The words rattled around my ears as if she were saying them on repeat, only she wasn’t.
She wasn’t saying anything. I wasn’t either.
We’d left the ballroom, were heading to the suite I’d reserved for us, and her hand was tucked in mine, our fingers latched together as we stood in the elevator.
Neither of us spoke with a couple chatting softly behind us, but our reflections were as discordant as the buzz in my brain.
She’s pregnant.
That was all I could think.
Did she look pregnant?
Though she’d been curvier than I remembered back before I’d left for New Mexico, Rachel was perennially slender. Still, there was a soft roundness to her face, and she had some color in her cheeks that I knew didn’t come from makeup. There was a pinched edge to her mouth, as if she were pursing her lips out of nervousness, but aside from that, her expression was blank.
Wearing a gown that was sin itself, that clung to her curves while shielding her belly from the world, I knew I should be thinking about dragging that skirt up and finding a way to get into her panties.
Instead, all I could think of was seeing and doing things I’d been denied with Wynter.
My thoughts were broken off when the doors opened and, glancing at the illuminated screen overhead, I knew this was our floor.
The soft carpet cushioned our footsteps as I led us to the suite where I’d gotten changed, and only when I’d closed the door behind us and guided her inside did I break the silence I’d allowed to fall between us.
“Did you not tell me sooner because you were thinking of having an abortion?”
Her head whipped around to the side at that, and the shock in her expression appeased me some.
“No!” she bit off.
Her anger was all the answer I needed.
She wasn’t lying.
Before she could defend herself, I murmured, “My mom once told me something. She said that if we were on a ship, and it had capsized—”
“What the hell does this have to do with anything? We’re not on a goddamn ship—”
I steamrolled over her interruption like she hadn’t said a word. “And she could only save my dad or me, she said she’d save me. Every time. My dad laughed at that anecdote because he said, and I quote, ‘Sorry, son, but we’re all going down because I won’t choose.’”
She blinked, and the color in her cheeks faded as she understood what I was saying.
“I won’t make you choose again,” she vowed, her voice shaky.
“You can’t promise that,” I retorted, “and I don’t expect you to. I’m just making a point.
“I know you don’t want kids, Rach, but I can’t let you—” I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck. “I won’t give this kid up. Not again. I did it last time because I knew having Wynter around would lead you to doing something insane, and it wasn’t worth the risk—”
“You say that like I was a danger to her!” she sniped.
I hitched a shoulder nonchalantly, when nothing about this conversation was that. “Your doctor told me you could be a danger to her.”
Her mouth rounded. “I’d never have hurt her!”
“I didn’t know that at the time, and I wasn’t willing to take a chance on that. Not on you hurting her or yourself and then either ending up in a coffin or locked up for thirty years for killing our child.
“You were different…” I frowned, tried to verbalize how she’d been back then, but I didn’t think she’d believe me. “You were like a completely different woman, Rachel. Understandably, but I couldn’t predict what you were going to do so I took her out of the equation. I can’t do that again.”
“I’m not asking you to,” she whispered, her grief in her eyes. “You think I could do that again? I’m not a monster, Rex. Jesus—”
“I’m not saying that you are, Rachel. Honey, I understand what happened before. You’d gone through hell. Had endured things that no woman should have to experience. I was on your side. I’m on your side now. But I can’t just be Rex here. The guy who wants to be your man—”
“You are my man,” she whispered miserably.
“I’m the father of your kids, Rachel. That’s what I have to be here, now. Do you get that?”
She swallowed. “I love you for that.”
I shook my head but rasped, “I want to see.”
Biting her lip, she nodded, dropped her clutch to the bed, and slowly pulled on a couple of buttons that I hadn’t even noticed. Suddenly, the side of her dress was folding inward and a seam had appeared. She stepped out of it, revealing a slip that got my dick harder than that sexy dress had.
Without the clever tucks, the silken fabric clung to every curve and I could see the bump like I hadn’t before.
Unable to stop myself, needing to see even more than that, to see her body ripening with the curves that came from the life we’d made together, I strode forward.
At that moment, the past fell away; the present faded into nothing because I was faced with the future.
A future I wanted so fucking badly I could almost taste it.
I wanted her.
I wanted my ring on her finger.
I wanted my brand on her.
I wanted to be the father of her kids.
I wanted Wynter at college in the city, this one growing up like a hellion who made me lose all my damn hair by fifty because he ran us ragged.
I wanted more.
I wanted fucking everything with her.
Only her.
My hands slipped around the solid bump of her stomach, and I slowly started to raise the hem of the négligée.
My eyes flickered to hers, waiting for her to protest, but she didn’t.
She stared at me, her bottom lip wobbling with trepidation, but before I could feel our kid, my cell buzzed, vibrating against my chest from where I’d stored it in the inside pocket of my jacket.
I jolted in surprise but ignored it.
Only, the goddamn thing wouldn’t stop ringing.
And that wasn’t all.
A soft chirp sounded from her clutch. It repeated itself a couple times.
We stared at each other, reality intruding into our private bubble, and I almost hurled something at the fucking wall when I saw that shield of ice overtake her expression.
Goddammit to hell.
But that chirp of an incoming message from what I recognized was her personal cell was drowned out by her business phone ringing.
Three notifications—all at once.
“Fuck, the clubhouse better not have been bombed again,” I growled as I reached down and snagged her clutch then handed it to her.
As she fiddled with the clasp, I grabbed my phone, watching as she opened the message on her personal cell first.
As a picture flashed up on the screen, my brow furrowed.
A gift bag.
Pink and black balloons tied to the handle.
Sucks to be you printed on the side.
Dead To Me had a new client.
“Who sent you that photo?”
Her frown was confused, and it told me she didn’t understand what she was looking at. “Hunter. My old college roommate.”
The guy who’d murdered her rapist.
The guy who acted like a Golden fucking Retriever but was as lethal as an abused pitbull.