Page 67 of The Heart We Guard
“It’ll be okay. I promise.” I nudge her from my neck, then brush her hair off her face so I can see her. “We’ll figure this out, Greer. I promise. We just need some air. Some space. Some time to process all the shifting pieces.”
“I can’t just live with you.”
“Says who?”
She rolls her eyes. “Everyone with half a brain. It has train wreck written all over it if I move straight in.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. And yet, I hate the idea of her living anywhere away from me. Anywhere unprotected.
“I need to know a lot more about who else has been looking for you and why. Esme told me about the other bikers. So, we’ll stay at my place until we know what’s going on. We can figure it out from there.”
I reach for the condom, and Greer lifts off me. “Okay,” she says sleepily.
I smile at the way she gives in to me, knowing she’s too damn fuck-drunk to fight me now, but in a few hours, when we wake, I’ll be ready for objections.
Because there is no way I’m letting my woman and child out of my sight.
20
BUTCHER
“Put the fucking suitcase down before I tie you to the chair,” I say when I see Greer lift the small suitcase off the bed and put it down on the floor.
She rolls her eyes and reaches for the coffee cup room service delivered half an hour ago. She’d sniffed it a couple of times before drinking it and told me it had initially made her feel a little sick when she first realized she was pregnant. “It’s twenty pounds, maybe twenty-five.”
“It’s twenty-five pounds I should have lifted off the bed.”
Greer purses her lips. “Is murder still illegal?”
I let go of the net curtain I’ve been peering out of for the last five minutes, watching what’s happening down in the parking lot. A small collection of bikers, too close to my bike for comfort.
I’ve messaged Grudge to call me and am waiting for him to do as I ask.
Meanwhile, I take the small suitcase and put it near the door, along with the larger suitcases she also dragged up here herself. I bite back the slight wince of pain I feel through my abdomen so that Greer won’t see.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She places the cup back on the table and walks over to me before stepping up onto her toes to cup my cheeks. “Because I might kill you if you spend the next few months mothering me.”
My eyebrows almost hit my hairline. “Mothering you?”
“Yes. People around the world give birth every day after doing far more laborious things than lifting a small suitcase off a bed.”
“But I can do it for you,” I say, exasperated.
“I know. Technically, you can do everything for me. Cook me a meal. Help me shower. Garden. Lift and reach every single thing I want to lift and reach. But it’s not practical, unless you’re going to be by my side every minute of every day. And even if that would work for you, it won’t work for me.”
“Stop making sense. Given you were throwing up twelve minutes ago, I don’t want to hear it.” I held her hair, even though she told me to leave. I got her a water, and she told me she could get her own.
I’ve had little Miss Independent up to my eyeballs, and it’s not even ten in the morning.
Greer smiles, and the hard edge that’s riling me, softens. “How about this? I promise to not put me or Pooks at risk. And you promise to not take over my life.”
She called our babyPooks. The corner of my lips twitch in a smile but I bite it back.
“There are going to be things I want to control, though. I need to know where you are. That’s just a club precaution. All the old ladies have trackers.”
“Fine. I’ll have a tracker. Next.”
