Chapter Four
Meg
“Can you zip me?”
Since I’m in Mateo’s study, and I came all the way here from our bedroom, he glances up in surprise. Which is reasonable. How does one walk all that way without coming into contact with another human being who could have zipped me up?
I didn’t. And Maria offered. But I wanted him.
Mia’s going to be here any minute, and while I’m not feeling as crazy as I was last night after the wedding, I still wanna make my man touch me.
“How are you feeling today?” he asks, getting up from his desk and coming around to help me.
What’s funny about this question is he doesn’t mean physically, because of my pregnancy. He means mentally, since I was a little cracked last night. Like it’s unreasonable to feel a little weird about your fiancé slow dancing with, flashing his big brown hypnotic eyes at, and kissing the motherfucking hand of the girl he fucked before you. A girl who has slept in your bed. A girl you’ve wondered if he had some unresolved feelings for on more than one occasion. A girl who looks at him with her heart in her eyes. A girl he has joked about making your sister wife.
But yeah, I must not have been feeling well.
Ugh, I’m getting annoyed again. Can’t have that. Mia and Vince will be here anytime. It’s game time.
I cock my head from side to side, regaining my focus. “Yep, I’m good,” I assure him. “I talked to Mia earlier. It seemed like she and Vince were doing okay today.”
I look back at him over my shoulder as I deliver that, and after zipping up my dress, with a faint smile on his lips, he points his finger up in the air and sarcastically twists it around a few times to indicate he gives zero fucks.
Okay then.
So I offer a light roll of my eyes and add, “I thought maybe we could grab lunch earlier, but apparently I interrupted. She and Vince were about to get in the shower. So hey, I guess if they’re not doing okay, it’s working for them.”
I have no possible frame of reference for what to expect after saying this. I’m literally throwing shit at the wall and seeing what happens.
Mateo is still behind me, but his grip on my shoulders tightens as he pulls me back against his chest.
“What are you doing?” he asks mildly.
My heart pounds, but I maintain a tone of complete innocence as I ask, “What do you mean?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Meg.”
My heart kicks up a couple of gears, then I say, “I was just… relaying—”
“You were trying to get a rise out of me,” he states, not letting me finish. “I know what you were doing; I want to know why you’re doing it.”
Since apparently we’re doing this, I pull one of his hands off my shoulder and turn to face him. “Do you want Mia?”
He holds my gaze for a moment, then instead of responding, checks his watch. He checks the fucking time. “Why don’t we talk about this later?”
My blue eyes practically pop out of my head. My stomach sinks. I can’t find words.
“They’re going to be here any minute,” he adds. “This isn’t a quick discussion.”
I guess that answers that, then.
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to stand in the kitchen and make dinner with her now, when I kind of want to stab her.
“Are you fucking her already?” I ask. My voice completely betrays me by wobbling with emotion in the middle of that question, and I want to curl up and die.
“No,” he says, firmly, grabbing my shoulders and bending to look into my eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way. This is exactly what I don’t want. I wish, if you needed to talk to me about this today, you would’ve done it before now. It’s too late, Meg. People are going to show up for dinner any minute.”
I want to flip my shit on him, tell him I don’t care if people are going to be here, this is my life, this is more important than goddamn dinner, and I need to know what the fuck is going on.
But I don’t. Because I know better.
I feel like I’m going to throw up, but I don’t blow up at him.
I feel like an idiot. But I don’t say so.
Mateo surprises me, pulling a ballsy fucking move, leaning in to give me a gentle, reassuring kiss. If I ever doubted he had gonads before, I wouldn’t now, when he actually has the gall to kiss me after all but admitting he wants to fuck my best friend.
Crazy pregnancy hormones engaged! I’m going to kill them both. I’ll seduce Dante. He looks enough like Mateo, right? Colette doesn’t even like him, and I get to keep the house. Probably. If he gets the family, presumably he also gets the house.
If Mateo notices I don’t kiss him back, he must not care.
“Everything is fine,” he assures me. He’s the one who drops some bullshit like that, and I’m the one who gets the reassurances. Aren’t those mine to give? Shouldn’t I be the one saying, “It’s okay, Gigantic Master Asshole of All Assholes, I still love you, even though you just said that”?
But no, he is the one reassuring me that everything’s okay.
“I want the talk now,” I state. “I don’t care about dinner. I don’t care. Call them and push it back an hour if you have to. I’m not going to be able to get through dinner with this on my mind. Unless you want me stab Mia with a kitchen utensil, it’s a very bad idea for us to make dinner together.”
