Chapter 18

She sat on the couch, unable to move. Unable even to look at the others as they retrieved Nick from the bedroom and left; she felt their eyes on her but refused to give them hers back. They’d all known this too, hadn’t they? This was why Tera didn’t seem to think she had any kind of future with Greyson, why Nick had interrupted Malleus and Malleus had interrupted Carter. They’d all known it, and they’d all kept it hidden from her. While she’d swanned along, tra-la-la, thinking—fuck. Just, fuck.

Ice cubes clinked into glasses, then cracked when liquor hit them. She didn’t particularly want to be grateful to him for a damn thing at that moment but she certainly hoped he was pouring for both of them.

He was. She grabbed the glass he set in front of her as if it was a jug of water in the middle of a desert and knocked it back, not stopping until the ice hit her nose. Good but not good enough. She held the glass up and listened to him refill it.

“So,” she said, picking up the refill. It was harder than she’d thought not to look at him. Part of her insisted she was wrong, that she was reading things into this, imagining a situation that didn’t actually exist. Any second now he was going to ask her what was wrong, kiss her head or pull her into his arms on the couch . . . it wouldn’t be the first time he’d sent others out of the room so he could be alone with her.

But not this time. She knew it, and every stupid hope, every silly fantasy she had, faded with each passing second.

And the bastard wasn’t even going to speak first. He was going to let her do it, he was going to take that tactical advantage from her. Jesus, was everything a fucking game to him? Had he ever even cared about her at all?

Those questions choked her, fought to jump out of her throat and fling themselves at him in suicidal leaps. She refused to let them. Instead she said, “So who are you marrying, then?”

“Jesus, Meg. You don’t pull any fucking punches, do you.”

“Me? Me? I’m not the one who’s been lying all this time, I’m not the one who’s been planning behind your back and leading you on—”

“Not—damn it, do you think this is what I want?” The frustration and pain in his voice sounded genuine enough, but she couldn’t trust that, and she couldn’t look at him.

“Why wouldn’t you? You’d—oh, right. Of course. I’m supposed to be your mistress, right? Or do I not even get to do that?”

Long pause. She stole a glance at him, quickly so he wouldn’t see her looking. At least that’s what she tried to do. Her head didn’t seem to be in her control. None of her body did; she had to squeeze her glass hard as she lifted it to her lips, because she couldn’t seem to feel the cold against her fingers.

Finally he spoke. “When was I supposed to tell you? Right at the beginning, when neither of us had any idea where this was going? You’d just been attacked and betrayed by demons. You’d just found yourself attached to them. Would that have been a good time to inform you that if you wanted to marry me one day, you’d need to become a demon? Assuming I did end up in a position where it became necessary?”

“You had plenty of other chances,” she snapped. Arguing with a demon was bad; arguing with a lawyer was bad. Arguing with a demon lawyer was infuriating.

“Oh, sure I did. I could have mentioned it right away, when Roc told you about the ritual and you insisted you didn’t want to do it. Or any other time since, when you insisted you didn’t want to do it. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

“You should have told me. You should have let me know this was—”

“Meg, darling, last night you refused to do the ritual even to save your own life. Was I really supposed to assume being with me was more important than that?”

Shit. He had her there. Mostly. “Don’t you think I was entitled to all the facts? Don’t you think I had a right to know all the reasons to do it, all the implications?”

He took a step toward her, then stopped when she glared at him. His face was pale, a little drawn; he looked extremely tired. She fought her instinct to get up and put her arms around him, cursed the fact that even in the middle of this conversation, that was her instinct. That no matter how hurt and angry she was—and both boiled in her stomach like a bowl of acid full of nails—she still loved him.

He leaned back against the wall. One hand clutched a glass full almost to the rim with straight scotch; while she watched he drank half of it off. “What if I had?”

“What?”

“What if I had told you?” His tone echoed oddly in her ears. Either she was on her way to drunk—she realized her second drink was almost gone—or he was simply speaking very quietly, in a subdued way she’d never heard. “What if I’d picked a moment—I don’t know, three months ago or six months ago, or when the subject first came up—and we’d discussed it? What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. That’s not the point, the point is—”

“No, that is the point. That is exactly the point. When was I supposed to put that kind of pressure on you? On us? Would you have appreciated that? Some guy you’ve been seeing for a couple of months suddenly telling you about the ways you have to change your life if you want things to go farther? What if you’d decided it was too much for you to deal with and you’d left? Or what if you had done it?”

Her mouth went dry, as if she’d been drinking cotton balls instead of gin. “So you don’t even want me to do it, that’s what you’re saying.” She stood up. “You—fuck you, Greyson. I’m out of—”

“Sit down.”

“Don’t tell me—”

“Sit down.” Pause. “Please.”

It wasn’t the most gracious request she’d ever heard, but he generally didn’t say please unless it was something important. Something he really wanted—no, she was not going to start thinking about that.

She sat down, though. “What.”

“What if you had done it, just for me,” he said, as if the interruption hadn’t taken place at all. “What if I’d somehow found just the right moment to bring it up—not too early, not too late—and you’d been understanding of why I hadn’t mentioned it before, of course, since as time went on it became more and more glaringly obvious that I was leaving it too late. What if all that had gone perfectly, and you’d done it, and you regretted it? And blamed me? Would you like to spend the rest of your life resenting me because of everything you gave up for me?”

“That’s not fair,” she replied, but she couldn’t put a lot of strength behind it. He did have a point there. It didn’t make hers any less valid, but he did have a point. “You didn’t give me a chance to make a decision.”

“Life isn’t fair, darling. That may be banal, but it is unfortunately true. I didn’t think it was very fair of me to ask you to give up everything, not when neither of us knew where we’d end up and you didn’t seem particularly interested in finding out. And then I didn’t think it was fair of me to ask you to give up everything when you were so adamant about not wanting to. And let’s be clear on this, since we’re laying our cards on the table, so to speak. When I say give up everything, I mean everything. You wouldn’t be able to keep doing your job, not the way you do now. Certainly the radio show would have to go. It makes you too vulnerable. And yes, there would have to be children as soon as possible. You’ve never even really mentioned wanting them.”

Of course she wanted them. But when was she supposed to bring that up? How far into a relationship did one start talking about having children and not be seen as some grasping, desperate female with an iron biological clock attached to her ankle? Especially when she knew they couldn’t have them naturally. Just as there were—well. She guessed she understood what he was saying, after all.

But the rest of it . . . Yes, she loved him. She wanted to be with him. Wanted to marry him. None of that was a surprise. But her work? Her radio show?