“You’re knocked up?”

Nash choked on a laugh and hooked a thumb at Rome.

“You might wanna look at the guy holding on to her, genius. Not mine.”

Jimmy’s eyes got huge when he took in the protective stance Rome had taken behind me. He looked at me, at my belly, and then back up to the thunderous expression of the man standing behind me. It irritated me to no end that he automatically assumed Nash would be the dad just because of his outward appearance. Why hadn’t I ever realized how shallow and awful he was before I had fallen in love with him? Gross.

“Seriously, Cora? What the hell happened to you? This isn’t like you. You used to be nice and funny. The old you would have forgiven me in a heartbeat, and we could have gone and had a beer and a few laughs for old times’ sake. You loved me.”

Oh, the nerve of him. How did I ever think anyone that stupid was my Mr. Right? I could read between his lines. The old me would have been head over heels to have another shot at being with him and he could have used me for a quick hookup to soothe his battered ego. Uh, no thank you.

“You happened to me, Jimmy. You have the nerve to talk about how I loved you? How about because of you I can’t love someone else? Where is the apology, the regret for that?”

I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me. I knew I needed to stop—that I was risking ruining the thing that mattered—but in my fury I was stuck in a cycle of past and future, anger and remorse, and there was no turning back.

“Cora.” Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck and looked at his feet. “We were young. I was immature. I never meant to hurt you that way. You were the first girl I ever loved. Can’t we just grab a coffee or something and mend some fences. I really am sorry.”

“No. Just because you’re sorry doesn’t mean I’m obligated to accept your apology. It sucks you came all this way in search of absolution, but it’s not my job to offer it to you. I don’t owe you anything. I never did. You were just too stupid to see that I was offering you the world and then you decided to toss it away. Never again, Jimmy. I’ll never do that again.” My voice dropped an octave and my chest heaved up and down. “The embarrassment, the loss of the only family I thought I had, it made me lost, made me search and search for some kind of perfect I’m never going to find. You ruined my idea of happy-ever-after.”

When my words hit Jimmy they made him shudder, and they made me feel free. But any satisfaction was brief, disintegrating as what I had just said hit me square in the chest. It was too late, I couldn’t force the words back in. I turned to look at Rome, and those blue eyes had gone dull, distant, his face like stone.

For five years I had needed this moment to let go. But now that the anger was starting to bleed out, I knew the harsh words I had thrown out in a blind rage had hit the wrong target.

Rome had offered me everything over and over again, and still I’d held back. I’d never been absolutely clear to him why I was so hesitant to just hand my heart over, and here I was laying it all out there to the last guy who deserved any consideration. Jimmy might have damaged my ability to freely offer my love, but I had to be accountable for my part in being scared to give everything over to Rome. I knew we were meant to be and holding back fell entirely on my cowardly shoulders.

“Cora …” Jimmy didn’t get the chance to add anything else because Rome’s tolerance ran out. He moved around me faster than a guy that big should be able to move and grabbed Jimmy by the collar of his trendy pearl-snap shirt. The toes of his hip boots dragged across the sidewalk and his eyes popped wide. I saw Jimmy gulp and heard Nash chuckle.

“Not helping, Nashville.”

“No plans to, Tink. Let him wrestle with the bear. He deserves it.”

“She said she doesn’t have anything else to say to you. That ends the conversation. You want to continue it, you continue it with me. A lot of time has passed for you, but I’m brand-new. I know what I got with her, and I’m not going to let you dirty it up or twist her up anymore.” He shook Jimmy like he was a rag doll and I had to bite back a grin. “She’s having my baby. I love her. There is no room in any of that for you to show up and try to make her responsible for your bruised ego and hurt feelings. Maybe if you weren’t a dick to begin with, you wouldn’t have ended up getting f**ked over in the long run. Are we clear?”

I had never seen this side of Rome. He was always kind of dangerous, always kind of coiled tight like he could take care of business at any minute. I had to admit it was fascinating to watch, and I wasn’t surprised that Jimmy couldn’t hold up under the threat of the kind of guy Rome was. I doubted many could. He nodded and Rome shoved him away. Jimmy stumbled off the curb and looked at me one more time.

“For what it’s worth, I do really understand now how bad what I did to you hurt. You always deserved better.”

I snorted. “I deserve the best and that’s what I found. Good-bye, Jimmy.”

The three of us watched him walk away, me with a new clarity, Nash with unbridled amusement, and when I looked up at Rome, everything I had been afraid my thoughtless words were doing to him was shining out of his hard gaze. He was angry, but more than that he was hurt, and I couldn’t fault him for it. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to try and soothe the unintentional burn I had caused, but those sapphire eyes flashed at me and I could feel the blaze of his anger burning in his tightly locked muscles and granite-hard expression. I took a step back and started when he did the same thing. There wasn’t supposed to be space like this between us anymore.

“What just happened, Cora?”

The words were gritted out between clenched teeth, and I blinked at him in surprise.

