Chapter 216 Try Your Luck

Chapter 216 Try Your Luck
Chapter 216: Try Your Luck 

Roman 

It felt like old times the second my hand closed on the door.

I drew a breath and already had an idea of what her fury would look like. Sav did not lecture first when she was this angry. She struck. 

She must have believed a slap was supposed to rearrange something in my skull. And I had learned, years ago, not to dodge it. 

Taking it was how I told her that she would always be safe with me. That she could come apart on me and I would still be standing when she was done.

I opened the door expecting the hit.

Nothing came.

I stopped on the threshold, thrown more by the absence than I would have been by the sting. She walked out of the bathroom and paused when she saw me planted there like an idiot, a frown pulling at her mouth.

“What are you doing standing in the doorway?” The leftover anger was still in her voice. 

I stepped in and shut the door. Then carefully placed the gun on the nightstand. “Nothing. Thought I had you figured out. Turns out I don’t.”

I didn’t miss the way her eyes remained fixed on the weapon. “Where are my children?”

“They’re fine. They're with Alexander and Ramsey.”

“Okay.” She gave me one last look that said she had not forgiven me, then crossed to the bed and sat down with a care that made her pregnancy impossible to ignore. A long breath left her. “God. My back is killing me, Roman.”

I went to wash my hands first. When I came back she was still on the edge of the mattress, twisting in small, useless increments, hunting for an angle that would ease the ache and finding none.

I took the cream the doctors had given her and sat behind her. “Turn around. Let me work on it.”

She shot me a look over her shoulder that was half glare, half warning. “No funny business. I’m watching you.” She smacked my arm before she turned. “Keep your hands where they belong.”

I laughed. “I haven’t even done anything, my love.”

“I know you.” The words were dry. “Try anything and I will knock your teeth out.”

“Understood.” I eased her blouse up and the waist of her pants down just far enough to reach the place that always locked up this early in the day. 

She pointed without looking. “There. Right there.” She braced her hands on the bed and bent forward. 

I stepped in behind her and started working the cream into the tight band of muscle above her hips, careful, slow, the way I had learned to be when her body was carrying more than it had bargained for. 

But, the position did not help my concentration. I lasted about thirty seconds before the truth slipped out.

“I know a few things we could do like this.” I leaned in without meaning to, the shape of her against me.

“Stop.” She glared at me from the side, but there was no anger in it. “I am still mad at you. You know that.”

“I know.” I kept my hands moving. “I’m sorry. Someone had to put Reginald in his place. No one talks about my wife like that and walks away clean. He is lucky I did not put a bullet in him. That took more self-control than I am usually interested in spending.”

She was quiet for a while. The only sound in the room was the faint give of the bed and her breathing as I worked the knot under my thumbs.

“I don’t want you doing that again.” When she finally spoke, the anger had thinned into something rawer. “You scared me, Roman. Do you understand that? A hundred things went through my head when you put that gun to his. What if they had shot you? What if I had to stand there and watch you fall in front of our children?” Her voice caught. “What if I lost you in a driveway because you could not let a stupid old man finish a sentence?”

I stopped.

I turned her in my arms before the next sob could fully form and pulled her against my chest. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry, my love.”

She broke. Sav made small, shaking sounds against my shirt. “I was terrified. I do not know what I would do without you. Please do not do things like that. I do not want you to die.”

I kissed her hair and held her tighter. “Nothing is going to happen to me. I promise. I am not going anywhere. Not from you. Not from them.”

She tipped her face up. Tears still trailed down, but her eyes were fierce now. “You promise? No more guns. No more killing. None of it.” 

Lying to her sat wrong in my mouth. I did it anyway, because she needed the sentence more than I needed to be honest about the kind of men who would keep coming for our peace.

“I promise.”

I knew myself. I knew this family. I knew the promise would not survive the next person who put a hand on what was mine. But I gave it to her regardless.

The effect was immediate. Some of the white fear left her face. She kissed me, grateful, and I kissed her back until the gratitude turned into heat.

She pushed at my chest, laughing under it. “No. No. I have no energy for whatever you just decided that was.”

I let her go, smiling despite the ache. “I wasn’t doing anything. You started it.”

“I was just trying to kiss my husband.” She made a face as she tugged her clothes back into place. “Not audition for whatever movie you were directing in your head.”

I sat on the bed, one knee folded, and let the other subject I had been carrying finally come forward.

“Lizzie’s pregnant, isn't she?”

Sav paused with her shirt halfway smoothed. Then she turned. “Yes. The test was positive.” A beat. “She doesn’t want the baby.” 

“Why?”

She frowned. “What do you mean, why?”

“They love each other. That's how they made the baby.” I heard how simple it sounded and still could not find a more complicated version that felt true. “Isn’t that what meeting in the middle is supposed to look like? I do not understand how she can love him and not want the part of him she is already carrying.”

“Roman.” My name came out tired. “She is still young. I'm not happy she wants to end it either. But there is nothing any of us can do if her mind is made up. And it looks like it is.”

“That is not fair to Reese.”

“I know it isn’t.” She sat down beside me, one hand finding the small of her own back again. “Forcing her will only make her miserable, and miserable does not stay contained. It spills. It poisons everything it touches. I have already talked to her. She is not moving. So I stopped pushing. She's scared. It is her first time. I will not be another person who corners her and makes her feel trapped.”

I stared at the far wall. “I’m disappointed.”

“So am I.” Sav’s voice softened. “But it is not our decision. We do not get a vote. I just wish she would open her eyes before it is too late.”

She said the last part lightly, the way people say things they have not fully looked at.

A chill ran down my arms anyway. The hair there stood. Before it is too late. In this house those words never meant what they meant in ordinary rooms.

“Maybe I should talk to her.”

Sav’s mouth curved, amused. “Try your luck.”