Page 308 of Carved in the Shadows

But I knew it was important to Trevan that my brother accept his intentions for me. I also knew there was some piece of him that believed my brother would punish him.

End him.

I couldn’t imagine…

“Are you sure I can’t go with you? I could⁠—”

He cut me off with the firm shake of his head. “No. It has to come from me. I’m not going to tell him about the pregnancy. You or the two of us can do that later. When you’re ready. But I need to be the one confessing the line that I crossed. The truth that it’s you and me.”

My hair swished against his chest as I gave him a reluctant nod. “Okay. I just hate this.”

“No more living in the dark, baby. No more hiding. Gonna stand for you, no matter the consequences.”

“And if you’re kicked out? Exiled?”

“Then I take you with me.” There was a slight hint of playfulness wound with that.

“I have faith that it won’t come to that.”

“I need to go,” he whispered, and I didn’t miss that he didn’t respond directly to my statement.

I gave him a reassuring smile before his long stride carried him around the counter.

I couldn’t pry my eyes off his determined, fiery frame as he threw himself out into the bright spray of sunlight.

My emotions were a tangle of joy and worry.

I watched him swing onto his bike, and the sound of it turning over convulsed through me like its own promise.

Then I stilled when I felt the jumbled energy radiating from across the store. Tumult and unrest and pain.

Uncertain, I looked that way.

Penny stood at the opening of the counter. Grief was inscribed like living letters on her face.

Twisting and morphing words that told a destitute story of loss and misery.

Scraps of it had been apparent almost every time I looked at her. Held beneath a sturdy surface where she attempted to keep herself floating over the sorrow that so clearly fought to drag her under.