“I told them,” she confesses. “I only wanted to tell Con but Ledge was home too. I didn’t know that he was going to be there. And Con, he wants me to get an a-abortion and —”
“Doesn’t. Matter,” I snap out again.
Abortion.
My body recoils at the word and I almost fall down on my knees. The only reason I manage to stay upright is because I’ve got her in my arms and I’ll be fucking damned if I’m dropping her.
Fucking abortion.
I want to do something drastic, fuck up this world because of how much I hate that word, but it’s not my decision to make, is it? It’s not my motherfucking decision.
I can feel her blinking up at me, all drowsy. “Where are you taking me?”
“To my car.”
“The one I stole?”
“Yes. The one you stole.”
“How did you get it back to how it was before?”
“What?”
“The car,” she explains. “It feels like before.”
“I worked on it all summer. Back then.”
“All summer?”
“Yeah.”
She hums. “I didn’t mean to do it. To steal your car.”
I squeeze her again. “You’ve already said that.”
“Why were you so mean to me? You said all those things that night. I can never forget them.”
“Because I wanted you to hate me,” I say against the tightness in my throat.
“Why?”
“Because I broke my promise to you.”
She has an adorable frown on her forehead. “Oh. Well, I did. I do. Hate you. And that’s why I’d never tell you.”
“Never tell me what?”
“That you’re a genius.”
“A genius.”
She hums again. “Yeah. A car genius. And a soccer genius. I hate how good you are with things.” She gasps then. “Maybe you should do it for a living. Build cars. And get out of your awful job.”
“Just go to sleep.”
She doesn’t. She rubs her cheek against my neck, making her geranium and sugar scent explode over my senses. “I’m going to miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Spinning on my toes.”
Not yet, I tell myself, I can’t fall on my ass while I have her in my arms.
I squeeze her featherlight body again – I can’t seem to stop – almost plaster her to me, and somehow she likes that.
She likes my brutal grip and sighs happily, her eyes closed. But she won’t stop talking. She won’t stop making my body hurt with her words. “But it’s okay. I don’t care about ballet anymore. I don’t even care about Juilliard. I care about other things now. Her…”
“Go. To sleep,” I growl.
And she does.
Fucking finally.
When I deposit her in the car and buckle her in, my eyes drop down to her flat stomach. I stare at it for a few beats, feeling my heart thunder in my chest.
Before lifting my eyes up to her peacefully sleeping face.
I promised her the other day at the bar that I’ll never make a promise to her that I won’t keep. And so I repeat the promise I’d made a week ago — as soon as I saw her touch her stomach — now.
I promise that I’m done hurting her.
I’m done ruining her.
From now on, along with protecting her from the rest of the world, from my fucking father and his evil clutches, I’ll protect her from me.
I’ll protect them both.
This isn’t my home.
I know this as soon as I open my eyes and take in the space around me.
Grayish-white walls, hardwood floors. A giant window taking up the entire wall to my left.
Even the height of the bed, when I climb out of it, is wrong. It’s too high, the mattress too thick and fluffy.
But the thing that gets my heart going the most is the scent.
It’s a scent I know.
It’s a scent that’s deeply and achingly familiar to me, but there’s also something different about it. Something so soothing that my stomach that roils in the morning is strangely calm.
I’m not sure what this soothing aroma is but I’m thankful for it.
I’m thankful and I’m frantic as I leave the room, dash out of it really, my bare feet slapping on the hardwood floor.
I have no idea what this place is or where I’m going as I almost run down the hallway that’s flanked with white doors, but I know who it might belong to.
I know who brought me here.
Him.
He did, didn’t he?
Instead of taking me back home, he brought me to this strange place that for some reason doesn’t feel as strange as it should.
It’s his scent, I think, and all the white.
Last night I wasn’t thinking clearly.
I was hurt and sad and afraid. It was like someone was sitting on my chest, suffocating me. So I snuck out of the house to get some fresh air.
I wasn’t expecting to walk for so long or to end up at Blue Madonna. I wasn’t expecting to see him there either. I wasn’t expecting to be brought here.
When I come out of the hallway into the living space filled with soft blue-colored couches and cozy rugs and see him sitting at the marble kitchen counter, bent over something, I don’t expect to feel a painful twisting in my heart.