“I thought this entire time that you couldn’t tell me you loved me, that you were struggling to find a house with me because you were still working through all that stuff that idiot left you with when he cheated on you. I thought I was letting you find your own way to where I was waiting for you, and I just watched you annihilate the only excuse I thought you had for holding back on me. You just told that idiot you could never love someone else because of what he did to you, I heard it loud and clear.”

I reached out for him, my hand was shaking, and I could feel Nash recoil next to me when he backed away another step. This couldn’t be happening.

“Rome.” I tried to get him to calm down. To get a word in edgewise, to tell him he didn’t understand, but he wouldn’t let me. The thing I was best at, talking, seemed to be my worst enemy at the moment. If I had just been able to tell him I loved him back, he wouldn’t be reacting this way now. Of course I loved him. I was just terrified.

“Dude, chill. She just got ambushed by her ex. She’s pregnant. Take a breath and calm down.”

“I know she’s pregnant, Nash. I had something to do with that, but I can’t give you everything, let you see all the broken, ugly parts of me, if all I get in return is only what you deem as safe. I’m not Jimmy. I won’t let you down like that, and I thought I had proven that to you over and over again. If you can’t be in love with me because of what that loser did to you five years ago, which one of us isn’t all the way in, Cora?”

Beyond the rage in his voice I could hear the sounds of his heart tearing loose in his chest. My fear and hesitation had caused this. There was no one to blame but myself. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pry the words he so obviously needed off of my tongue. I did love him, but this wasn’t a way I was ever going to tell him that. He would never believe me if I blurted it out to prevent this ugly scene.

The driver’s door slammed shut, and he took off in squeal of tires and roaring engine. I was glad he wasn’t on the bike. That would have been dangerous and scary.

Nash pulled me into a one-armed hug and I rested my head on his chest.

“He’ll calm down. I think seeing Jimmy was as much of a shock to him as it was to you.”

“He’s right. I should have told him how I felt forever ago. I just couldn’t. I was scared telling him I loved him would mean it would all fall apart and it would destroy me if it didn’t work out. He always tells me I color his entire world, but he did the same thing for me. If what I felt for Jimmy is beige, then what I feel for Rome is a damn box of Crayola crayons. I shouldn’t have been such a baby and just let him know. He is perfect for me, Nash.”

Nash swore a little bit and turned so that we could go into the shop.

“When two people feel that way about each other, they figure it out. Just like Rule and Shaw did and just like Jet and Ayden. It’ll be fine, Tink. I promise. By the way that was a nice gut shot. You shoulda aimed for the nose, though.”

Normally that would have made me laugh, but I felt like everything I had was swirling around in that cloud of wrath Rome had ridden away on. It had to work out, there was no other option. He was it for me, I just needed to pull my head out of my ass and tell him. He was right: I asked him for everything and he gave it without question. He wanted one thing from me, to hear that I loved him like he loved me, and I had been unable to do it for him. I sucked. Plus I was sick and tired of the big jerk always somehow managing to get the last word in every time we had a fight. That was really annoying.

“I wish that was a promise I could be sure you could keep, Nash. Don’t say anything to the guys. You can tell them about Jimmy because you all gossip like teenage girls, but leave Rome out of it. I need to fix this mess on my own.”

And fix it I would, because there was no other option for me or for our baby.

When we walked in the door, the guys all wanted to know what was going on. I let Nash fill them in while I asked Rule if I could talk to him in the back room.

He followed me, his face screwed up in a total look of confusion, but he was kind enough not to grill me.

“That was Jimmy.”

“I figured. Looks like Rome made it pretty clear he better leave you alone.”

“Yeah, he also made it pretty clear I better figure my shit out or I’m going forward alone.”

I thought Rule would get riotously indignant on my behalf, but he didn’t. He narrowed those pale eyes at me, which made me twist my plugs around nervously. I felt like a bug under a microscope.

“What? Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what, Cora?”

“All judgy. I was your biggest cheerleader when you were acting like a dipshit over Shaw, so knock it off.”

“He loves you, Cora. That isn’t a joke. He’s never laid himself on the line for anyone like that before that wasn’t family.”

“I know, I know. I’m working my way there, all right. I don’t want to be without him.”

“Do you love my brother, Tink? Because if you don’t, even if it kills him, you need to walk away now. You can’t do that to him.”

“Rule.” I sighed and started to pace back and forth in front of him. “I wanted someone perfect, thought it would keep me safe, save me from another broken heart, and all it did was insulate me and make me too scared to tell a wonderful man that I love him back. I thought I could show him, that he would just know, just feel it pouring out of me the way I felt it from him. I screwed this up royally and I don’t know if he’s going to let me fix it.”

I started crying and he swore and pulled me into a hug that crushed my ribs.

“Everything is fixable. He had the same reaction when Shaw let us know about Remy, only then he had all my idiotic outrage on top of his own to keep it going. He works his way out of it and I know how much he needs you, Cora. It’ll be fine. Love is a goddamn scary thing. Facing it takes brass balls, and we all know you have a pair.”

I didn’t want to laugh, but I had to. I pulled away and wiped a hand over my face. “I used to think I was pretty tough, but your brother has turned me into a big pile of goo.”