Page 71 of The Devil's Pair

“I –” Briley paused, took a breath. “I see what you’re saying.”

“You see or you agree?”

“I see.” Briley bit her lip. “I’ll – I’ll work on agreeing.”

“That’s a start.” Elle gave her a real smile now. “The truth is that you’ll find your life here a whole lot easier if you can change your mind, even just alittlebit. Even just aboutonething.”

“You’re probably right.”

“OK. Eat.” Elle nodded at the plate, took a small stab at levity. “Don’t make me send the boys out here.”

Briley watched the other woman go back into Satan’s, then turned her eyes back to the mountains. She ate slowly, gazing at the astonishing landscape, her mind racing the whole time.

The truth… let’s think about that for a little while, huh?

The truth was that she liked Elle very much, and not just her. She liked Zoe and Jo and Wolf and Cole and Silver; she likedeveryone, even the cold and menacing Ice, who’d come through for her back at the compound, and then had rumbled the Michael/Crusher link and raised the alert as soon as humanly possible.

And of course, Dux and Drake. Her feelings for them were oddly complex and mixed-up, while also being crystal-clear and pure.

The easy truth was that they were the strongest, kindest sexiest men that she’d ever known, and she was blessed to be carrying their babies. She knew that. Shealsoknew that they were going to stand by her and behind her every second of this pregnancy, and after too. They wanted nothing more than to be Dads to these children – and they told her that they’d be as involved as she allowed them to be. They hoped that that would be fully, utterly, totally.

The less-easy truth was that Briley had complicated feelings about being here in Denver, here with The Road Devils, here with all the history of Gideon and the Garden staring her in the face every time she looked at Elle. She felt like she was just hanging around a graveyard with a bunch of half-buried problems and events, things with sharp enough teeth to still bite, and enough breath left in them to still wound.

She wanted to stay here with Dux and Drake, with Zoe and Scars, with all of them. She really did, even if it was just for a few months. But she also couldn’t live among a bunch of only-half-dead issues – and especially not if she wanted to bring new life into this ungodly mess. Some might optimistically see the babies’ births as an exorcism or cleansing baptism of sorts, and Briley was trying hard to do just that. She’d spent the past week trying to convince herself that new life would wipe out the ugliness and sins of the old one.

As she sat here now, though, she knewthetruth. The real one, the hard one. The fucking heartbreaking one.

“Hey, darlin’.”

“You OK, babe?”

At the voices speaking in their usual unison, Briley turned and stared them. They gazed right back at her, wearing matching expressions of seriousness and worry on their gorgeous faces. Then, quick as a knife-flick, they looked at each other and had one of those totally-silent conversations. When they turned those amazing blue eyes back to her face, sheknewthat they knew.

She opened her mouth to say something – to apologize, to explain, to defend, to beg for forgiveness – but she didn’t get a chance to say anything at all. Not that she knew what to say, really.

“Nah, babe,” Dux said gently. “Don’t. We understand why you have to leave.”

“Howcanyou?” Her voice broke. “I’m taking your children away from you because I can’t stand to be here.Howis that something that you understand when I barely understand it myself?”

“Because we’ve seen you this past week,” Drake said simply. “You look haunted.”

She started, stunned yet again how it seemed that they could read her mind. How the actualhelldid they know she’d been thinking about drifting half-buried corpses, about feeling their chilly fingers clawing and clutching at the babies? In her worst, most terrified moments, she was convinced that she’d lose them both to the darkness swirling around her.

“I’m – I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I didn’t want to do this to you. I really tried…”

“We know,” Dux told her. “We’ve watched you fight to settle here, to look past all the shit that hurts you. But it’s not good for you – for any of thethreeof you – and you’ve got awhole life back in Pennsylvania that you love and that’s waiting for you. A beautiful house, a job, friends.”

“We’ll pay for everything that you and the babies need,” Drake added. “We’ll visit every month, more often if you need us to. We’ll – we’ll figure this out, OK?”

“OK,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

They smiled at her now, and the smilesalmostreached their eyes. Then Dux said:

“One more thing, babe. Something that we haven’t been able to say yet.”

“What’s that?”

“We wanted to tell you how sorryweare.”

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