Chapter Twenty-One
Barrett wasn’t great company.
Well, no, that wasn’t fair.
He was good company when I was in a good mood and therefore enjoyed his sarcasm, distance, and probing conversation.
But when I was worrying myself sick about Sawyer, Brock, and Tig out chasing down my ex, who had kept me in a goddamn coma for a year and had also recently taken his wife and was, by all accounts, out of his ever-loving mind, yeah, he sucked.
Because anytime I voiced a concern, his idea of comfort was to say, in a sort of distracted way, that Sawyer and the guys knew what they were doing.
And, okay, sure. Of course they did. They put themselves in dangerous situations for a living. But that didn’t mean I shouldn’t worry.
Eventually, I worried myself to sleep on the living room couch, Slim asleep against the couch, legs up in the air.
I woke up to something slamming down on the coffee table.
I blinked, disoriented, for a long minute at the dark bottle, willing my sleepy eyes to read the label. Then another one slammed down beside it.
My head angled up, and there was Sawyer.
He looked tired. His eyes were heavy and slightly blue underneath from lack of sleep. But he was okay. He didn’t look like he had a scratch on him.
“Prenatal vitamins and extra folic acid.” At my confused look, he moved between me and the coffee table, squatting down, and pushing my hair behind my ear.
“Apparently, birth defects happen within the first three or four weeks of pregnancy. So the extra folic acid will help guard against brain and spinal cord issues.”
“Were you reading a pregnancy book or finding and getting Michael locked up?”
“A bit of both,” he said with a tired smile.
“Found Michael. He’s at the station now.
So is Sully. But I decided to stop at the pharmacy before I came home.
I picked up these too, after skimming them,” he added, reaching for another bag on the floor behind the coffee table.
He produced three pregnancy and childbirth books and put them down beside the vitamins.
I looked over, feeling a strange surge of emotion at the display. It said something. It said he wasn’t just agreeing to the situation because I was pregnant and he was a good guy and he had no choice. It said he was invested in it, in the baby, and therefore, in us and our future.
“What?” I asked, a little uncomfortable with how emotional I was over some vitamins and books, trying to lighten the mood. “No baby name books? I have a feeling we are going to be butting heads for nine months over that.”
“That’s what they created baby name websites for. Are you one of those chicks who always had names picked out?”
“Since I always wanted to adopt and most kids already have names they’re pretty attached to, no.”
“Good point.”
“Barrett is a good name,” Barrett said from his position sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop, where he had been for the better part of six hours, not taking any breaks because Sawyer had an insulated carafe so he could just sit it on the counter beside his cup and keep refilling.
“So if we have a girl, you want us to call her little Barrett? Pretty little Barrett?” Sawyer teased.
“Got a point,” Barrett said, unfazed.
“So what do you say you throw some of these back with some of the smoothie I brought you and throw some clothes on?”
I wrinkled my nose at the idea of the vitamins, knowing how they tended to sit like lead in my belly, and with the morning sickness, that didn’t seem like a great plan.
“You throw them up, you can just take more,” he offered with a smile.
“Yeah, that’s not helping,” I laughed, sitting up. “I need to get dressed because they want to talk to me, right?”
He looked almost apologetic at that, though it wasn’t his fault at all. “Yeah, babe. But I know the detective, and he will let me sit in with you if you want.”
“Of course I want,” I said, the words just blurting out of me, making his smile spread and his eyes go warm.
“Then I’m there.”
“Ugh,” Barrett groaned, snapping his laptop shut.
“I need to be just about anywhere else,” he said, shaking his head at us.
“And if you dare say any shit about someday I am going to get myself a good woman, I am going to put a virus on your computer and siphon all your money to fund some fucking guinea pig rescue or some shit. Those pigs will be living large on your dime. I get enough of that shit from Marg.”
With that, he was out the door, and Sawyer’s eyes were watching me, big smile on my face. “What?” he asked.
“When’s Barrett’s birthday?”
“December fifth,” he said automatically.
“Does the pet store on Madison still sell guinea pigs?” I asked, and Sawyer’s laugh followed me down the hall. “I’ll be out in five.”
Before I woke up in Famiglia’s parking lot, I had never seen the inside of a police station.
