Page 28 of Wicked Brutal

I want to say something to him and I don’t know what. Sorry would be obscene. Are you okay would be stupid. Anything that puts my baby and the one he lost in the same sentence feels like a knife I’d be handing him to hold by the blade. Danny saves me from trying.

“Is she happy?” he asks.

The question catches me sideways. “Yeah. She’s scared as hell too."

Danny nods once. “And you?”

I don’t have to think about it. “Happy, scared, but happy.”

Another nod, slower this time. “Good.” The word comes out rough, but it’s real, and he says it again like he wants me to actually hear it. “Good, Ry. I mean it.”

I have to look away for a second. “I’m fucking terrified, if we’re being honest.”

“Yeah,” he says. And that’s it. No bullshit reassurance, no everything’s going to be fine — because Danny knows better than anybody in this room not to promise a person that. He leans his forearms on the table. “You don’t have to act weird with me about it. I can already see you doing it.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You keep looking at me like you’re waiting for me to crack down the middle.”

“I’ve looked at you twice.”

“Exactly. That’s a lot of eye contact for you. It’s practically a hug.”

Iz snorts, and I point at him without turning around. “Not now.” He lifts his hands.

Danny almost smiles, and then his gaze drops back to the table, and when he speaks again his voice is different. “It hurts. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t, and it’s probably going to hurt for a long fucking time.” His thumb moves along the edge of his phone. “But Ally being pregnant doesn’t take anything away from ours. And me missing ours doesn’t mean I’m not happy for you. Both of those are just — true. At the same time. All the time. You’ll get used to living inside that. I have.”

“Danny—“

“I’m happy for you,” he says, looking straight at me. “I mean it, and I need you to believe me, because if you spend the next seven months tiptoeing around me I’m going to lose my mind.”

“I know. I believe you.”

Xander leans back against the counter and lets out a breath. “Okay. Can we circle back to the part where Harrington made an entire human being?”

Iz’s hand shoots into the air. “Thank you. Finally. A serious man asking the serious questions.”

“No,” I say.

“I have one question. Kaiden’s house, correct?”

Kaiden closes his eyes. “For fuck’s sake.”

“New Year’s Eve was at your house. That’s established. That’s on the record.”

“I know where my own party was, Iz.”

Iz looks at me, fully committed now. “Guest room, or—“

“I’m going to kill you.”

“I’m building a timeline. Which guest room? Because if it was the blue one, I slept in there after Thanksgiving, and I have some follow-up concerns—“

Xander kicks the leg of his stool hard enough to nearly put him on the floor. “Ow,” Iz says, wounded. “I’m being thorough. Thoroughness is a virtue.”

“You established the timeline,” Kaiden says flatly. “New Year’s. Move on with your life.”

“Fine.” Iz picks his sandwich back up, chews for a second, then points it at me. “Congratulations, though. Genuinely.” I stare at him. He shrugs. “What? I mean it. You’re going to be somebody’s dad, which is objectively insane, and I, for one, am thrilled to be his cool uncle.”