This displeases him. Sighing, he tugs me closer, holding my hand. “Don’t do that. You like Mia—you love Mia.”
“A little less knowing you want to fuck her.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to fuck her,” he states, glancing at the door to the study.
Adrian is standing there, with a wide-eyed Elise by his side.
“We’ll come back,” Adrian says, about to turn around.
“No,” Mateo says, stopping him. “Stay.”
Adrian’s head falls back and he sighs, like he’s never dreaded anything so much in his life.
I feel like I’m going to cry. I hate being pregnant. I hate everything.
“Do we have to?” Elise asks.
Mateo smirks, amused that even Elise wants to leave. “Come on in.”
“Actually, I have kitchen things to do,” Elise says brightly, leaning in and giving Adrian a kiss. He secures an arm around her waist, tugging her closer, like he needs to kiss her a little longer to get through this mess.
I reach a new low as I feel jealous of Elise. Adrian is so fucking devoted to her. She’s so lucky. I’m rolling downhill fast.
I’m trying not to get lost in it. I’m trying to keep my balance. I’m trying to be logical, and that’s usually easy for me, but… well, pregnancy.
I should go do kitchen things too, but now Elise is in there and she damn sure doesn’t want my company. Mia’s going to be here any minute, and I’m still feeling super stabby. If I just murder her today, I can totally blame my pregnancy hormones, right? How pissed would Mateo be? But hey, without his back-up bitch around to warm his bed, he’d surely keep me alive.
No, I can’t kill Mia. That would be wrong.
Of course, Mateo might be fucking Mia, and secretly fucking my fiancé is also pretty wrong.
I emerge from my murderous contemplation to see Adrian pouring himself a stiff drink, slamming it back, then pouring another.
Now he turns to face us, sighing. “So, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Mateo assures him. “Meg’s hormones are… making her crazy.”
“Meg’s always been crazy.”
“Yes, but the kind of crazy I like,” he specifies. “Apparently pregnancy makes her emotionally unstable.”
“Only room for one emotionally unstable partner in the relationship, huh?” Adrian asks good-naturedly, like he’s amused. I guess he has to be. This is a goddamn disaster.
Mateo rolls his eyes and approaches the cart to grab himself something to drink.
“Hopefully it’s a boy then,” Adrian remarks. “Maybe you won’t have to do this again.”
“Am I even going to be here for this to happen again?” I ask, my eyes on Mateo’s back. “What does this mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he says again, looking a little less patient. I do know how he hates to repeat himself, but I also don’t give a fuck right now. “I told you we’ll talk about it later.”
“After I stab your girlfriend—got it.”
Mateo slams his glass down and I jump as he strides across the room, catching my arm and yanking me close. I’m alarmed already, but even more so at the look of warning he gives me, like I’m sorely testing his patience.
“Be nice,” he says, simply.
I can only stare at him, my eyes wide, anxiety gathering in my chest. It aches. This hurts. Not his hold on me, nothing physical, but that he’s taking a stand for Mia—telling me to be nice to her. Letting me know he won’t accept me lashing out at her.
Goddamn him.
I swallow, looking away from him. “Yes, master,” I reply, scathingly.
He grabs my chin now, forcing me to look up at him. “I love you. Nothing has changed.”
Everything has changed.
But I don’t say that.
“I’m not feeling well,” I say, tugging my arm away from him. “I think it would be best to have dinner without me tonight. We’ll talk later.”
“Meg…”
“It’s one fucking dinner, Mateo,” I snap. “You want me to be nice and I can’t right now. So I’m going to go upstairs; just tell them I’m having a bout of morning sickness and we’ll be back to normal next week.”
I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know anything, because apparently there’s a long conversation coming, and I don’t know what it’s going to sound like.
I don’t wait for his permission. I don’t say another word; I just quit the study and head upstairs before I run into Vince and Mia. My emotions are out of control and I want to rip her hair out of her pretty little head, so I definitely do not want to see her.
I try to ground myself while I walk. I’m out of sorts, getting carried away, but I need to relax. For one thing, Mia was normal around me until yesterday. Until they danced. He can’t be fucking her yet—he came home with me, and they didn’t disappear together after they danced. So he isn’t fucking her. But he must have said something to her in those three minutes that changed things for her. Maybe he told her that he wants to fuck her. Which seems like a disaster, because Mia’s so fucking infatuated with him that she stays in a relationship with someone she half-hates just so she can keep coming around.
I need to find an objective perspective. I need to clear my mind, push past my foreign surplus of emotions, and figure this out.