Chapter 37
Other than a slew of healing wounds, getting winded too easily, and needing to sleep far too much, I was fine. I felt fine. But I couldn’t convince the team of that.
I couldn’t convince Gray of that.
Whenever I tried doing anything for myself, everyone threw around the argument “You died,” like it gave them the right to do every little thing for me. And my defense of “I’d hardly call a minute dying” never seemed to help my case or go over well with any of them.
It’d been three days since I’d been released from my five-day stay at the hospital, and I was getting restless.
I’d heard the doctor—I understood I couldn’t do anything strenuous just yet.
I understood I couldn’t run or work out or fight with Gray, but I could get my own food.
I could get up and walk to the bathroom without someone jumping to their feet and asking if I was okay—if I needed help.
I could shift without Gray’s assessing stare snapping to me and darting over me in that worrying way he’d adopted.
If one more person told me to sit back down and rest, that they’d take care of whatever I needed, I was going to snap.
Maybe it made me ungrateful; I really couldn’t tell at this point.
I just knew I needed to move, to do something, and no one was letting me.
Then again, my restlessness might have something to do with the fact that everyone had been gathered in Briggs’ house since Operation Davis because it was supposedly safer.
Now that we’d finished our offensive attack, we were keeping everyone in one place while we waited to see if the Wreckers or this new family would retaliate.
And, even though there were enough rooms and couches to fit all of us, it was feeling far too cramped.
It didn’t help that Briggs was growing more agitated by the day because Rush still hadn’t returned from New York, and, for the first time, he was withholding information from Briggs.
Whenever Rush did text, he gave Briggs the same vague report as every other day: “I have Peyton. She’s safe at the moment. Trust me.”
So, Briggs barely had his anger in check. I was about to snap at the next person who so much as looked at me like I was fragile. There were nine of us in a five-bedroom house. And—
“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 she could 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 she isn’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’t know,” 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’s nothing.
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 you want this?” 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—in our future. 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-or anything.”
“Really, who knew you were capable of these insecure spirals?” he gently teased, one of my smiles gracing his too-handsome face when I narrowed a glare at him. “Mallory, I’m not sure anyone knows how to do those things, but it’s instinctive. When the time comes, you’ll know what to do.”
“And if I don’t?”
His smile shifted into a smirk. “Your whole life has been about being the best in everything you do. I doubt this will be any different.”
He was right and so incredibly wrong.
I was confident in every move I made because I knew exactly what I would do if anyone so much as tripped into my path, let alone pulled a gun on me.
But that was what made all of this so terrifying . . .
Gray, our unanticipated marriage, and this unexpected baby, were all massive unknowns.
I knew wars. I knew battles. I knew different fighting strategies.
And even then, I’d still failed last week.
But all of this? Not only had I never been taught any of it, it’d been banned in our house.
It’d practically been a sin to even think about a relationship or a future outside of the military, let alone having children.
How could I be the best at something I didn’t know the first thing about?
“Get out of your head, Peach,” Gray whispered as one of his hands curled around my cheek, drawing my attention to those pale green eyes. “We’ll figure this out together.”
I relaxed against his hand, even as my eyes narrowed in another glare. “You’re already great with kids.”
“When I know I get to hand them back off to their parents,” he said with a shameless smirk. Using his thumb, he tipped my head up to steal a soft, lazy kiss before repeating, “We’ll figure this out together. Now, about you trying to make Lainey more nauseous than she already is . . .”
I shoved away from him, steadfastly ignoring the sharp pain in my back, and forced an eye roll at the wicked gleam in his eyes that matched the tease in his voice.
But I secretly loved it.
I would take anything over that hushed, careful tone he’d been using with me all week.
Looking into the large vanity mirror, I quickly swiped at my wet cheeks as if the tears had never existed, then looked at the bandages on my neck that definitely needed replacing.