Page 93 of Wicked Ruin

“Some sour sweets. They’re supposed to help with the nausea.”

“That’s adorable, but you have to tell me when you’re coming. Erin’s supposed to be here in an hour.”

“What would Erin think if she saw me here?”

“I don’t know, but it’s too close for comfort,” she says as she sets the bag on the counter and peers into it.

“How did you know what to get? Electrolytes and sour?”

“I read a lot about things,” I say, scratching at my temple.

“When?”

“When I’m not sleeping.”

“Are you not sleeping?” she says, tipping her head to the side.

Christ. I haven’t slept since I shared a bed with her, so it’s been over a week, but I don’t tell her that. Don’t tell her I’ve been standing in Seamus’s office, staring at the sideboard, fancying myself a drink even though I haven’t had one in a long time. But I can already taste it, can already feel the way my nerves would settle and the world would go steady again.

“I also got the infant carrier situation sorted. Mostly, anyway. I’ve been going back and forth between the two safest models, and I finally found one that’s supposedly the easiest to carry.”

“Well, that’s nice.” She tries one of the sweets at the counter and makes a face so pure and terrible that I laugh out loud.

“Oh, this is genuinely horrible,” she says, but she’s laughing.

“It doesn’t have to taste good. Is it helping?”

She studies the sweet in her mouth with a look of serious deliberation as she rolls it over her tongue. “Now that you mention it, I think I’m so distracted by the horrible taste that I forgot to be nauseous for a minute.”

I smile at her. “Here, it can’t be that bad.” I pop one in my mouth, gag, and spit it immediately into the bin.

She snorts at me. “Well, you’re not the pregnant one, so it’s fine.”

The week’s been like this—stolen hours in her flat, in the strange domesticity of two people figuring out, in small and specific ways, how to make this work. The right tea. The right sweets. The name of the doctor. The minor details of a life neither of us has fully admitted we’re building together, when we haven’t even sorted the biggest things yet.

This is why I’m not sleeping.

“Have to go to a charity dinner tonight,” I tell her, scratching at my nose.

“I know. Cavin told me about it.”

“When did you see Cavin?” I ask her.

“I go to Erin and Cavin’s on the regular to work, you know. He mentioned it was tonight. Wasn’t too keen on having to wear a tux.”

“Aye. Kiss me so I taste you the whole night, will ya?”

And she does.

Then someone’s at the door. There’s a quick knock, then the doorknob’s turning⁠—

My hand is on my gun before the door opens.

“Declan, no⁠—”

Erin stands in the doorway. She blinks, staring at the two of us. Bridget, with her hair disheveled and her lips swollen, and Christ, her shirt’s still halfway pushed up from when I slid my palm up to cup her tits. And me, holding a fuckin’ gun and sporting a boner.

“Declan,” she says. “Put the gun away.”