Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
brIDGET
I'm vaguely aware of being tucked in bed, next to Declan, who’s warm and smells really fucking good. I don't want this to change. I'm afraid that if I open my eyes and wake up, he's going to be gone, and I'll be back to taking care of things on my own.
He said he would make things work, but at what cost?
I roll over a few times during the night, but the truth is, I am exhausted and barely come fully to. When I wake in the morning, the first thing I notice is the smell of hot tea. The second is him. Wood, pine, musk, and all male.
I turn back over, content.
When I open my eyes again, there are two steaming mugs of hot tea—cream and sugar in mine, the way he knows I like it—and he's sitting in the chair by the window, wearing nothing but his boxers, bare-chested, with his phone in front of him.
He isn't reading it, just staring out the window instead.
Outside, early morning light filters through clouds, breaking into soft touches across the small room.
“You're still here,” I say as I roll over. I want to throw a lasso around him and tie him to my bed.
“Of course,” he says. His brow furrows, and he pulls something from a pair of jeans lying on the floor. Glasses.
“Declan! I didn't know you wore glasses,” I say.
“Just got them,” he mutters under his breath. “I can read a hell of a lot better with them. Pain in the arse though.”
Oh my god, he's adorable in glasses—all muscular and sexy and cute. I want him to fuck me while wearing those glasses, but I don't say anything. Not yet.
Hungry. And experience teaches that waiting too long for that will make me sick.
“I was researching a few things. But before I do, can you tell me why you have this list of doctors and symptoms on your sideboard table that has nothing to do with your illness or pregnancy?”
“I was helping Bronwyn research things for her father, Mr. Nosy.”
He nods and finally concedes with a smile.
“Well, that’s sweet. So. I’ve done some research myself.
I found the safest infant carrier,” he says soberly.
“And the best diet recommended for prenatal mums, but I'm not going to be an over-the-top ogre about it.
It's your body. You should eat what feels good to you. I just thought this might interest you.”
He holds up his phone, tapping the screen. “I also have a very important list that you need to go over,” he says. “It's a specific prenatal care protocol you'll have to follow because you're in remission. The doctor told you to see an obstetric hematologist right away, aye?”
“Aye, among other things. I'll need labs done, a special sort of supplement… I mostly have to make sure I maintain my platelet counts and all that. Might need to get blood transfusions like I did before.” I swallow hard.
“The doctor said the chances of relapse during pregnancy are almost twenty percent.”
He goes very still. “Bollocks.”
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
“There’s an eighty-percent chance you won’t,” he says finally.
I smile wordlessly at him and nod because that’s exactly what I needed to hear.
“And I can get everything you need,” he says. “You’ll need rest, and you’ll have to make sure you’re not exposed to people who are visibly sick.”
“Aye. It’s not unlike it was before, when I was sick.”
“Right. But this time, we’ve got the medical help you need.”
I nod, thankful, but I don't trust my voice right now. I want this. I want him. But a part of me still fears I'm not enough, and that whatever he's concocting isn't going to work.
Erin’s plan to get me healthy worked—it's because of her that I got to see Dr. Rosenberg. But look what happened with my mother and my father…
“I don't know why you stayed…”
“I wanted to.”
“But what about Valentina?”
“She left for the States this morning,” he says simply.
I nod. “But if anybody sees you here—”
“Nobody's gonna see me here.”
I still can't help feeling like we’re on borrowed time, and it's only a matter of minutes or hours before somebody discovers us.
I'm the one who does the accounting. I know exactly what the aftermath looks like.
I've seen it in the numbers—column after column, transfer after transfer, power made legible.
The Espositos aren't a family; they're an empire, and what they're buying with this marriage isn't Declan but a fucking foothold. And even though I’ve only been working with them for the past few years, it’s clear to me.
Seamus has been architecting this for years.
I've processed enough McCarthy money to know this alliance is a living, breathing, ironclad fact, with Declan's name on it and the full weight of the McCarthy family behind it.
And I'm pregnant with his baby.
I press my hand flat against my stomach.
When Erin and I were younger, we played a game pretending that the pathway behind our house was made of molten lava. Our goal was to get to the tree line without touching the ground. We’d squeal and scream as we ran, careful to make sure our feet stayed safely planted on flat stone.
