Page 76 of The Devil Gets His Due

“Hey!” shouts the driver. “You can’t—”

“She’s pregnant,” Graham barks, “and this is an emergency. So you can drive, or you can call the cops, but we’re not getting out of this fucking car the way things are at the moment.”

I bury my head against his chest, thanking God he came with me and that he was so…soGraham. So fierce, so protective, so unrelenting.

And some ancient part of me says,“Keeley, you knew this is who he was. You chose him because of this.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Of course,” he says, then he gives the driver my address.

“We still need to get your car,” I remind him.

He swallows. “I just want you home first, okay?” His hand stretches over his eyes as his thumb and middle finger press to opposite temples. “Fuck, Keeley. That…could have been bad.”

He stares out the window for the rest of the ride home, his jaw locked tight. I’ve never seen him this stressed, not even when I told him I was pregnant, and I don’t know how to break through the ice surrounding him right now.

I’m quiet too, because the one thing I thought I wanted…I definitely don’t want. Did I blindly adopt my mother’s hopes and dreams? I think maybe I did. And then I blindly pursued medicine simply to prove Shannon wrong. I probably could have used some therapy when my mom died, because as it stands, I don’t know if there’s anything I’ve done in my life that’s actually authentic, that wasn’t inspired by spite or sorrow or sheer childlike enthusiasm.

When we get to the apartment, I kick off my heels and go to the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” I ask. “I can make a mean grilled cheese. Well, I can start one and you’ll take over when you smell it burning, but my intentions are good.”

His smile is so small it’s barely there. “I’m fine, thanks. Go to bed.”

Except he’s not fine. I can tell he’s not fine, and how do I insist? How do I convince him that if he’d just let me in, it would all be better? That’s never been how he operates.

He goes to his room and I sit on the couch, feeling like a failure in every possible way. I just risked our child’s life. I made Graham so upset he can’t even look at me, and I have no idea what I am even supposed to dream about now that I don’t want the things I did. How am I supposed to swing for the fences when I don’t even know which fence I’m swinging toward?

I stare at Graham’s door. I can’t fix what I did tonight, and I’m not going to solve my career issues in the hour before bed, but I can at least apologize. Because none of it would have happened if I’d just listened to him.

I cross the room, tapping on his door before I enter. He’s fully dressed, and appears to be pacing.

He stares at me as if he’s furious and lost at the same time.

“Graham, I’m sorry,” I whisper.

He regards me for another moment. Probably only a second but it feels longer.

“This was all my fault and I know you’re mad, but if you’ll just tell me how to fix this, I—”

He takes two long steps, moving toward me so fast my words stop short and I instinctively step back.

And then his hands are on my face, cradling my jaw then sliding into my hair. I expected him to be mad, to punish me for this, and I have no idea what’s happening right now.

His mouth lands on mine, his kiss demanding and desperate at once, and I am no longer confused. He was scared, and this is what he needs to reassure himself.

He neededme. And I needed him too.

He groans, his hands sliding down my sides to grip my ass and pull me closer.

His mouth, his grip, his urgency...it shuts down everything in my head but the most primitive impulses. I want him so much that my hands are shaking, and my breath is coming in small pants. If there was a magic spell to undress us both, head to toe, I’d already have released it.

My palms land on his chest then slide up around his neck, and I know I’ve lived this exact moment before: the moment of realizing how much he’d been holding himself back and feeling overwhelmed by it, feeling as if there was just…too much of him,and wanting it anyway.

I untuck his shirt.

He breaks the kiss only long enough to wrench it overhead and hurl it to the floor. “Take off the dress.”

I think of my body the way it is now—the stretch marks, my swollen breasts lined with fine blue veins, the seven-month swell of a human being pushing out from beneath my skin. “I—”

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