Laurel is openly disappointed when she opens the bathroom door and I’m the man standing on the other side of it. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her nose is flushed. A tissue is balled up in her hand and now the light in her eyes dies because I’m not Sin.

Ouch.

I guess I deserved that.

Leaning against the doorframe as if unaffected, I ask, “Mind if I come in?”

Too polite to tell me no, Laurel shakes her head and takes a step back.

It’s a small bathroom—maybe normal by some standards, but compared to even the smallest bathroom in my house, this is a pantry. Hell, my pantry is larger than this bathroom.

I shut the door behind me and take a step forward. Laurel is close already because it’s so crammed in here, but I’m not one to pussyfoot around. Rather than wait for an invitation that won’t come from a woman I’ve let slip away from me, I reach out and wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into the sanctuary of my chest. I hear her sigh, then feel her relief as she settles into my embrace. Her relief feeds mine. Perhaps she hasn’t recovered her trust in me, perhaps mine isn’t the face she wanted to see when she opened the door, but now she moves into my arms like I’m someone she likes. Like she did those days in Chicago when she followed her instincts instead of common sense and decided she could trust me.

It’s my fault Laurel trusted me. I gave her every encouragement to do so, and it seemed harmless at the time. It was only a fling, after all. I could reside in her memory as a good experience, she would be the same for me, and safely tucked away from one another for the rest of all time, it could be true. I could have simply been the handsome stranger she spent a wonderful weekend with.

If only the goddamn condom hadn’t failed us.

Now she gets the reality of me. Usually women I’m only casually involved with get the fun experience, the charming Rafe, not the one my girlfriends have to deal with. There’s a reason I don’t have girlfriends all that often; I’m much more appealing as a hook-up, and I know that about myself.

Laurel didn’t. Laurel believed in the fantasy I showed her, and now even though she has seen it blown all to shit, she is letting me hold her. That gives me hope. Perhaps Sin doesn’t have his hooks sunk all the way into her yet. Hell, if showing her the truth worked to dull my shine, I could easily do the same thing to her vision of him. I have no idea what Laurel actually knows about Sin, but I know it can’t be the whole truth or she wouldn’t look at him the way she does.

Now’s not the time for that, though. For whatever reason, she’s sniffling into my dress shirt. I didn’t understand why she got so upset all of a sudden, but when she rushed off looking like she was about to burst into tears, I looked at Sin for an explanation.

“Hormones,” he said, simply.

Now I rub Laurel’s back, knowing this is probably my fault, too. If she really hasn’t had sex with anyone else, then I have to be the one responsible for impregnating her. I still don’t know how, and I’m never going to trust another condom again as long as I live, but it’s starting to seem like this is real.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” I murmur.

“Everything,” she says, rather dramatically.

“Let’s narrow it down. What are the top three things that are wrong right now? I have an entire criminal empire at my disposal, you have that giant Price brain in your pretty head; surely together we can fix three things, can’t we?”

Another sniffle. Then she mutters, “I’m pregnant. You’re the father. You sure you want a third thing? I can keep going into double digits if you want me to.”

I smile faintly, even though she’s emotional and annoyed at me. She can’t see my face while she’s tucked into my chest, so I’m safe. “Do you not want to be pregnant?” I ask her.

She doesn’t answer me. I don’t know whether she’s afraid to admit how she feels, or afraid of my response, so I go on.

“If you don’t, I understand. You’re only 19 and this isn’t your home. But if you do, that’s fine, too. It’s perfectly understandable if you want to make the best of a bad situation. I know you didn’t get pregnant on purpose. There’s no way you could have. I’m the one who provided the condoms, not you.”

After a moment, her tone still low, she asks, “Why did you have to be so mean? This is the Rafe I thought I was coming to see.”

I run a slow hand up and down her back in a gentle, reassuring motion. “No one can be at their best all the time, kitten. Surely you know that.”

Now she bends her head up to look at me. “I didn’t expect you at your best all the time, I just expected ‘not cruel.’ I don’t think that’s an excessively high expectation to have.”

I brush her hair back behind her ear, running a hand along her jawline. “No, you’re right; it wasn’t a lot to expect. I’m the one who reacted like a scared 19-year-old and you were the one who behaved like an adult.”

Laurel nods. “Next thing you know, I’ll start running your mafia. I’ll probably be better at that, too.”

She startles a little laugh out of me. “Maybe. You want to be queen for a day? I’ll let you call all the shots.”

“Psh, for a day,” she murmurs good-naturedly. “I’m gonna run this city.”

“Mm hmm. As long as you never have to lie,” I state, recalling her horrendous attempt at lying to her sister on the phone.

“I need time to prepare before lying. I can’t pull it off on the fly like that.”

“Yes, if I didn’t pick that up by the time you name-dropped your friend Wennifer, it hit home then.”

“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.

Instead, I have to endure this dinner and watch her treat him like her master. Laurel works harder to please Sin with the food she made him, most of her attention, her amusing stories. All of it makes me so fucking angry, I can hardly think straight.

I recognize the repentance in her, the desire to make up for possibly slighting him, even if he didn’t see it. I would love that instinct, if she directed it at me. It’s wasted on Sin. Whether it’s how he has learned to handle her or just because I’m here, he is stonewalling her. Not as harshly as I did, much more stealthily. He’s withholding just enough to make her worry, just enough to make her sweeter, just enough that he collects looks from her ranging from slightly eager, to longing, to desperate for his approval. His carefully controlled responses don’t make her think he’s being a dick to her, they make her think she’s hurt his feelings—and Laurel isn’t big on hurting feelings, so it’s exactly the right card to play.

I hate to fucking admit it, but he’s playing her like a goddamn fiddle, and she doesn’t even know. It’s a little like watching Mia dance around Mateo, except that after years spent learning his ways, my cousin’s wife knows what he’s doing. Laurel has never played this game before, so she doesn’t have a clue.

I should tell her.

No, I shouldn’t tell her, I should have someone else do it. I wish I had some ex-girlfriend of his I could dig up, but even thinking of digging up Sin’s ex is frankly gruesome. Someone needs to shed some light on him for Laurel, but it can’t be me. It won’t work coming from my lips. I’m too obviously invested and given our history, anything I say against him is more likely to make her dig in loyally like she has tonight.

No, I can’t be quite so direct.

I’ll have to think of something else.