AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Reese, I—I'm sorry?—"
"Baby." He pulls away to look down at me. The rims of his eyes are red, but he holds back whatever's threatening to spill from them. "Babe, none of this shit is shit you need to apologize for. Fuck, Olivia—none of this would have happened if it weren't for me. I'm the one to blame here, not you. You could have died." He shakes his head. "I was so fucking stupid, believing that she'd let you go. I'm a walking goddamn time bomb in everyone's life and—" He chokes up, his eyes falling to my empty stomach.
Slow, he presses his palm there delicately. An anguished exhale leaves his body.
"And he's gone. He's gone because of me."
For the first time, I hear Reese breaking. Brick by brick, the foundation of his being comes crumbling down. He is a wreck.
I touch his face. He's never known this pain before like I have. I would give anything for him to have never felt this agony. But here we are. Together in this hell.
"He's gone because of Holly," I tell him. "And she's going to pay for what she did."
"She already has." His eyes meet mine briefly. "She's dead."
My jaw drops. I’ve thought it so many times since waking up that I don’t know why it comes as a shock, but it does. Dead? Are you sure?
"It's so fuckin' weird, you know?" he continues with a laugh. "She was the mother of one of my children. And I don't feel shit? That's fucked up, isn't it?"
The news should shock. But what comes instead is relief. She's never going to cause us trouble again. She's not allowed to exist in this world when our son wasn't allowed, either.
There are more questions that still need to be answered. Things that will probably follow us if what I think happened is actually what happened. But for now, my focus has to be Reese.
I make him look at me, our eyes meeting so there's no room for misinterpretation, no place for doubt between us. "Reese… she wasn't the mother of your child. She never was."
Confusion ripples across his face. "What?"
"When she took me, she showed me that letter you wrote. And I didn't believe her. I never believed that you would do something like that, that you’d mean all those things that you said. It pissed her off and she spilled her entire endgame. Violet was never hers. Violet was her twin sister’s. Hellen. She… she died in a car crash. You two did sleep together, obviously. But it was just a one-night stand with a girl who never wanted to intrude on your life."
He's dumbfounded. Confused. I don't blame him. "But… she… I-I still made this happen. It doesn't matter. I?—"
"She did this. Not you. You loved our baby. You would have… you would have been the perfect father for him, Reese. Never doubt that you were the best thing to happen to our little boy."
The doubt still clouds his eyes. "Olivia?—"
A soft gurgling sound comes from the direction of the hospital door. I hadn't noticed that it'd opened, but when I look over, my heart seizes.
Grams is there…
… with Violet in her arms.
"Sorry," Grams apologizes softly. "She's restless. She wants her papa and her mama a little more than her Grams, I'm afraid."
Violet's big, beautiful green eyes stare back at me. So much like her father's. So much like how I pictured her little brother.
I've missed her so much, and yet when I see her and her cherub face, those green eyes… I feel haunted. I can't control the flow of tears, the sobs. As Violet reaches out to me, her chubby fingers wiggling wanting me to hold her, I shake my head, sobbing into my hands.
"I… I can't."
Grams keeps Violet in her hold, unsure of what to do. Reese stands up, wordless. I hear the pitched click of the call button for the nurses' station. Then his soft voice.
"I'll take her."
I look up from my hands as he scoops Violet from Grams's hold. He bounces the baby in his arms. How I desperately wish I had the bandwidth to do that myself.
My heart rate monitor is angry now. Wailing, warning. A new nurse comes in and beelines to my side. "Miss, we need you to calm down. You're going to cause yourself more harm if you don't."
"H-How am I supposed t-to calm d-down?!" I sob desperately. "H-How are you s-supposed to f-fix this?!"
