Page 76 of Unwritten Rules

Holding my phone up, I tilt it this way and that as though that would make any difference, dejection filling my body. Eventually, I perk up when I remember the valet.

If I can grab Jo’s car keys, I can drive to someplace with a signal and return it before she’s any the wiser.

Walking around the side of the house in the direction he’d taken the car, I’m met with silence. The countryside is quiet, aside from the sound of my feet softly crunching the gravel beneath my wedges.

“Stupid fucking mask.” I untie the ribbons from behind my head, able to see much more clearly without it hindering my peripheral vision.

Reaching the back of the property and still no valet, I’m about to turn back when I hear a door opening.

A man, his face shrouded in darkness, exits the club, striding across the space to a before-now unnoticed black SUV.

As he approaches, a flame-haired woman slips out, her face lighting up with a bright smile that I can easily see when a sensor light brightens the area.

My gut churns in foreboding when the mystery figure reaches her, his very familiar, now illuminated hands dropping to her heavily pregnant belly. My heart shatters when his achingly beautiful, much adored deep baritone resounds through the air.

“How’s my little one?”

CHAPTER 23

NATE

Having shot V a quick text, I spend the next hour avoiding eye contact with everyone. Finally, my pocket vibrates with her reply.

V

Fuck’s sake, Nate.

How can I say no, considering you ask with such desperation?

Are you sure you need me tonight, though? It’s Saturday…

Even though Saturday is a cattle mart at Valentine’s, I don’t stop to ponder. I need re-centring and V…God love her, but she owes me.

ME

When can you be there?

The dots appear, indicating that she’s replying, but I don’t wait to read it.

Pocketing my phone, I clap my left palm on Henry’s shoulder and my right on Cade’s, yanking them close and smiling broadly as though I’ve not got a care in the world.

“Right, you two. It’s been emotional—”

Cade spins to face me. “You better not be about to cut this short, you wanker. It’s a celebration—”

“And I’m the newly-christened carefree wanker who can do whatever, and whoever, he pleases.”

Henry chuckles darkly. “Oh, you nasty bastard. Go, then. We’ll rot here in adulthood. Enjoy the meaningless pussy, Hawthorne. The other side tastes all the sweeter for the wait.”

Christ, if my best friend’s banter-filled jibes don’t hit right where it hurts.

I don’t want meaningless pussy. Haven’t since I was eighteen and realised there’s more to life than getting your dick wet.

Zara had been the first woman I’d met after deciding to remain celibate until I met the woman I would settle down with.

Within three months of meeting, I was utterly enamoured; three months later, she was pregnant.

We’d gotten engaged after that, and when she’d miscarried a couple of weeks later, we’d moved pretty much permanently to Isla De La Cruz, the island my mother had added to the already enormous Hawthorne portfolio upon her marriage to my father.