“Fast work there, bud. I didn’t realize she’d been in town long enough to put a bun in her oven. You should enter those swimmers of yours into the next Olympics. You’ve got some golden medal spunk going on there.”

Grady blinked, placing his bottle down on the table with a loud thunk. An itch started at the base of his spine, his bloody pressure spiking. What. The. Fuck?

“Who’s got a bun in the oven?” Tucker asked as he reappeared with three bottles of beer and handed two over.

“According to Dolly Watson at the Gerald funeral this afternoon,” Drew supplied, “Suzanne St. Michelle.”

Arlo nodded. “I heard it from Shirley at the bakery.”

Grady stared at Drew and Arlo as his brain tried to process the most preposterous gossip he’d ever heard. And that was saying something for Credence. There was no way—despite the lack of condom, which had been monumentally stupid given they’d moved to her bedroom to get one, for fuck’s sake—Suzanne could be pregnant now.

Correction. Grady’s blood pressure spiked again. No way she could know she was pregnant now, because ultimately, he supposed, she could be pregnant. If she wasn’t using some other kind of contraception.

Grady’s heart pounded. Oh. Holy. Jesus.

He came back to the conversation, which somehow had moved to prenatal vitamins. “Folic acid,” Drew was saying. “It’s important she get started on that ASAP.”

Arlo snorted. “Dude, you sell fancy coffins for a living. What you’d know about pregnancy vitamins could be written on the back of a postage stamp.”

“I can read, dickwad.” Drew shot Arlo a withering look. “And please, we in the terminal-care industry prefer the term eternity suites.”

Which cracked up Arlo and Tucker.

Grady barely registered the laughter and banter going on among the three guys who had not only crashed his peace and quiet but blown it to smithereens. His gaze fell on his phone, and suddenly the presence of those text messages took on an urgency they hadn’t before. He picked it up, his hands shaking, his pulse tripping.

Tapping on Suzanne’s message, he mentally braced himself as it opened.

God I’m so terribly, terribly sorry, Grady. Wish I didn’t have to give you a heads-up but here goes… There may or may not be a rumor going around Credence about me being preggers, so I wanted to forewarn you. I DID NOT start it and there’s ZERO chance of it being true because I have a contraceptive implant, but I think it’s out there and I think your aunt (who is so so so lovely btw) thinks it’s true even though I DENIED it most vehemently. I promise I did.