Page 129 of Branded
Everything rolled off my back. I was adaptable as shit. I could take a flurry of hits and keep on smiling and joking.
This interaction had me turning into a cartoon thermometer, the top trembling and expanding as the mercury within heated up and threatened to burst free.
Deep breaths.
“Please put me down,” I said firmly. Quietly, calmly, but firmly.
He’d just reached the hall—turn left and we would hit the bathroom, turn right and we’d walk through another large room filled with high-top tables and another wooden bar that took up one wall of the space, the front door at its opposite end. He stopped. “I said?—”
“I know what you said,” I interrupted icily, “and I don’t like your tone, nor do I like how you’re acting.”
His expression was a lesson in anger. “Pru and Mar?—”
My eyes suddenly stung, hurt blazing through me.
Because to insinuate—no, to say outright that I’d do something to jeopardize these babies—well, he might as well have taken a two-by-four to my stomach…then wound up and struck again. I was giving up my body, my time, my life, and my job in New York?—
No, the last two I’d given up willingly, ready for an escape.
Hell, all of it I’d given up willingly.
Because Pru was Pru and she’d been handed too much shit in her life and I was happy to do this for my friend. Because I was happy to start my life over somewhere fresh, with a new job and a new house and a place that wasn’t full of memories that sliced and clung deep and?—
I pushed that aside, lifted my chin. “I would never do anything to hurt these babies.”
His brows rose, but he didn’t respond, just kept walking down the hall, not giving a fuck that we were drawing plenty of curious stares and not giving a damn that I was dying a slow embarrassing death.
First, tumbling to the floor.
Second, a fucking princess being carried through the bar.
Cute.
“Wait!”
Raph stopped, turned us back slightly and I saw Julie, our favorite server, rushing toward us. She had a to-go cup in one hand and my purse and jacket in the other.
“I wouldn’t,” I whispered. Begged, really.
If he was insisting on carrying me, at the very least he could keep moving, could end my crippling embarrassment, could put me out of my misery.
But nope.
He stayed still, slanting a glance down at me, his eyes still frosty as Julie caught up to us. Jules handed me the cup and gently tucked my purse in the valley created from my body touching Raph’s before spreading my coat over the top. “Water,” Jules murmured. A squeeze of my hand. “Feel better, okay? I need you here for Cheese Night Extravaganza next week.”
I forced a smile. “I never miss an opportunity for cheese.”
“Thanks, Jules,” Raph said gruffly, abruptly turning for the front door and pushing through it. He glanced down at me. “No fucking lip. You’re going to get checked out.”
I sighed. “I know what I’m doing?—”
“I know that if a pregnant woman passes out, she should go to a fucking doctor, whether or not the babies are her own!” he yelled into the cool night air.
That thermometer burst and my temper let loose “Fuck, man,” I snapped. “Fucking listen to me and stop interrupting! I’m not dumb or stupid or some fucking little princess you get to boss around.” I shoved hard at his chest, managing to loosen his grip enough to wriggle my legs down and get my feet on the ground. “All I’ve been trying to say—if you’d fucking let me talk, that is—is that my doctors are aware of the dizziness. I’ve mentioned it, and they’re not overly concerned, but,” I added quickly and loudly when he opened his mouth to no doubt retort back at me, “I’ll phone the on-call doc, see what they want me to do. If that’s to go into the ER, fine. I’ll go. But if they advise something else, then I’m going to listen to the fucking doctor and not some bully of a hockey player who thinks he can treat me like shit just because some pathetic bitch of a female fucked him over!”
I was yelling now.
On a street corner.