I was kind of too out of it to notice it the first time, but the second time around, it was almost comically like the stations on TV.
Right inside the front door was the desk, a woman standing behind it, everything about her pointing to the fact that she was made of steel and had no time for anyone’s bullshit.
To the right were offices. To the left and back were a bunch of desks manned by various detectives.
Sawyer’s hand was at my lower back, and he jerked his chin toward a middle-aged man with a rounded belly who stood and motioned to one of the open doors at the end of the room.
“Interrogation rooms,” Sawyer said, leading me with him.
“It sounds like you’ve been in one before.”
“Oh, only two or three dozen times,” he said with a wicked smirk as I went into yet another room that was straight out of Law and Order. There was a table with three chairs, a two-way mirror, and a camera in the corner.
That was it.
“Ms. Sweeney,” the detective said as I sat down. “My name is Detective Collings.”
“Hey, Detective,” I said, giving him a small smile.
“So, I have your report here. And I apologize that no one took your claims seriously until now.”
“In the detective’s defense, my story probably did sound crazy.”
“You got Sawyer here to believe it.”
“Well, it was true.”
“It was indeed. Now I need to ask you about your relationship with Michael Robinson…”
Then he did. Either to his credit or thanks to some warning by Sawyer, he kept things short and sweet, taking down vital details about the timeline of our relationship, carefully asking about my medical results after Sully dropped me off, and going over the report I gave a few weeks ago.
When all was said and done, I was informed that I might be contacted, to which Sawyer said he could do so through him. We met up with Tig and Brock in the waiting area and moved outside as a group.
I thanked the two of them, getting a huge bear hug from Tig and a kiss on the temple from Brock before they shuffled off to find their beds, looking like they both needed them.
Sawyer and I made our way back to the car and drove home in silence, leaving me to start to worry. Maybe now that everything had blown over and the dust had settled, he was having worries or reservations.
“You know,” he said as he put the car in park and turned to look at me, “everyone has a tell.”
“A tell?”
“When they’re nervous. Brock gets stiff and quiet. Tig talks a lot. Barrett gets antsy. You, apparently, push back your cuticles.”
I looked down at my hands, not having really even noticed I was doing it, but I was. “You know, that’s a freaky skill set you have there.”
“Comes in handy when my woman clams up and won’t tell me what she’s stressing about.”
My woman.
“You’ve been quiet.”
“Right, ‘cause I’m a regular chatterbox every other day.”
“Unusually so,” I said, forcing my eyes up to his.
“Babe, I’m fucking beat is all. Been a long day and a half. And to be perfectly honest, coming home to someone who has been worried about me, that shit is new. So if you need something from me, babe, demand it. What do you need?”
Put that bluntly, I honestly didn’t even know what to say to that.
“I, ah…”
“You want a recap of the night? All the details?”
I felt my stomach twist and shook my head. “Sometimes, yeah. But not right now.”
He nodded, looking out the window for a second. “How about you join me for a shower that I can’t guarantee won’t involve some heavy petting, then get into bed with me where that petting will turn into more, and then take a nap with me?”
And I realized that was exactly what I needed.
I needed affection, something I had always considered the surest sign that someone was still interested in you. The day you stopped touching was the day your relationship started dying.
“Sounds perfect,” I agreed. We climbed out of the car and back into the apartment, where Slim made a show of slowly climbing off the couch he knew he wasn’t supposed to be on.
Sawyer’s hand grabbed mine, entwining our fingers and pulling me down into the bathroom, where he only dropped it after he reached into the shower to turn the water on. He was facing me as he slowly lifted his shirt and discarded it.
And, what could I say? It felt like ages since I had seen him naked.
It had only been days since the first time I threw up, both of us figuring I might be contagious and that touching was probably not a good idea.
That and the fact that I never felt less sexy than right before or directly after puking for ten minutes every couple of hours.
So, yeah, I was looking. My eyes were greedy, moving over the firm outlines of his abdominal muscles, following the trail of hair into the waistband of his pants, where he had his hands working the button and zip.
He discarded his pants, and it was obvious his mind was likewise afflicted because his cock was pressing against the material of his boxer briefs.
“You gonna be shy? ‘Cause your ass is coming in that shower with me, and I don’t think it will be all that comfortable to do that with all your fucking clothes on.”