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My jaw ticks. "I wouldn't blame you for that."
She sucks her lips between her teeth, her eyes glittering dangerously. "Then what's that look in your eyes? I haven't been actively working to tie you down. Why the hell do you do this at the slightest sign of trouble?"
"Do what?"
"Self-sabotage." She walks away to the closet herself, where she finds something to wear. I watch as she dresses, no comeback in my head, and no words on my lips.
Is that what I'm doing? I don't believe so, but I'm uncertain how to feel with another baby on the way.
I stretch out an olive branch. "I'll get you a pregnancy test."
She throws me a long, angry look, the curve of her hips tucked away securely in the denim she's zipping up at her waist. I exhale a rush of stiff air.
It feels a hell of a lot better to be talking to her clothed. My cock doesn't seem to recognize the fact that we're having a fucking argument.
She finds a shirt and slips her hands through the sky-blue cotton of it. "I'm sure I'm capable enough to do that for myself."
"I want to do it for you."
She chuckles softly, but there's no humor in the hard words that slip from her lips. "Will you need to get me a DNA test when it turns out positive?"
I prowl towards her, her eyes widening the closer I get, her chest heaving with anger, mine with fear. "I know you haven't been with anyone else but me, Mel. There will be no need for that."
She exhales and the tears pooling in her eyes come spilling down her cheeks. My pulse spikes. I don't want to be the cause of her pain. I'm not worthy of it. "You hate me, don't you?"
I pull her into my arms. "I could never hate you, Melissa."
She glances at me and then away. "But this isn't what you want."
It isn't what I don't want either. Another baby means someone else to disappoint, to protect. Another human that I could hurt.
"I don't know Melissa. Can we take this a moment at a time? I'll get you the test kit from the store this evening."
I let her go, already feeling her loose and the chasm growing between us. It doesn't matter much if she'd gotten pregnant deliberately. It won't matter because we're to be married anyway.
But that budding fear that had grown back in the room becomes a tree as the day grows into the afternoon. My attention slides. I'm all over the place, unable to focus on anything for more than a few minutes at a time.
I end my meeting with my men, and Alec finds me at his club, nursing a drink a little bit past noon. He's probably been informed of my presence by one of his men.
He slides into the private booth beside me and pours himself a drink from the bottle. He swallows a loud gulp, winces, and drops the glass with a thud to the table. "You're drinking in the middle of the day."
I shrug. Maybe the drink will dull the spiral of my thoughts. I'd tried work, but it hadn't worked out much.
I'd even spent an hour at the gym, punching at the bag, hitting my fear for her into the bag, and the murky swirl of thoughts had somehow become worse. "So are you, Alec. What do you want?"
"Do you plan on finishing the entire bottle?"
"I'll pay for it. You don't need to worry about it."
He smiles and pours himself another drink, but his eyes are sharp. He shifts closer. "What's wrong?"
The music from the club pounds up at me, drifting through one ear and out the other. The sounds offer no distractions. "Why do you think something's wrong?"
He takes another drink from his glass. "Maybe because you're here in the middle of the day, gulping down my expensive whiskey like water."
He can be trusted. He's, after all, my brother. And I wonder how he'll feel about this. Maybe I'll know how to feel myself. "Mel's pregnant."
I don't tell him there's a slim possibility that it is, in fact, a stomach bug, or that she hadn't picked my calls when I'd called this afternoon, or that the thought that she might not be pregnant makes disappointment seep into my guts.
