Nash pushed the brim of his hat up and his periwinkle-colored eyes shone at me with unbridled amusement.
“Any particular reason you showed up at the exact same time as Asa?” I was pretty sure Saint had told him about my current infatuation, but I wasn’t in the mood to share or be teased, so I just shrugged.
“Good timing, I guess.” Nash was Rule’s best friend, so punching him in the gut to get that cocky grin off of his face wouldn’t be in good form considering the situation.
I let go of Saint’s arm and found a seat that was off to the side. I kicked my feet up on the one across from me and settled in to wait. Having babies took a long time and it wasn’t like I was going to sleep anyway.
I was drifting in my own thoughts. Thinking about Asa’s startling revelations that he was willing to go to jail to pay for past crimes, thinking about the way he tasted, the way he felt so hot and hard in my hand. I was thinking about the idea of going back to work without Dom at my back and how that was almost impossible to get my head around. I also couldn’t get my mind off the fact that all I wanted when I couldn’t sleep and the gym wasn’t enough was to go toe-to-toe with the southern bartender I couldn’t get out of my head. My crush was turning into an obsession.
I jolted a little when a tiny body landed in the chair next to me. Cora looked at my sprawled-out form and kicked her much shorter legs out in front of her with a grin. “Not even close.” There was still a foot beyond the toe of her combat boot and the opposite chair.
I rolled my head to the side so I could look at her as she settled in next to me. Cora was the unofficial guardian angel of this group. She was a petite powerhouse of a woman, and when I wasn’t sort of terrified of her, I really liked and respected her. Tonight she looked a little pale and she had obvious bags under her two different-colored eyes.
“How’s it going?” I figured if anyone would know it would be her.
“Fine. Rule’s actually handling all of it better than Rome did. Rome had the nurses and my OB-GYN scared to come near me. Rule’s taking it all in stride. As long as Shaw is cool, he seems cool, but the real contractions haven’t started yet. We might have to send in the reinforcements if he flips out like his brother did.”
I laughed. I had no doubt Rome was extra scary when he was stressed and freaking out. He looked like he could win a war all by himself with no weapons, just standing off to the side chatting with Asa.
“Well, that’s good. It’s nice you’re all here to support them. Ayden called Asa. She’s on her way already.”
Cora tilted her head back on the chair, put a hand over her tummy, and squeezed her eyes shut. She looked a little green all of a sudden and I sat up straighter. I was going to ask her if she was okay when she breathed deep and then turned her head to look at me as whatever was wrong with her apparently passed.
“She’s going to be devastated if that baby comes before she gets here. Moving to Austin with Jet was the best choice, but it’s hard on them with all of us still here.”
“She told Asa he had to be here just in case she couldn’t make it.”
Cora nodded and smiled at me. “He needs to be here regardless, and so do you.”
It was uncanny how she always seemed to see everything. “I’m here.” I said it begrudgingly.
“Yeah. But you had to think about it first. You belong here, Royal. Don’t doubt it.”
But I did—doubt it, that is. I just didn’t know how I fit. “Things just felt off and a little strained after I had to take Asa in. I wasn’t really sure how to handle that, and making friends has never been all that easy for me.”
Most girls didn’t like me or didn’t trust me and boys only wanted to pretend to be my friend in the hopes it would lead to more. Aside from my tight bond with my mom, my relationship with Dom and his sisters, and now Saint, I had lived a pretty solitary life.
“Shit happens. What happened with Asa wasn’t your fault and we all know that.” She gave me a very pointed look, her brown eye hard and her blue eye sharp. “Do you?”
I wanted to tell her everything felt like it was my fault. It felt like all I could do anymore was make mistake after mistake. I never got the chance, though, because panic crossed her pretty face and in a heartbeat she was up out of the chair and darting across the waiting room to where the bathrooms were located. Rome’s deep voice rumbled with a litany of swearwords as his mom scolded him, which he blatantly ignored as he followed his tiny fiancée into the ladies’ room. He ignored the nurse that called out to him as well, which had all the guys gathered around laughing.
I was pondering Cora’s words about fault when her now-vacant seat was filled with a much bigger, masculine body. Whenever I was within touching distance of him, all my senses seemed to go into overload. He draped one of his long arms across the back of my chair and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“You okay?” His voice was softer than usual and way too close to my ear. I gulped a little and nodded.
It was the fact he asked, the fact that I think he really cared whether I was okay or not, that overshadowed all the red flags he liked to wave in my face warning me away from him.
“Yeah. I’m glad I came up with you. It’s nice to see this.”
“See what?”
I waved a hand vaguely around the room indicating where Salem and Rowdy were cuddled together, where Nash had wrapped Saint up in his arms and was holding her, where Rome had disappeared after Cora, and even where the older Archers were sitting huddled together.
“Happiness. Togetherness. Unity. It was just me and my mom when I was growing up and she jumped from man to man always looking for something she couldn’t seem to find. It’s pretty cool to see couples that actually want to be together. Stability is kind of a foreign concept to me.”