Only now… this isn’t a game.
The baby changes nothing. That's the part I keep coming back to, the part that hollows me out when I let myself look at it directly.
Seamus arranged this marriage, and Seamus does not rearrange things because of inconvenient feelings, unexpected pregnancies, or the fact that his cousin is currently in a flat he's not supposed to be in, with a woman he's not supposed to want.
Seamus will look at the numbers the same way I do.
He'll see what I see. And what he'll see is that the Esposito alliance is worth more than this.
Than us.
There is no us. That's the thing I keep forgetting and then remembering again, like a bruise I keep pressing. There is this room, this morning, this man sitting in my chair. And outside this room, there is a world that has already made its calculations and doesn't need our input.
I'm good at not thinking about the shape of what comes next. I have had a lot of practice—years of it—the kind that starts when you're young and realize the person you love has already decided what he has to be, and all you can do is love him anyway and try not to let him see it.
But I can feel it pressing in at the edges.
The weight of it. The sheer stupid danger of sitting here like this, like two people who are allowed to have this, when the ground beneath us is moving and has been moving for a long time.
We are on the smallest possible rock in the middle of it, close enough to touch but with no idea—none—whether the leap to safety even exists.
“Here,” he says, rising to his feet. He hands me the cup of tea, made just the way I like it. I sip it, and it's strong and hot and bracing, just creamy and sweet enough. “Delicious,” I say.
“Are you hungry?”
“God above, I'm always hungry,” I say, shaking my head. He smiles, but just then a wave of nausea roils through me. It comes on so quickly that I can't tamp it back down. Oh no.
I slosh my tea on the end table as I throw the blankets off myself and run to the bathroom.
“You alright?” he asks behind me, but I can't bother to answer because I’m barely holding it together. I make it to the toilet just in the nick of time.
“Ah, there,” he says, because of course Declan is next to me, holding my hair out of the way and whispering soothing things in my ear. “Sorry, lass. You'll feel much better soon.”
I'm not even embarrassed because this is Declan, and he's my best friend—but I don't want to spend this one stolen moment I have with him by throwing up the contents of my stomach.
Finally, I'm exhausted and spent, my head resting on something that feels like tile. When I come back to myself, he's sitting in front of me, his brow furrowed in concern, one hand moving in slow circles between my shoulder blades. He holds a warm washcloth to my mouth and a glass of water.
“Water?” he asks. “I don't know if pregnant women who throw up want that.” And then he kind of grimaces and half smiles at the same time. “Most of my experience dealing with people throwing up has to do with the club, after they’ve had too much to drink. This is a bit different.”
“Water’s good.” I take the water and give him a weak smile.
“Better?” he asks.
“Grand,” I say, which is a lie, and we both know it.
He laughs, and I rinse and spit the water back into the toilet because I don't have the energy to stand. Then he's holding me, carrying me, helping me to my feet.
“Come on, love.” He puts an arm under me and walks me back to the bed.
I want to protest, but I don't because I like being carried by Declan.
He settles me against the pillows and takes my tea from the end table, checking the temperature of the mug with the back of his hand before handing it to me—which is the cutest thing and so Declan that I actually smile.
I take a sip. It's gone a little cold, but I drink it anyway. He sits at the edge of the mattress beside me, and it feels so damn comforting.
“Maybe I should get a dog,” I say, my eyes closed from exhaustion.
“A dog?”
“It feels nice to have someone sit on the edge like this. Dogs do that, don't they?”
“Do you think I look like a dog?” he says with that teasing glint in his voice that makes me laugh.
“You know what I mean.” He pats the top of the blanket by my arse, effectively giving it a muted smack.
I smile, then sigh, and I’m on the cusp of crying because… I want him to stay.
He bends and kisses my forehead. “I told you—you need to trust me. Okay?”
I nod. “Maybe we can run away,” I whisper, already knowing it's not true, that it's not a possibility. It's not even something I really want to do.
“Run away,” he repeats. “Where would you go, if we could?” I love that he doesn't say we can't—just gives me the space to dream.
“I heard Germany is beautiful. And I do like pretzels.”
“What would you do there?” he asks. “Besides eat pretzels.”