Sophie (The Boss 8)

Neil took an audible breath through his nose. "I think...she'll survive. Whether she'll be able to do more than that, I'm not sure. For the first time in my life, I'm not sure that she'll truly recover."

"I don't think you recover from something like this. The level of betrayal is..." My voice died away.

"He preyed on her at her weakest. You were right, Sophie." Neil shook his head, closing his eyes. "I can't believe I didn't see it."

"You weren't trained to look for it," I reminded him. "All those red flags? Women are warned constantly. In any other circumstances, maybe Valerie would have noticed them, too."

"I can't believe you suggested the guest house," El-Mudad's lips curved in a slight smile. "The woman you once described as having 'the most rip-out-able hair in Manhattan'."

"Don’t...don't remind me." My stomach churned at what I'd said about her haircut. The fact that she'd taken those small precautions and we'd all seen them as signs that she'd been coping with her grief sickened me. "You know, I complimented the short hair on her. If I had known—"

"But you didn't. And when you did know, what did you do?" Neil asked.

I didn't want to give myself credit for somehow "rescuing" Valerie. The fact that she'd had to accept help from me had to be a blow to her pride, one I might have loved striking years ago. Now, I hated that she was in a position where she had to rely on me for aid. "It's been a long night. I need to change the subject." I didn't care if I sounded selfish or uncaring; my husbands knew I wasn't, and they were the only ones present to judge me.

"Self-care time," El-Mudad proclaimed in agreement.

"Good idea. I think I'll catch up on a few episodes of Supernatural," Neil said.

El-Mudad and I stared at him.

Neil was unmoved by our silent shaming.

“There is just...one thing.” I winced at my own words. “When are we going to tell Valerie about the adoption?”

“Do we need to consult her?” Neil asked, in that tone he used when it was evident that he’d answered the question before he’d spoken it.

“Not consult, no,” I said cautiously. Maybe his goodwill toward Valerie was already used up. I didn’t want to reverse any of the work we’d done. “But I don’t want her to be blindsided by it.”

“The way she would have blindsided us by kidnapping her?” El-Mudad said quietly.

“That wasn’t—” I stopped myself. It was her fault, at least partially. She wasn’t at fault for Laurence’s actions against her, but she’d actively participated in trying to hurt us. “You know, I’ll bow to experience here. You guys are the dads. You probably know better than I do how she’ll react or what any of this means. Just tell me where to sign, I guess.”

“Sophie—” Neil began.

“Please don’t take that as me being passive-aggressive. You know I’d rather be aggressive-aggressive,” I quipped. “I’m just saying, out of the three of us, I’m the one who has the least wisdom on this subject.”

Neil gave me a closed-mouth smile, and El-Mudad scratched the back of his neck. In other words, they agreed that I was out of my depth.

I took my dinner to the home theater—Neil had already staked out the TV in the bedroom—and stuffed my face with bacon-wrapped, chorizo-stuffed figs washed down with Topo Chico to the soothing sounds of an old rerun of Cold Case Files. I was laying on my back on the big bed set in among the movie theater-style seats, shirt pulled up, and yoga pants pushed down to accommodate my late-term food baby, letting out the most maple-cured burps this side of the Canadian border when El-Mudad walked in.

“Shu hayda!” El-Mudad shouted from the doorway, feigning shock. “A hippopotamus in the cinema!”

“Shu hayda!” I pretended to be alarmed, as well. But I did it with my middle finger up. “A husband not minding his business!”

“Poor El-Mudad.” He walked into the room slowly, scuffing his bare toes on the carpet of each stair. “No one loves him.”

“Neil picked the Winchesters over you?” I pushed up on my elbows. “Did you call him a hippopotamus, too? Because not to critique your flirting—”

El-Mudad dropped heavily on the bed beside me. “Not a hippopotamus, then. A beautiful, gassy lady-Shrek.”

“Her name was Fiona. And I hope you weren’t coming in here for sex; I am too full to move.” I stifled another belch.

“Well, I was coming in here for sex, but you’ve cured me of my raging desire.” He snagged the remote. “Your punishment is cleaning up all these dishes and coming back for a cuddle.”

I would have argued that there was plenty of room to cuddle if we put the dishes on the floor, but I had to use the bathroom, anyway. “You’re lucky I was already going that way. Otherwise, you’d be in here by yourself.”