Page 22 of Tangled Decadence
“You were always sleeping or too tired to talk.”
“No wonder she’s suspicious. I’m never too tired to talk to her.”
I clear my throat pointedly. “She’s under the impression that—and this is a direct quote—your ‘hot boss is controlling and he should know that you like control IN the bedroom, not outside it.’” I allow myself a tiny smirk at Wren’s shocked face as her jaw flops open. “She had a lot of interesting things to say about me, actually.”
“And I am not commenting on any of them!” she blurts. “Those were private messages meant for me!”
“Understood. I wouldn’t even dream of asking you to clarify all those fantasies you’ve apparently been having about me.”
“Shh!” she hisses, looking around the room like someone embarrassing might be eavesdropping. “I’m reading here… oh, God!”
I chuckle quietly and help myself to more food. For the first time in weeks, I finally have an appetite.
9
WREN
“Why can’t I come see you?” Syrah demands.
“The doctor is worried about infections. She doesn’t want to expose me to anything unnecessarily. The last trimester has had a few… complications.”
Of the mob life variety, to be specific. But Syrah doesn’t need to know that.
She does huff out an impatient breath. “Fine. I don’t like it, but fine. You know, for a second there, I honestly thought you’d been, like, taken hostage by the hot boss and his hot wife.”
My reply sticks in my throat. I probably should tell Syrah about Bee, but I can’t bring myself to go there. If I say the words out loud, they’ll be true, and if they’re true, then God only knows how long that pain is going to last.
It sounds dumb and dumb is exactly what it is, but that’s how my brain is working these days. Logic is a thing of the past.
“I’m not a hostage; don’t worry. Everything is fine.”
I can practically hear Syrah’s suspicion through the phone. “You’d tell me if anything was up, right?”
“Of course!” I cringe at the way my voice goes up a handful of octaves into a barely believable pipsqueak. “It’s just that I’m not gonna be much fun, anyway. I’m basically confined to a bed all the time with nothing but TikTok and books for company.”
“What about B?—”
“Ah, shoot, Syrah, I’m really sorry, but I’ve gotta go. Baby’s pushing down on my bladder.”
“Okay, call me later?”
“Okaysurebye!”
I hang up as fast as I can and drop the phone like it just stung me. I’m gonna have to explain my life to Sy one day; I can only hope that, when I do, she forgives me for keeping her out of it.
Sighing, I swing my legs off the bed and heave myself to my feet. I fell asleep way too late last night after several hours of mindless scrolling, but I got in a few good hours of snoring anyway. My body is still catching up on all the rest I didn’t get while I was trapped with Cian.
After a long shower, I end up in my new closet rifling through the clothes. Most of them don’t fit anymore and the ones that do all belong to Dmitri. I grab one of his t-shirts and press it to my nose. It still smells like him, all manly and smoky.
“Dammit,” I mutter to myself as I drop it in self-directed disgust.
What the hell am I doing, sniffing his t-shirts like a lunatic? The thought of him catching me like this is mortifying. But without much else in the way of options, I pull on the shirt and a pair of his boxers and slink out of the room.
“Dmitri?” I call down the hallway.
He emerges from his room almost immediately, brows furrowed. “Everything okay?”
“The only clothes that fit me are yours.”