Chapter 3
Silver
By some miracle, they made it to the hotel without him realizing anything was amiss. Probably thanks to the constant chatter she’d managed to keep up for the entire drive, something she hardly ever did, but that Ice seemed to put down to her excitement over the wedding.
Which wasn’t entirely a lie. She really was happy to see Lottie and Braden finally tying the knot. That just wasn’t the only reason her heart felt like it might actually burst inside her chest.
Outside the bridal suite, Ice pulled her up against him, pressing a hard, punishing kiss to her lips, hot enough to burn off some of the nervous energy pumping through her veins.
Lifting his head, he looked down at her through those heavy-lidded eyes. “You sure you’re okay, baby?”
“Promise. Just excited.” Again, not a lie. Just not the whole truth, either. Hopefully he’d forgive her for keeping her secret a little while longer.
But if he decided she needed to be punished, well, she wasn’t going to complain about that, either.
For a long moment, he studied her, his gaze roaming her face and her stomach clenched with worry. But then he nodded, a single sharp bob of his head, and the knots in her stomach unwound themselves. “All right. I’ll see you at the end of the aisle.”
“I’ll be the one in green.”
The smartass reply earned her a snort of laughter and another kiss before he released her and turned to make his own way over to the groom’s suite. When he disappeared, Silver dragged in a deep, bracing breath, doing her best to shake off the lingering nerves and reached for the doorknob.
Her friends looked up from their spots on the couch as Silver approached, their eyes going round with surprise, and the relief she’d felt just a moment ago gave way to uncertainty. They couldn’t tell, right? You couldn’t just look at a woman and know she was pregnant.
Right?
“What?” Stopping a few feet from the couch, Silver frowned. “Why are you all staring at me?”
“You just look… not like you,” Cordelia said, her head tilting to the side as she looked Silver up and down. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen you without makeup.”
Oh, thank fuck.
“Please.” Silver rolled her eyes, more because it was expected than anything else. “You’ve definitely seen me without makeup. You’re over at my house all the time.”
“Yeah, and you always have makeup on when we come over.” Openly amused by this new development, Frankie grinned. “I never really thought about it before but Delia’s right. This is totally new.”
“You’re all ridiculous.” With another exaggerated roll of her eyes, Silver made her way over to the couch and dropped down onto the surprisingly soft cushions. She glanced over at the person seated beside her, then did a double take when she realized she’d never seen her before. “Who’s this?”
“Oh my god.” The woman’s voice dropped to a reverent whisper Silver recognized all too well. “You’re Silver. I knew you’d be here and like, I’ve seen you in the group chat but like… Oh my god, you’re Silver.”
Ahhh. A fangirl. Most of the members of the club had gotten used to her and Ice hanging around, so it had been a minute since she’d gotten this reaction out of someone.
She didn’t hate it.
“You know, Aria, if you’d come to like, any of the planning events we had over the past few months, you wouldn’t be drooling right now,” Frankie teased, lifting her mimosa for another sip.
Aria. Braden’s daughter. Shifting, Silver studied the pretty brunette, looking for signs of her father in her.
There. Around the eyes, especially. Same shape, same color, even hints of Braden’s devil-may-care attitude sparkling in the pale blue once the shock started to wear off.
“Shut up, Frankie,” Aria shot back without any heat, and Silver nearly laughed at how much she sounded like her father. “I just needed a minute.”
“Where’s Ruby?” From her spot on the other couch, Cordelia chuckled. “You two will be great friends. She had pretty much the same reaction the first time she met Silver, too.”
As if on cue, Frankie’s phone buzzed, and she looked down at her phone.
“Her ears must have been burning because she just texted me.” Frowning slightly, she tapped out a few messages before sighing and rolling her eyes.
“Ruby’s going to be late. Apparently she pushed one too many of Beckett’s buttons this morning. ”
Laughter rippled through the group, with the exception of Aria who frowned. “What does that mean? Is that a kinky thing?”
“Oh, shit.” Silver lifted a hand to her mouth, horror filling her at the realization that Braden had understandably kept his very kinky job a secret from his daughter. “She doesn’t know, does she? Braden is going to murder all of us.”
“Relax, she knows. Well, she knows about the club and why it’s called Club BDE. Or why we call it that, anyway.” Frankie paused and turned to Cordelia. “Did you know that’s actually Braden and his brother’s initials?”
Well, that was news to Silver. She’d always been told it stood for Big Daddy Energy, which made sense since nearly every Dom there, and at least one Domme, identified as a Daddy.
