Ernie’s eyebrows twitch again, his eyes locked onto me, his tail still madly flicking back and forth. He doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about, but for some reason I get the feeling he disapproves. “Look, it’s not up to you, anyway. It’s up to me. I need time to process this, okay? And looking at me like that isn’t going to change anything.”
The sound of the front door opening nearly causes my heart to explode. I panic, hands patting myself down, searching for something…for the pregnancy test. Did I bring it down here with me? Is it still upstairs in the bathroom? What the fuck did I do with it? My hand finds the length of plastic in my jeans, barely managing to fit all the way into the pocket at my hip. I shove it down as hard as I can, pulling at my t-shirt then, hoping the material covers the pocket from view altogether, as if my boyfriend has laser eyesight and might be able to see through the denim of my jeans. Zeth appears, and all the oxygen leaves my lungs.
He’s covered in blood.
“What—what the hell happened?” I can’t seem to find my voice.
He props himself up against the wall, looking down at himself. “Well. I was driving across town and I realized I was being followed. I thought it was Lowell, but turns out it was the Italians. Got a little ugly.”
“The Italians? The guys from New York?” I remember them calling a couple of weeks ago. Seemed like they wouldn’t quit for a while there. It’s been quiet for long enough since then that I thought the bastards had given up harassing him and had decided to leave him the fuck alone. Really, how stupid is an assumption like that? What the hell is wrong with me? Being sick and dealing with this Mason crap has really blindsided me.
“What happened exactly? What—what did you do with him?” I hate to ask questions like this, but I need to know.
Zeth proceeds to describe in intricate detail how he restrained the guy after breaking his nose and drove him across town to the docklands, where he had some guy he knows seal the Italian’s car with him inside it into a shipping container back to New York. It’s going to take three days for the container to reach it’s destination, by which time the mafia guy inside the corrugated metal is going to have lost his fucking mind. I can’t see how this is going to end well. On top of everything else? Jesus, it’ll be a wonder if any of us make it through the next month.
“I didn’t want to tell you.” Zee pushes away from the wall, yanking his blood stained t-shirt over his head in one rough, incredibly sexy move. “But…y’know. No secrets,” he says gruffly. I love that he wants me to know everything. Being kept in the dark so much back when we first met, along with more recently, when he was hiding Lowell’s arrival, was infuriating and also very dangerous, and so the fact that he wants me clued in these days is reassuring. But damn if the guy doesn’t know how to make a girl feel like utter crap.
He says no secrets, and I have the biggest secret of my life nestled up, snug and warm in my uterus. Fuck. I should tell him. I should tell him right fucking now. I’m going to do it. I have to. I can’t not tell him. I—
He cups my face in his hands, and his knuckles are covered in blood. I can smell it on him, thick, coppery, overpowering. My stomach heaves. “Okay, angry girl? You look…kinda pale,” he says. I love the look of concern he wears. Those deep brown eyes are brimming over with it as he rubs his thumbs over my cheeks. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work today?”
I shake my head, touching my fingertips to his wrists. If he doesn’t remove them soon, the smell of the blood is going to make me vomit. “I was meant to. I still didn’t feel well, though.” Please, dear lord, don’t let him think it’s weird that I’m still sick. Please! “I have plenty of unused vacation time, so I figured why not take the rest of the week off. HR were threatening to make me take enforced leave, so this kinda works out for everybody.”
Zeth studies me for a moment with sharp, intelligent eyes. Slowly, so painfully slowly, he leans down, his face getting closer and closer as the seconds pass. I imagine him calling me out on my half-truth. It feels so shitty not telling him what’s going on after I gave him hell for not telling me about Lowell only a few days ago. Is it obvious that I’m hiding something? Is my fear and panic sitting there on my face, out in the open for him to see, plain as day? It has to be; I don’t know how I could possibly hide it.
Zeth’s lips part. He’s going to say something. He’s going to say something…
He kisses me.