Lily chewed it out on her lower lip, her gaze shifting between her brother and her boyfriend as if she was contemplating how to go about mixing oil with vinegar. “Okay, so if this is going to work, it’s going to take more than just you dropping into Jesse’s lap to get him to stay in his chair at breakfast tomorrow.” She continued to nibble on her lip as her eyes narrowed in concentration. “You better squirt a few rings of super glue onto his chair too. Just to be safe.”
I bumped my arm against hers and smiled. “Already so two steps ahead of you. I’ve shuffled through the gray matter where useless information is kept and dusted off the file listing where your dad keeps his tubes of glue”—I tapped my temple—“as well as a hammer and nails to secure the legs of his chair to the kitchen floor so he won’t think about escaping with the chair glued to his ass.”
That made Lily laugh again. “You’re right. You are two steps ahead of me.”
When I joined in with her laughter, only laughing harder as we glanced between the two stone-cold expressions on Jesse and Colt’s faces, I felt it again. Harder. Stronger. That stomach-tightening-before-snapping sensation hit me so hard it sent me back a couple of steps.
“Hey? Rowen?” Lily’s laughter cut off instantly as she reached for my arm. “What’s the matter?”
Colt had come around to my other side, one arm going around my back to support me as he exchanged a nervous look with Lily.
That one had been painful enough it probably would have dropped me to my knees if Lily and Colt hadn’t been on me like white on rice. As sudden and staggering as it had been, it passed as quickly as it had come on. Barely a handful of seconds had passed, and the rip-me-open sensation was gone.
And so was the guy guarding his post fifty feet away.
“What happened?” Jesse asked in a tone hinging on scared shitless when he broke to a stop in front of us.
Lily shook her head, studying me with her own mask of worry. I knew she and Jesse weren’t related by blood, but that didn’t change the fact that almost two decades of growing up together meant they could practically mirror each other’s facial expressions. Her worry lines folded as deep and in as many places as Jesse’s.
“I don’t know. She didn’t say,” Lily said.
“Rowen, what’s going on?” Jesse stayed right in front of me, not seeming to notice Colt camped out beside me, still ready to support me if my body gave out again.
I paused before answering because this one required some deliberation. Whatever that hell-fire sensation had been, it had gotten my attention. It had even made me a bit nervous. I’d been feeling clusters of something similar all night, but in comparison, those had been weak tremors. This had been like the ten on the Richter scale.
I sucked in a breath and did a quick check of how I felt now. Fine. Normal. Whatever that had been was gone and didn’t seem to be coming back. It might not have been wise or smart or cautious, but looking into my husband’s anxious face, which looked one answer away from breaking, I forced a smile.
“Indigestion,” I said in that calm, even voice I’d perfected ten lifetimes ago. Faking one emotion for another . . . Spiderman could scale sky-scrapers, I had that. “That’s what’s going on.”
Jesse shook his head hard. “You’re lying.”
Lily sucked in a tiny breath beside me.
I weaved out of Lily and Colt’s holds and stepped toward Jesse. “You just called me a liar.”
“I said you were lying, not that you are a liar.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not.” Jesse rubbed at his temples. “That’s like saying you took a paperclip from the bank, so you’re a klepto.”
Fine, he had a point, but I wished he didn’t. I couldn’t keep arguing circles around him and distracting him from what was important if he proved his point in one succinct statement.
“Are you going to tell me what happened just now? Or do I have to haul you to the emergency room and have the doctor on call there tell me what happened?” Jesse stopped rubbing his temples long enough to give me one of his sweeping inspections. His gaze lingered on my stomach.
I didn’t want to go to the E.R. I wanted to stay right there and enjoy the night and our friends and family and each other. I didn’t want to ruin Garth and Josie’s special night because my body had done something a little crazy and my husband had taken that whole crazy thing and run with it. I didn’t want to be treated as if I was hanging from a thread and everyone was holding their breaths, waiting for it to snap. I didn’t want my husband to hold me at arm’s length in some areas while he held me so close I felt like I was suffocating in others.
I didn’t want to leave.
“I already told you. Indigestion. Too many taquitos. Too few Tums.” I paused to take a breath because damn if it wasn’t exhausting being pregnant in a hot barn smashed to capacity with people while I tried to convince my husband for the one millionth time that I wasn’t seconds away from taking my last breath. “I’m fine.”
Jesse was looking at me like I was anything but fine. Colt was too. Lily though? There was warmth in her eyes and a smile on her face. She was on my side. Two against two. That might have been even in a different situation, but this was two men versus two women. The very same women they loved, cared for, and got their making out dot, dot, dot needs satisfied from—or at least had until Jesse had gone all old-school monk on me—so we weren’t tied. No, Lily and my vote won. The guys knew it too.