Breeder - Redneck

I looked at the mask I’d dropped on the vanity and my pulse raced. If I walked out there without that now it would change the whole game. I could find my ass in jail for all the things I’d done. But as a man who was coming back to his senses, I didn’t have a choice.

I walked into the room to find her sitting at the edge of the bed with her face in her hands. From the way her shoulders shook, I knew she was crying. I was across the room in a few steps. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.” She stopped crying long enough to look at me and then flew over the bed to the other side.

She looked around the room wildly as if looking for something and my heart fell. She hated me. “Who are you?” She looked beyond me as if expecting someone else to walk into the room. Shit, she’d never seen me without the mask.

I pulled the shit off over my head and her eyes flew to my tats. She calmed and kneed her way back across the bed to sit where I’d found her. She started crying harder now and I wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know if I should touch her. When she looked up at me with such pain in her eyes, I knew I had to.

Sitting on the bed next to her, I wrapped my arms around her, expecting her to rebuff me. Instead she laid her head on my chest and bawled. I eased back on the bed bringing her with me and held her close as her body shook with her tears.

She was doing what I had not been able to, not since I stood over the tiny coffin that held my son. I stared up at the ceiling as she cried it out. It felt like an hour had gone by when she sniffed and wiped her face.

“Do you want to talk?” My voice sounded hoarse to my ears and I cleared my throat. She had a lot of questions, mostly about how sure I was that everything in the file was true. “It’s true, my wife all but named him before she died. She remembered the car and I found it on surveillance video just a few miles from where they were killed.”

Her hand went to her stomach and I felt cold seep into my bones. “That’s why.”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“What?” I held my breath not believing what I’d just heard. She fought her way out of my arms and sat up beside me.

Her face was ravaged with tears, her eyes swollen her nose red. I reached up and caught an escaping tear as it rolled down her cheek. “I’m sorry that he did that to you.” Of all the things I’d expected her to say that wasn’t it. It only made me feel even worse.

“What are we going to do now?” That was the question wasn’t it?

“I’ll take you home tomorrow.” It almost burnt a hole in my tongue to say the words out loud. She was the only thing I’d been close to since I lost my family. Even when she was my enemy she was the only human contact I’d had in almost two years.

She’s so young…

“What about the baby?” She looked at me out the side of her eye and I felt bile rise in my throat. Did she want to get rid of it? What the fuck? How could I have fucked up so royally? “The choice is yours.” I knew it was a lie even as I said it. I would do everything in my power to keep my child alive.

“We have to deal with dad first unless I want to go into hiding for the rest of my life.” I looked at her sharply, not believing what I heard. “What are you saying Katya?” I sat up next to her and watched her carefully. If she was playing me I’d know.

“I’m saying that I don’t like what you did to me, but I understand why you felt like you had to. I’m still mad at you and it’s going to take some time for me to forgive you for what you did, it wasn’t fair to me I had nothing to do with what he did. But if there’s any part of the guy I met online in there, then you can’t be all bad. I think I’d like to meet him.”

I got what she was saying, but it took a minute for her words to ring true. There’s no way I could be that lucky. No way that after all the curve balls life had thrown my way that I could walk away from this unscathed. But she seemed so sincere. I had no choice but to believe her.