleared a table of fragile objects, he jumped to his feet and caught her before she cost him even more fucking money.
“If you break another motherfucking thing in this motherfucker,youpaying for it,” he snapped, gripping her arms.
“You’re worried about your fucking money?”
“When you wasting that motherfucker unnecessarily, fuck yeah. Do you fucking know how muchthiscosting me?”
“We’re discussing our future and you’re worried about money?” she asked again.
He glared at her. “When we started discussing our future, Bailey? You fucking stuck on stupid. Stuck in the fucking past and on shit we keep motherfucking talking about. Not a motherfucking thing I say getting through your thick fucking skull. Not that I love you or that I want us to be a fucking family again or that you need fucking help. You’ve lost your motherfucking mind and I don’t have a magic fucking wand to fucking fix you.”
She jerked away from him. “Now you think I’m crazy.”
“As a fucking loon. No sane bitch doing what the fuck you’ve been doing and saying all thebullshit you been fucking spouting. You can’t see what the fuck you got for the fucking baby you want.”
“The babies I lost!”
“Those lost babies not your fucking fault. They not my fault or Harley fault or Meggie faultorCJ fault. They just weren’t fucking meant to be.”
“You didn’t even know. You didn’t care enough to notice I was pregnant.”
“Did you fucking know you were pregnant every fucking time before you miscarried? How the fuck you blaming any of us, includingyourself, for fucking pregnancies that weren’t viable?”
“Those babies were inside of me. My body, which was defective. No, not only defective butmid.”
Fuck, why had he been such a stupid motherfucker? Johnnie tipped Bailey over the edge because she’d been standing on the precipice of self-hate, blaming herself for the miscarriages. She was already at her lowest and he’d come and targeted her looks and her place in the club, which further eroded her confidence.
Unable to bear her sobs, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her. She stood on her tiptoes and embraced him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sobbing. “Don’t hate me. Please, Lucas? I love you. I don’t knowwhere we’re going from here, but…but…make love to me now. Please don’t deny me.”
He should have. As usual, nothing had been resolved between them. It had just been a rehashed screaming match. But Bailey was so vulnerable and he felt so fucking guilty for losing his temper with her.
