Chapter 17 #2
I nod once. Slowly. Because if I don’t move, I might actually burst into tears right here in the office and I would rather die. “Okay,” I say.
His brows draw together. “Allie—”
“No, it’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice too even now, too careful. “I think I’m figuring that out.”
He takes one step toward me.
I take one back.
That stops him faster than anything else tonight.
Good.
Because if he touches me right now, I might completely lose the little bit of composure I’ve got left.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.
“Then how did you mean it?”
He doesn’t answer fast enough. Of course he doesn’t.
I nod again, once, and force my voice not to shake. “I’m gonna go.”
“Allie.”
“I said I’m gonna go.”
This time when I move, he doesn’t stop me.Maybe because he can see it in my face now. Maybe because even Jimmy Baker knows there are only so many times a woman can stand there waiting for a man to give her something honest before she starts feeling pathetic.
I unlock the office door with fingers that don’t feel entirely like mine and step back into the hallway before he can say anything else.
The music hits me first. Then the lights. Then the normalcy of the club moving on like nothing just happened.
I hate that too.
I hate how life keeps going when yours just got yanked sideways.
By the time I make it through the back hall and out into the side entrance, I’m operating almost entirely on instinct.
Breathe. Walk.
Don’t cry in the middle of Ambrosia.
Don’t cry in the middle of Ambrosia.
Don’t—
“Whoa.” Kya’s voice stops me before I make it to the parking lot.
I turn too fast.
She’s standing there near the side door with Mac and Brooke, all three of them apparently having migrated outside for air and peace and, knowing this group, probably to complain about the men they’re currently stuck loving.
All three of them look at me. All three of them immediately know something is wrong.
Which is offensive, honestly.
I paste on the closest thing I can manage to a smile. “Hey.”
Brooke’s face softens instantly. “Oh no.”
Mac narrows her eyes. “That bad?”
Kya looks over my shoulder toward the side entrance like she’s already mentally selecting a weapon. “Do I need to kill someone?”
Under any other circumstances, I might laugh. Instead, I just say, “Can I come with you?”
That’s apparently answer enough.
Brooke is on her feet before I finish the sentence, one hand on her lower back and the other already reaching for me. “Of course.”
Kya doesn’t even ask another question. She just grabs my hand and tugs me toward the SUV parked crooked near the curb.
Mac is the last one to move, but only because she’s giving the club entrance one long, flat look that promises violence later if required.
We end up back at the clubhouse twenty minutes later with takeout spread across the kitchen island and the kind of low-level chaos that somehow feels easier to breathe in than silence.
Kya is already halfway through losing her mind. “This is not what I asked for.”
Dom, standing six feet away with both hands up like she might actually throw the bag at his head, looks exhausted in a way that would be funnier if I weren’t trying not to unravel. “It’s the same place,” he says.
“It is not the same thing.”
“It’s lo mein.”
“It is shrimp lo mein,” she says with the kind of righteous fury only a pregnant woman denied exactly what she wanted can muster. “I asked for chicken.”
Dom blinks once. “You said protein.”
Kya makes a sound so offended it doesn’t even belong to this century. “Are you out of your damn mind?”
Brooke, who has somehow ended up with tears in her eyes while laughing at the exact same time, leans into the counter and presses a hand to her stomach. “Oh my God, I can’t breathe.”
“That’s not funny,” Kya snaps, even though she’s fighting a smile now too.
“It’s a little funny,” Brooke wheezes.
Mac, standing at the sink with a fork in one hand and the driest expression I’ve ever seen in my life, doesn’t even bother to look up when she says, “If men were required to survive one week of pregnancy, civilization would collapse by Thursday.”
Dom mutters, “I’m standing right here.”
“That was intentional.”
I laugh before I can stop myself.
It’s small. Weak. But real.
And all three women catch it instantly.
Brooke’s expression softens first. “There she is.”
Kya points her chopsticks at me. “Okay. Talk.”
I immediately shake my head. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Mac takes a bite of food like this is the most predictable thing in the world. “You’re visibly unraveling.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“It’s accurate,” she says.
“I’m literally sitting here.”
“While looking like you’re two minor inconveniences away from setting a building on fire,” Kya says.
“That could still be pregnancy sympathy,” Brooke offers kindly.
“It’s not,” Mac says.
I glare at her. She ignores me.
Kya slides a carton of lo mein in my direction because apparently she’s not too enraged to still be motherly. “Eat first. Spiral second.”
I take it mostly because arguing sounds exhausting.
The women settle around the island in a loose, lived-in mess of oversized shirts, swollen ankles, tangled hair, and too much emotional intelligence for my current comfort level.
Brooke leans against Carter’s abandoned stool.
Mac perches on one of the barstools like a queen forced to sit among peasants.
Kya kicks one foot against the cabinet under the island while she continues muttering death threats at Dom’s food-ordering abilities.
It should feel normal. And somehow, it does.
That’s what finally gets me talking. Not pressure. Not questions.
Just the ridiculous, grounding normalcy of this kitchen and these women and the fact that somehow life keeps making room for both devastation and lo mein.
“I think,” I say slowly, staring down at my takeout container, “I made a mistake.”
Three sets of eyes lock onto me.
Kya is first, naturally. “Did you murder someone?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
Brooke nudges her. “Be nice.”
“I am being nice.”
Mac sets her fork down. “What kind of mistake?”
That’s the problem, isn’t it?
I don’t know how to answer that without saying too much. Without saying everything. Without handing over something that still feels too raw and too humiliating and too mine.
So I go for the easiest piece. “The kind where you think maybe somebody is finally going to say what you need them to say,” I answer quietly, “and then they just…don’t.”
The kitchen goes very still. Not tense. Just attentive. That’s worse somehow.
Brooke’s face crumples in immediate sympathy. “Oh, honey.”
Kya’s expression turns murderous all over again. “I hate men.”
Mac, predictably, just says, “That tracks.”
I laugh once under my breath, but it hurts.
And there it is.
The thing I can’t keep dodging no matter how much humor and noise and takeout I pile on top of it. The real ache under all of this. Because the problem isn’t just what happened in that office. The problem is what didn’t.
He wanted me. That part isn’t in question anymore. But wanting me and choosing me are not the same thing.
And tonight, for all the heat and chaos and years of tension finally snapping loose, Jimmy still didn’t give me what I needed.
Not honesty. Not certainty. Not anything I can hold onto without feeling stupid for it.
Just more confusion. More intensity. More almost. And I am so tired of almost.
I look down at the carton in my hands, blinking a little too hard against the sting in my eyes, and realize with a clarity that feels almost cruel how little has actually changed.
I got him to look.
He still isn’t giving me what I need.