Lena began backing away down the hall.
She’d been good lately, taking her meds, but I could sense that she was feeling hunted. Throw in her PTSD and this wasn’t going to end well.
My gaze dropped and I watched her without making eye contact as she scrambled toward the elevator, her hand fumbling for the button.
“How could you keep that from me?” Aoife shrieked, the demand punctuated by the elevator doors whirring open. “Why would you befriend me?”
Only when Lena was standing inside it did she answer, and it was simple and not the right thing to say at all, “Because I had to atone.”
With Jake wailing, I darted over to his side to pick him up.
Comforting him, I watched as Aoife grabbed an ornament from a console table and hurled it at the elevator.
But the doors were closing.
I caught Lena’s eye, our gazes clashed and held for the first time, and I saw the muted apology in hers before she was cut off from me.
The vase exploded against the doors a fraction of a second later, and Aoife let out a wail as she hurried over to it and banged her fists against the wall.
“Atonement?” she screeched. “Atonement?”
“Sweetheart, stop it. Jake. The baby—”
That wasn’t the right thing to say either.
I watched as she turned to the nearest console table, one that was loaded with photo frames, and swept her hands across it.
As the frames went flying and they crashed to the ground, I watched on, well aware that my borrowed time was ticking away.
I wasn’t a man who watched on while his wife suffered.
But she had a right to grieve.
She had a right to express her anger.
She was also barefoot.
There was glass everywhere.
Every protective bone in my motherfucking body couldn’t let this carry on.
I knew she’d escalate.
I’d been there myself.
She wanted the world to burn, and I had to help her control the inferno.
I placed Jake back in his stroller, strapping him in quickly, then I rushed over to her side and picked her up before she could throw the ornaments off another table.
I didn’t know if her feet were bleeding from crunching on the glass, but I knew that was about two minutes away from happening.
As I picked her up, she screamed and her feet kicked out as she tried to free herself from my hold.
“Aoife,” I ground into her ear. “You need to stop this.”
“You bastard! I fucking hate you—”
The words sliced into me like she was armed with a knife.
I growled, “You can hate me all you want, but you will not harm yourself.”
I backed away from the mess she’d made, and I strode us past a still sobbing Jake and into the living room.
The poor kid needed our attention but Aoife was kicking and screaming, trying to get out of my hold, and she needed all my focus.
She managed to clip my knee, and I almost went down, and that was when I lost my shit.
I didn’t head for the sofa anymore, I went to the nearest wall. Twisting us around, I shoved her against it, pinning her in place as I snagged her hands, raised her arms, and pressed them to the wall.
Aoife bucked and battled but she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
As she screamed and kicked, I let the battle rage on as I bit off, “You hate me, but I fucking love you. I love you more than anything. You’re my wife, but you’re my fucking life, Aoife. You mean everything to me. I will not let you hurt yourself. I will always protect you—”
“You’re a LIAR!” she shrieked. “You protected her. You chose her.”
She was right. To an extent. “I didn’t,” I snarled. “I didn’t choose her—”
“You did. You fucking did. You let me love her—”
I had. There was no arguing with that. “I’m so goddamn sorry, sweetheart.”
“Sorry isn’t enough,” she sobbed.
“It isn’t, I know it, but I swear to you I didn’t choose Lena.”
“You’re a liar!” she screamed again, the words armed with claws that made me bleed.
“I didn’t!” I hissed. “I chose me, Aoife. I chose me.”
I had no idea why but that stopped her shrieks, that stopped her from bucking against me.
Around us, the air seethed. As if our tempers made heat swell and bubble.
She grew still.
Hellishly still.
I tried not to savor these last moments of closeness, pretty damn sure this was it—the last time she’d let me hold her.
“Let me out,” she breathed.
She sounded calmer. I was still unsure, however, if that was the worst thing to say or not. It appeared to have gotten through to her enough that it calmed her down.
“You won’t keep doing shit that’ll end up with you hurting yourself?”
“I won’t,” she bit off testily.
I moved a couple inches away so that she could turn around. I half expected her to try to knee me in the balls, but she didn’t. She stared up at me with tear-drenched eyes that were red and weepy.
Unable to stop myself, I pressed into her, and I pushed my forehead against hers.
“I wanted my family, Aoife, and I didn’t have faith. I-I didn’t… I didn’t choose her. I chose them. Why would you have wanted anything to do with them after this?” I shook my head. “I was selfish and so fucking wrong, and I’m so goddamn sorry. You’re my life, Aoife, my life. My world—”
She was silent for so long that I felt sure I’d lost her anyway, then she rasped, “I want to see him.”
I didn’t expect her to say that, so it took me a second to reply, “I don’t know if you could handle it, Aoife. We have to think of the baby—”
Her hands went to my shoulders, and she tried to shove me back and away. It didn’t work, but she tried again anyway. In this, however, I would always be her safe haven in the storm.
She might not think she was safe with me, but she always would be.
“I can handle anything this fucking world throws at me, Finn. I’m still standing, aren’t I? My husband betrayed me, the love of my life lied to me, and I haven’t crumbled to dust, have I?
“I. Want. To. See. Him,” she ended with a snarl. “You can help me or not but I swear, nothing will stop me from seeing him. Not you, not anyone.”
This wasn’t a hill I was willing to die on.
“I’ll ask Aela to come babysit.”
Whether Aoife would regret this later on was tomorrow’s problem.
Twenty-Seven
Aoife
I shrugged away from Finn’s grasp as he tried to clasp our hands together when we approached the warehouse two hours later.
It was dark out, cold too, but I didn’t notice. He’d insisted I wear a coat, had insisted on gloves and a scarf for the baby.
The baby that probably wouldn’t survive to term.
I complied because whatever he was, Finn was a good father.
I had to believe that, believe in that because otherwise I’d…
Well, I didn’t know what.
I felt like I could keep on hitting him. Could keep on screaming at him. But all that would do is make me need to ice my knuckles again and my head was already pounding from all the crying.