AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He could’ve—” I run a hand down my neck. Defending myself while my second is unconscious in a hospital bed is a bad look, even for me. “Does he know you’re having a boy?”
“Of course he knows. He was at every single one of my appointments.”
I hear what she doesn’t say:Unlike another father in this room.
I collapse into the seat on the opposite side of Dominik’s bed. “He never mentioned that, either.”
“Maybe he didn’t think he could.” She’s got a white-knuckled hold on Dom’s hand. That grip could wake a corpse from its grave—but Dominik doesn’t so much as stir. “It’s not like you leave a lot of room for anyone else in your world.”
I tilt my head to regard her carefully. “You still don’t like me, do you?”
Her eyes drift to me, the anger in them softening. “That was true—up until recently. My opinion of you changed when Laila came into the picture. She made you better… softer.”
“Do you know what that will do to you in this world, Kira? Beingsoft—” My lips curl around the word. “—will send you and the people around you to an early grave.”
Kira looks down at Dominik like she can’t bear to look at me another second. Silence descends, broken only by the regular blips of the heart rate monitor.
Beep.
Stillness.
Beep.
Silence.
Beep.
The unforgivable gap of things that cannot be said aloud.
“If Dominik was awake,” she murmurs, “he’d tell me to stop being so angry. He’d tell me that this is the life he signed up for. And that, by marrying him, I signed up for it, too.” She closes her eyes. “But he’s not awake. And he can’t tell me that. So I just?—”
“Blame me if you want,” I tell her. “I deserve it.”
She shakes her head and laces her fingers across her belly like she’s trying to shield her child from me.
“I’ll cover all the medical expenses,” I tell her robotically. “You won’t have to worry about anything.”
I can’t stay here any longer. I push myself to my feet, even though every bone in my body is begging me to sit the fuck back down. Kira says nothing as I rise, as I start to leave. It’s only when my fingers close around the doorknob that she speaks.
“Where’s Laila? I thought she’d want to be here. She and Dominik are close.”
My hands ball into fists. “She’s… busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
Getting on a plane.
Getting the fuck away from me.
Before my sins do to her what they did to my best friend.
“I have work to do, Kira. The men who attacked Dominik are still out there. I need to make them pay.”
I can tell she knows I’m changing the subject, but she doesn’t argue. She just turns away, going back to holding Dominik’s hand. “Send my love to Laila, then.”
I don’t respond, mostly because I don’t want to lie to her any more than I already have.
For Laila’s sake, I’m not going to send her anything.
