Page 44 of The Devil's Pair

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“Twins!” Cheryl said merrily, lifting her glass to Briley in a toast. “Twins courtesy of the twins!”

“Stopsaying ‘twins’, and I’dkillfor a drink right now,” Briley grumbled, cradling her glass of sparkling water. “Goddammit.”

“Itisa bit weird to drink my birthday wine all alone for once in all our years of friendship,” Cheryl conceded. “But Bee, I’m really glad that I’m here this weekend… it was a bit of luck, huh?”

“Itisgreat timing,” Briley agreed. “If I had to be here tonight all alone, I think I’d go crazy.”

“OK, look. I know it’s a lot to process, and it’s a total shock, and I have a million questions. But I guess the one that Ireallywant to start with is: are you going to tell Dux and Drake?”

“Yeah, that’s the big one, right?”

“And?”

“And…” Briley sighed. “And yes. Yes, I think that I have to.”

“Good,” Cheryl said emphatically. “I mean, I know you guys have been in touch a bit since they went back to Denver, right? Calls or texts or whatever?”

“Sure, a bit of both.” Briley pushed her hair off her forehead. “But it’s all really casual, maybe a bit flirty, but we don’t talk about anything much. I’m not sure how I go from something like, ‘Ada was drinking whiskey sours all afternoon again’ to ‘hey, one of you knocked me up! LOL’.”

“Oh. Oh, God.” Cheryl gave her a startled look. “I didn’t even think aboutthatpart of it. Which one is the father? Is there any way to tell? I mean, they’retwins.”

“Itispossible to find out who the father is, with some really advanced and specific DNA testing. Personally, I don’t need to know, but the guys might have different ideas.”

“You think the biological Dad might take the lead, while the other one stepped back?”

“Honestly, Cee?” Briley bit her lip. “No. No, I don’t think so. I think they’d be in it together, all the way. They’d see it as their equal responsibility.”

“Well, that’s great. Isn’t it?”

“It could be, I suppose,” Briley said slowly. “But we’re assuming they’ll behappyabout the babies.”

“You don’t think they will be?”

“I honestly don’t know. We used condoms – every single time, no matterwhat– so we all had protectionandbirth control in mind the whole time. I mean, these are middle-aged guys who’ve never been married, they have no kids so far. They have this whole badass MC lifestyle with women crawling all over them, and hordes of regulars lining up for one-night-stands. Do men like thisreallywant to change diapers and clean up vomit off the carpet? These guys are all about freedom and living for the moment, and a kid is the exactoppositeof all of that.Twokids are doubly so.”

“But you’re going to tell them anyway?”

“Yeah. I mean, we have all these weird shared experiences together, and I can’t imagine keeping this from them. It’d be the worst kind of lying that I could imagine.”

“‘Weird shared experiences’?” Cheryl echoed pertly. “You mean a bunch of hot threesomes all over this house?”

Briley gave her a narrow look. “No. I mean when they witnessed me kill Gideon in cold blood, then helped me escape and start a new life partly on their dime. Don’t get mewrong, OK… the sex wasgreat, but it didn’t even scratch the surface of what Dux and Drake did for me, and what we shared.”

Cheryl immediately sobered. “I’m sorry, Bee. That was really dumb of me to say.”

“No, it’s OK,” Briley reassured her, took a deep breath. “I’m just feeling really emotional and confused, and reallyreallyfreaked out, and it’s making me snappy.I’msorry.”

“So,” Cheryl said softly. “When are you going to tell them?”

“I’ll call them tomorrow.”

“To hell withcallingthem!” Cheryl exclaimed. “This is the kind of news where you get your doubly-pregnant ass on aplane!”

“You think?”

“Hell,yes, I think.” Cheryl smiled at her friend. “I just wish that I wasn’t starting this new job in New York in two days. I’d fly to Denver with you in three seconds flat, just to be there if you needed me.”

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