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“Please, Cain... I can’t bear it.” They would share a life, a home, a family. What of the child now in her womb? Would it ever recognize Adam as anything more than an uncle? Cain was not a selfless man, and once he accepted his fate, Adam would have nothing.
Perhaps Annalise knew this and that was why she insisted they help him. “She practically chose you—”
White light exploded behind his eyes as Cain’s fist crashed into his skull. Bone crunched at the bridge of his nose as blood seeped down his face.
“You’re pathetic,” Cain sneered. “Your loyalty should be to her, not me. And certainly not them!”
His head throbbed, and a roar ripped from his throat. “I am loyal to her!”
“How? By abandoning her?”
“This is best for her! This is best for everyone. This is how God intended—”
“She loves you, you fool! Leave God out of it!”
He turned away, his gaze dropping to the spatters of blood on the floor. “She’ll learn to love you.” The pain bloomed in his chest, overtaking his heart. “Loving her is simple, Cain. You won’t have to try.”
“Is that what you want? Her in my bed with your bastard child between us?”
His eyes squeezed shut. “You won’t let that child know the difference. I know you.”
“I’m not interested in raising your son. You sentence me to an eternity of knowing she wanted you first. How long will she picture your face when I touch her? Dream it’s your body filling hers?”
Bile rose as he covered his ears. “Stop. Please.”
“But that’s what you’re asking of me. You want me to stand in your place.” Something shifted in his voice. Inadequacy rolled off of him, and he stepped back. “I’m on this earth to serve as your backup.”
Adam looked up at him, eyes pleading and face bloodied. “Does she not call to you? Have you not shared dreams? Your refusal can only go so far, brother. I know the truth. Denying the hold she has over you is only denying the inevitable.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve spent so much more time with her and yet... You still don’t fully know her. She’ll fight me, Adam. She’s fierce and strong and she’s far past pissed. You say she’s mine, but she’ll never accept that. Our God holds no authority over her will. And what will happen when I grow tired of waiting for her consent?”
“In time she’ll—”
“No!” He yanked him off the floor, onto his feet, and slammed his back into the wall. “I will not force myself on her! And how dare you suggest she learn to accept anything she doesn’t want. You are her protector!”
“She doesn’t belong to me!”
“Then who, Adam? Who does she belong to? That female is more English than anything else. This is not my battle. It’s yours.”
“And I lost!” he shouted, finally shoving Cain’s hands away. “I had her—I had everything—and I lost all of it! God has—”
“Your God has betrayed you!” He pointed down the empty corridor. “She would never betray you in such a way. She sacrificed her entire world for you. She agreed to marry you. She even tried to...” His voice broke as he looked away. “She even tried to save us.”
Adam’s brow tightened as he watched Cain struggle to process everything they’d gone through. He was unaware Cain knew about their pre-marital bargain.
“I was going to take her from you,” Cain whispered, his eyes unable to meet Adam’s. “I was angry. Why should you get her? I went to the house. You were with Grandfather and Father, away in the barn. The rain covered the voices, and I could have stolen her right out from under your nose.”
Adam’s gaze dropped. “Why didn’t you?”
He laughed. “She’s rather adorable when she’s stubborn. Honestly, as titillating as it might have been to drag her kicking and screaming out of there, the thought exhausted me. She wanted you. And she had no shame in telling me—over and over again.”
Cain paced to the opposite wall, pressing his back to the plaster and sliding his back down until he sat on the floor. “I think she’s the sort of female who’d fight me forever. I don’t want that. I don’t want the fight. I don’t want to be anyone’s second choice. I’d rather have no one.”
“You’re not second choice.”
His head lifted, and Adam saw his anguish as much as he felt it. “To her, that’s all I’d ever be.”
Tears flooded Adam’s eyes. “How are you fighting this?”
Cain shook his head. “Because she’s not mine. She’s yours in every sense of the word. Even in our dreams, we only shared pain. Perhaps she can feel mine, and that’s why it was so important for her to fix this war between us.”
Adam wanted her pain. He wanted her joy and her happiness. He wanted all of it, and knowing Cain experienced this slight part of her, broke him in ways he couldn’t explain. Their kind was not built to share. He wanted all of her.
