I hid my laugh in another full-body gulp when Lyla’s eyes stretched wide before she pivoted. Leave it to Kandy to order a fucking coffee drink, buck ass naked at an underground party.
“Don’t let anyone handle your drinks here,” I said directly into her ear before she pulled away.
“Got it, babe. I’m going to go…” She took a sip. “Play!”
How her hips perfected the saunter, I will never know.
“Is he upstairs?” I asked, peering up at the balcony, roped off with black caution tape.
“Yeah,” Lyla confirmed, trepidation flashing across her face before pulling out a shot glass and taking it straight.
“Hey, Daph,” Molly plopped onto the stool beside me. She was naked, round, and had to be about seven months along.
For as long as I could remember, she and Rinley had been together. He was part of the clean-up crew, which was code for making dead things disappear. You’d think such a profession would come with stoic resolve and icy blue wisdom, but Rinley was a dick for brains. I couldn’t stand the asshole, but like me, she had grown up under the cadence of violent men.
Not that you’d ever know.
Molly was sweet. The kind of flower that pops up in spring, painting the air with the promise of sugar. It didn’t take me long to learn that men here liked that sort of thing. I think it made them feel less like underworld monsters and more deserving of the finer things in life. Sadistic assholes.
“Aren’t you a doctor?” She asked, twisting her straw around in the ice water Lyla had given her.
“Midwife. And no, not yet.” I studied her, taking in the way her swollen ankles bent into the barstool. “Molly?”
“Don’t start,” she groaned, slumping even further. “All I ever do is sit in that room at the clubhouse and rest. I wanted to feel like a person for five goddamn seconds, okay?” She shot me a teary-eyed scowl, then went back to tracing circles in her glass.
“Anddo you?” I arched a brow, handing Lyla a twenty. “Wolfe covers my drinks, so keep that,” I told her.
“Love you,” Lyla mouthed, drifting down the bar to help the cluster of penises camped there.
“No,” Molly mumbled, on the verge of crying. “He’s up there fucking some girl right now.” She bit back her ire because that was what club wives were expected to do. Fidelity was a choice, not a promise, and in this world, you played by the rules or died for breaking them. “And I feel fat, and tired, and…” She swallowed. “And fat.”
“You’re pregnant. Growing a soul is hard ass work,” I stood, taking her by the arm to keep her legs from dangling. “Molly,your ankles are really swollen. Are they watching your blood pressure?”
She gave me a look that told me everything I needed to know. Rinley was likely keeping her from medical appointments because eyes on her meant eyes on him, and something inside me burned.
“Move,” I ordered the two people fucking on the sofa, before pointing at Molly to sit.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” Molly shot me a look before plopping down in a huff.
“Tired of what?” I asked, bending low to put her feet up.
Damn, they were worse than I thought.
“Fixing things and it not mattering. You helping me now won’t help me later. You’d think you would have learned that,” she was trying to hurt me. “I mean, you tried to fix Threx, and he is up there fucking, too.” Molly shot me a bladed look, her pretty brown eyes plummeting even lower.
“Thay and I aren’t like that, and you know it.”
“Please.” She threw her head back in an indignant scoff, glitter sliding from her cheek to her shoulder. “Of all the couples in the club, you two are the only ones who arelike that.”
A dark cloud crept over me, but I shoved it aside. I couldn’t drown in rain clouds right now. I was too tired of slipping into the damn hole that held me by the throat.
“Molly,” I changed the subject. “When you are pregnant, the blood in your body increases by almost fifty percent.” I took a deep breath. “Which means your heart is working harder, your kidneys are filtering more, and your blood vessels are under a great deal of stress.”
Molly stared at me, folding her lip under the way she always had whenever someone spoke to her like a person.
“And if that strain becomes too much for your veins to handle, the fluid in your blood leaks into your tissues, which causes them to swell. It is a sign of preeclampsia. You need to see a doctor.”
She rubbed her face, leaning back into the cushions in silence.