Mancave (Wild Men 3)

“Yeah, we’ll talk about that. I’ll call you,” Matt says, all cryptic and mysterious, and I shoot him a look.

He doesn’t take the bait. He takes another swig of his beer and switches the TV channel to a rerun of Friends.

“You guys are the best friends ever,” Evan says, so low I barely hear him, his gaze fixed on a spot beyond the TV. “I’ll never forget what you did for me.”

“We’re not done with you yet,” Matt mutters, and I give up on trying to figure it out, leaning against his side, and promptly falling asleep.

These days that is all I seem to be good at.

That, and trying to save the world, as if I ever could.

Chapter Thirteen

Matt

I don’t sleep.

After tossing and turning for ages, I get up and go the bathroom, splash some water on my face. I stare into my tired eyes in the cracked bathroom mirror and wonder what’s my problem.

Yeah, Ross is an ass, and I don’t look forward to meeting him tomorrow. To Octavia stepping into his path again. I don’t trust myself not to go all caveman on his ass, knock him over and throw him into the bushes by the roadside.

If he as much as thinks about mocking my wife, if he as much as lays his little fucking finger on her… Jesus Christ, I’m getting riled up just thinking about it.

Why did I agree to this?

Oh right. Because Octavia looked at me like I was breaking her heart for insisting she change her mind, and I have no power to refuse anything this girl asks of me.

Nightmares. How could I refuse when she thinks seeing that asshole face to face may set her mind at ease? Especially now. She needs lots of sleep. She thinks I don’t notice how tired she gets sometimes, but it’s hard to miss. Carrying a baby isn’t easy.

So when I return to the guest bedroom and find her sitting up, her hands on her belly, I stop dead in my tracks, my heart doing a war dance against my ribs.

“Tay, is everything all right?” I sit down beside her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just gas, I think.”

I relax. Why am I so worried anyway? It’s not my first rodeo with a pregnant wife. The mood swings, food cravings, nausea, hunger, sudden tears, I’ve been through it all twice, and will never regret a single second of it.

“Want some tea?” I ask her. “Maybe some chamomile tea?”

It used to do the trick with Emma.

And just like that, the memory slams into me like a punch, so hard I grunt, and I’m not here. I’m with Emma, before she fell sick, before she died, way before it all went to shit.

When she was pregnant with our kids, glowing with happiness. When I had my hand on her swollen belly, feeling our babies kick. When she laughed and told me they would be kick-ass.

I can’t breathe.

Lurching to my feet, I stumble to the window and throw it open, desperate for some fucking air. I’m drowning. Suffocating.

The hospital room where she died. Mary and Cole crying at home, asking for their mom. Zane, my wife’s adopted brother, almost drinking himself to death, unable to cope with her loss.

And I…

I rub at the thick scar running down the inside of my arm, to my wrist, flex my usually half-numb fingers, the nerves permanently damaged from cutting too deep back when I thought my life would never find meaning again.

I was wrong.

I put my hand on the window pane. Cold. So damn c