“I did, but only because I’ve worked there for so long.” Cordelia’s lips curved upward. “I may or may not have been the one who started the rumor that it stands for something else.”
Okay, well, that explained that. Sometimes Cordelia was more of a brat than the rest of their group combined.
Throwing her head back, Frankie let out a laugh. “Sometimes I think you may be the biggest brat of us all,” she said, echoing Silver’s thoughts.
As the laughter faded, Frankie froze, her cheeks flushing red as she cleared her throat. “Sorry. Ah, I just… remembered I have something to do. Be right back.”
Pushing up off the couch, she hurried away, leaving the rest of them watching after her with varying degrees of amusement and sympathy.
Or, in Aria’s case, pure curiosity. “Where do you think she went in such a hurry?”
Silver had a pretty good idea, and judging by the smug smile on Cordelia’s face and Ivy’s blush, they did as well. But she wasn’t sure exactly how ‘innocent’ Braden’s daughter was, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to corrupt her.
“Hey, where’s Lottie?” Silver asked, as much to change the subject as to feed her own curiosity.
Aria rolled her eyes. “She got pissed off about something I said and stormed over to the other suite to tell my dad off. I figured she’d be back by now, though.”
Depending on how pissed she’d been… perhaps not. But again, not something she wanted to talk about with Braden’s daughter.
“Silver, are you hungry?” There was a desperate glint in Ivy’s eye that said she was just as eager to avoid sharing too much with Aria. “There’s a whole buffet over there.”
Truth was, she was starving. But just the thought of food had her stomach rolling. “Um, no thanks. Not really hungry.”
“You sure?” The corners of Ivy’s mouth dipped down, and despite Silver’s insistence otherwise, she rose from the couch. “What about a mimosa?”
“No.” Her response came out sharper than she’d intended, earning her a raised brow from Cordelia and a surprised stare from Ivy. “Sorry. I just want to be clear-headed today, you know?”
“I know I’ve never seen you turn down a mimosa, but sure,” Ivy said with a shrug. “Water and a muffin, then.”
Silver opened her mouth to protest, but she was cut off by Cordelia’s low chuckle. “Just let her, Sil. You know she enjoys doing for others. Drink the water and pass the muffin off to someone else if you’re really not hungry.”
Because she’d been friends with them long enough to know Cordelia was right, Silver just sighed. “Will do.”
Silence stretched between them for a few seconds before it was broken by the loud clearing of a throat. “So… would it be totally out of line for me to ask for an autograph?”
Aria’s question surprised a laugh out of Silver and she grinned over at her new friend. “Absolutely not. And the next time we visit the club, I’ll send some stuff home with your dad. We’ve got piles of it at the house.”
Piles of entirely useless memorabilia, because Deviant Whispers was no more. The loss was still a wound, deep in her soul, one she didn’t think would ever fully heal.
Ivy returned with Silver’s water and a muffin, a welcome distraction from the ache. Silver took both, and was both surprised and relieved when the smell of the muffin didn’t make her want to throw up. Setting the water aside, she unwrapped the fragrant treat and took a tentative bite.
“Oh my god,” she said with a low moan. “I forgot how fucking good these muffins are.”
The first bite went down without any problem, so she risked a second bite, and then a third with no ill effects.
Magic muffins.
As Silver ate, Ivy launched into an animated story about something that had happened at school. And as she talked, Silver’s mind wandered, her imagination conjuring images of her and Ice’s child, making mischief at some imaginary preschool in the future.
Would it be a little girl, with her daddy’s dirty-blonde hair?
Or a little boy with Silver’s own dark curls?
Would the child look more like Ice or her or be some perfect blend of the best of both of them?
Would they inherit their parents’ musical talents or have their own gifts, their own paths to follow?
And even if they were as musical as she and Ice, would she want her child to follow in her footsteps?
She’d loved almost everything about being in a band, but there had definitely been some drawbacks.
Milestones she’d missed out on in her teens and twenties because she’d been busy setting the musical world on fire.
An ache settled in her chest as she wondered.
These were all questions she and Ice would need to talk about.
Decisions to be made, because the little bean growing inside her wasn’t just an accessory to be flashed in front of the cameras, it was a person.
A human being with their own hopes and dreams and ambitions.
Heavy. God, she hadn’t considered how fucking heavy it would feel, the weight of caring for this tiny human who wouldn’t stay tiny forever. Everything in her ached to go to Ice, to tell him the truth, to let him hold her as she broke down and confessed her deepest fears.
But no. Today was about Lottie and Braden. She just had to make it a few more hours and then she could tell Ice everything.
And pray he’d be willing to stand by her side through it all.