“I think it was Winnefer,” she tells me.
“Oh, my mistake. I fucked up the name of your made-up friend. Will she ever forgive me?”
Laurel’s eyebrows rise. “I don’t know, she holds her grudges pretty hard, that Winnefer.”
I shake my head in mock disappointment. “Typical Scot. You gotta stick with the Italians.”
“Oh yeah, because you’re a calm, forgiving bunch,” she says dryly.
“Hey, I’m calm,” I tell her, with exaggerated bluster.
Laurel chuckles at me and I can’t help grinning back at her. This is the first moment since everything went to shit that I’ve felt a little bit of Easter coming back, and now I’m remembering why I liked her. Now I’m remembering those nights after I fucked her tight little cunt until we were both exhausted, when she would curl up in my arms and talk to me about nothing until one of us fell asleep.
I regret being such an asshole the other night, but I can’t undo it, I can only try to fix it. Maybe her problems are too big to fix tonight, but a couple of my problems can be remedied right away.
“Come home with me tonight,” I say.
The amusement drains right out of her face, solemnity returning. “Come home with you?”
I nod, bringing one of her hands to my lips and kissing her knuckles. “You should be staying with me, not Sin.”
I expected some level of discomfort to flit across her face when I said his name—perhaps a shade of shame or guilt. Laurel is inexperienced to begin with, so sex is a bigger deal to her than it is to me. I don’t like that he’s been with her, not if she’s someone I want to keep, but in this instance, I can acknowledge that it’s entirely my fault. I kicked her out of my house—out of my city, in fact—and drove her right into his arms.
Those are not the feelings that flit across her face, though. There’s conflict. Reluctance. I just offered her the same deal she happily accepted the other night in a nice moment between us, and instead of readily agreeing, she takes a step away from me.
“I don’t know,” she says.
I watch her, frowning in confusion. “What do you mean, you don’t know? What’s not to know? You’re pregnant with my child; we’re not at odds anymore, so why wouldn’t you stay with me?”
“Because… I’m staying with him,” she says, taking another step back, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t know exactly what to call this, but I don’t see how I can just…”
“You don’t have to do anything,” I assure her. “I’ll talk to Sin. I’ll take care of it. I know that would be uncomfortable for you; I won’t make you do that.”
“I don’t need you to—no.”
Why is this damn girl still resisting me? I just had her in my arms a minute ago. “You’re still pissed at me?”
“No, that’s not why—” Cutting off mid-sentence, she shakes her head. “It has nothing to do with you. I just can’t walk away from Sin like that. That would be mean, and I don’t want to.”
I frown harder. “You don’t want to? You don’t want to go home with me? You would rather stay here with him?”
“I don’t want to do this. Let’s go back to the kitchen. Dinner is probably done anyway, and I’m all better now. Thank you for coming to help me get my head together, but… we need to get back out there before Sin starts to worry.”
I am fucking flabbergasted. Laurel slips past me and pulls open the door, darting into the hall like she’s afraid I’ll trap her inside otherwise. I’m too stunned to try. Laurel isn’t supposed to like Sin. He’s supposed to be the pair of arms she turned to when I was an asshole, not someone she would rather spend the night with than me. It wasn’t even something she had to think about. She could have said she needed time to think it over, to make a decision, but there was no decision. It was him. Even with my door open, she wants to stay here, in this fucking house that’s a fraction of mine, with my enforcer. She could have me, and she chooses to stay here with him.
What the fuck?
Straightening my jacket and rubbing a hand down my now-damp shirtfront, I check the mirror to make sure I’ve schooled my expression before heading back downstairs.
Laurel is in the kitchen already, right by Sin, like she has a guilty conscience, but it’s misdirected. If her damned conscience is weighing on her, it should be because she’s taken another man’s dick when she’s apparently pregnant with my kid, not because she was locked in a bathroom with me. If she yearns to make amends, it should be to me, not him.
Her loyalty should be mine, not his.
Sin turns around and shoves a plate full of food at me. His face is expressionless, his eyes flat. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, and I’m too compromised right now to dig. I’m biased by what I expect to see—smugness—and what I want to see—that he feels threatened—so I can’t peel back his veneer right now and peek at what’s actually happening. I’m too close to it. Too invested in the result.
I don’t know if it even matters. If Laurel is on the page she seems to be on, it doesn’t. Not tonight, at least. I can do more work on both of them and get my way eventually, but I don’t want him having her in the meantime. I hate knowing he’s touched her at all, but to lie alone in my bed tonight knowing he’s still touching her? It’s an infuriating prospect.
I wanted her to be easy, goddammit. I apologized, I meant it, I fixed my behavior; now get your ass in line and come home with me, for fuck’s sake. Warm my bed, not Sin’s.