Page 76 of The Broken Keys

And I’m about to shit all over it.

He won’t understand. To him, this will be a betrayal. It’ll look like I chose Jax over him, like everything we’ve been rebuilding was a lie.

It’s not a lie. I want Callum in my life, but how?

He doesn’t know about my relationship with Jax. Nobody knows about the two-plus years I spent falling in love with a man who taught me things about myself I never knew. Callum only knows that I disappeared to Paris and came back different.

Oh, I wish I could turn back time.

Erase the hurt, rewrite the rhyme.

Vixen, forget Paris. Please, forget Paris.

I suck in a ragged cry and wipe the tears off my cheeks. I can barely make out the road and the cars. My vision blurs as I tighten my grip on the steering wheel.

Callum continues to sing about wanting me to forget mytime in a city where I found myself and found the man I’m in love with. My time there was meant to be.

Just as Jax has always said, we’re tied together by fate. This baby is proof of that. I can only hope and pray that he’ll want this as much as I do. But what if he doesn’t?

Callum’s voice continues to haunt me as I drive in a daze. The Malibu place is only minutes away.

The song plays on. I should change the station. I should turn it off. But my hand stays frozen on the steering wheel, knuckles white, and tears blurring the road ahead.

I try to bat the rivers of waves off my face to clear my vision. It doesn’t help.

I try to focus on the road and on the car in front of me. Anything except the impossible conversation waiting for me at the end of this drive.

I’m pregnant and the baby is yours.

That’s all it’ll take to put everything on a different path. My chest tightens.

What if Jax doesn’t want this? What if he looks at me with that cold business expression and tells me this complicates things too much? What if he offers me money to make it go away?

No. Jax wouldn’t do that. He’s not that kind of man.

But what if the man I think I know isn’t real? What if the time we spent together was just an arrangement that got out of hand? What if I was fooling myself into thinking it meant more than it did?

That’s impossible because Jax told me he loved me yesterday. Even though he told me to move on with Callum, Jax wants to talk to me. Maybe he’s changed his mind, and he wants to work out this terrible situation.

My life is spinning. I take a deep breath, trying to calm the panic rising in me.

The song is on the last portion of the lyrics.

Now I walk through shadows bare, haunted by your whispered air.

In the silence, love remains, a bittersweet and aching pain.

Though the world keeps spinning fast, I hold on to what we had.

In every dream that fades away, I still cherish you this very day.

Come back, vixen. Forget Paris. Please forget Paris.

Callum’s voice is raw with emotion as he sings about loss, regret, and a love he won’t let go. I’m going to break his heart all over again, and it’s too much for me to bear.

A stoplight ahead turns yellow. I press the brake, coming to a stop as it shifts to red. Two cars idle in front of me.

I close my eyes for just a moment, letting the music wash over me. I let myself get used to the weight of what I’m about to do.