I frown at his reverent whisper. “What?”
“Her name.”
“Her name?”
“Yeah,” he whispers again, his fingers glued to my belly. “Like the circle of light on an angel. Or a fairy.”
A rush goes through my chest. A big huge rush of warmth.
Halo.
My baby girl. Our baby girl.
“It’s perfect,” I whisper back, my eyes stinging again but this time with happy tears.
“Halo Jackson.”
“Did you think of it just now?”
“No.” He shakes his head slowly. “I’ve always known.”
“You have?”
“Yeah.”
I’ve been proposing name after name that he kept rejecting. And we’ve had countless arguments about it. Well, I have argued. He’s simply looked at me with amused eyes and twitching lips.
And now I know why.
Because he always had a name.
He always knew she was Halo.
I frown. “Well, why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Because it was more fun to watch you get all excited about stupid names before I shot them down.”
And then I have to ask him again, “Why do you hide the things that might make someone like you?”
That might make me like you…
His eyes move back and forth between mine, his fingers on my belly flex and, swallowing, he rasps, “Because I don’t want to be liked.”
Not by you…
I hear his unspoken words, and the heart that was already twisting in my chest squeezes even more. So much so that I feel like all my vessels and chambers will burst and explode and he’ll kill me with everything that I feel for him.
Despite my better judgement. Despite history teaching me.
Despite him.
“Listen, Fae, about earlier —”
I don’t let him talk though. I grab his wrist and take his hand off my belly. When I stand up, I take him with me and drag him to the bathroom. He goes without a word.
I guess he knows what I’m going to do.
He knows that I’m going to clean and bandage his cuts.
He hits the lights in the bathroom and I let go of his hand to get all the stuff together. When it’s all out on the counter, I grab his bleeding hand again.
I keep my eyes on the task but I know he’s watching me.
“Where’s your key?” I ask.
“Threw it away.”
“Why?”
“So I don’t get to you. When I want to. So you’re safe from me.”
My heart twists again and I bite my lip at how much it must sting him when I run the cotton swab over his scrapes, but he doesn’t move a muscle.
“Did you punch the door?” I ask then.
“No.”
“Then?”
“Found a rock. Busted the glass with it.”
I shake my head, still looking at his hand as I wrap a bandage around it. “I was mad at you. Am mad at you.”
“I know.”
“But I was fine. She — Halo — was fine.”
“It didn’t look like that from where I was standing.”
I sigh sharply, finishing up. “What you said to me was rude. It was uncalled for and it was mean.”
“That’s why I said it.”
I look up then. “What?”
His eyes are all dark and intense. “Because I wanted you to understand something.”
“And what is that?”
He comes closer to me, as if now that I’ve gotten my way and I’ve cleaned his wounds, it’s his turn now. To talk. To do things. To grab me.
Which he does.
He grabs my thickening waist with one hand and my face with the other. He even pulls me to him as if he doesn’t want a single thing separating us.
Especially after how I kept us apart by barring the door on him.
So he eliminates every little thing that stands between him and me, presses my short body to his tall one, and I hate that my hands clutch his shirt at the waist.
I hate that as soon as our bodies touch, my achy, tender breasts to his ribs and my swollen belly to his pelvis, my lips part on a trembling, relieved breath.
He dips that body over me then, and cranes my neck up as he growls, “First things first, you’re pregnant with my baby. You’re pregnant. And you need to understand that if I want to get to you, you’re going to let me. It doesn’t matter that you’re angry at me or I’ve been an asshole to you. You are going to let me. Because if something happens to you, Fae, if something happens to her, Halo, I don’t even know what I’m going to do. So if you ever lock your door or bar the windows or whatever the fuck you want to do to keep me out, remember that I’ll break it all down. I will destroy every single thing you put in my way in order to get to you. Do you understand that? Tell me you understand that.”
I do.
I do understand that.
He told me this once when I was sixteen, that he’d climb every tower, bust through every window to get to me. And today he did.
So I get that and I nod. “Yes.”
“You fucking scared me.” His fingers on my body are urgent and pulling. “You scared me.”
I fist his shirt and stretch my neck even more. “But you were so…”
He presses his forehead to mine, his eyes flashing. “I know. I know I was cruel. What I said was uncalled for, but you need to remember something. You need to remember that I’m not made for love. I don’t do love. Some people can. Some people can fall in love, have a family, live in a big fucking house decorated with flowers and stuff. Some people stay together for the rest of their lives. And when one of them dies, the other one dies too. Or lives while praying for death. I’m not one of them. I didn’t grow up like that. I didn’t… I never saw stuff like that, you understand? All I’ve known is how to fight, how to go to war, how to win wars.
“And you won’t get that because you’ve always had it. Love. You’ve always had brothers who loved you, who cared for you, who protected you. And you bake fucking cupcakes and you knit and you dance like a fairy. You are a fairy. But I’ve always been alone. I don’t have friends. Except for a sixty-year-old man who sucks at giving advice. I don’t have a family to speak of. I’ve got a shitty father and a mother who doesn’t care. I’ve got Pest but she’s more dependent on me than anything. I don’t expect you to understand any of this though. But I want you to understand this: I want you to understand that you can’t fall in love with me. Not again. You can’t fucking fall, Fae. You can’t. You can’t get your feelings mixed up again if I fuck you, you got that?”
“What?”
“I’ve got a sister who’s pretty fucking emotional. And you’re that too. Girls can be emotional about this stuff. But I don’t want you to be, okay? I don’t want you to get involved emotionally if we have sex. Because I’m only going to hurt you. And I’ve done that before and it fucking sucked. It sucked. It tore me apart for two years and I pretended that it didn’t. But it did. And even though it might destroy me to hurt you again, I will. You saw what I did just now, didn’t you? So I know that I will. Because that’s all I know.”