Her head snaps up, and her eyes flash. "No."
"You took nothing." I push off the wall, closing the distance. "You left the money. The cards. The clothes. If you were going to run, why not take what you could sell? Why not take a weapon? Why leave with nothing?"
Her jaw works. Her fingers roll and unroll the covers. "I couldn't," she whispers.
Then she clamps her mouth shut. Locks it. Throws away the key.
Frustration detonates in my chest. I grab her chin—not hard, but enough to force her eyes to mine. "You couldn't take my money, or you couldn't stay with me?"
Silence.
I release her and pace to the window. Giving us distance before I do something I regret. I want to shake her. I want to beg her. I want to keep her close enough that she can never vanish again.
"Talk to me, Riley." My voice drops. "Or I swear to God, I'll put you over my knee."
Her eyes snap to mine. Wide. Sharp. Finally, the fire. "You mean beat me up?" Her voice is hoarse but defiant. "Try it."
Something in my chest cracks open. Not anger. Relief. She is still in there. Still fighting. I cross the room in two strides. Snatch her off the bed by her upper arms. She gasps, but she doesn't cower.
"I should," I snarl, shaking her once, gently. "I should put you over my lap until you remember exactly what happens when you scare me like that. Do you have any idea what you put me through? Any idea what it felt like to walk into that empty room and know you were gone?"
Her breath comes hard and fast. Tears brim in her eyes but do not fall.
"Tell me what's going on." My voice breaks on the last word. I pull her against me, crushing her to my chest, my hand fisting in her wild braids. "Tell me why you ran. Tell me why you didn't want me. Tell me why I'm standing here with my heart in my fucking hands, and you won't even look at me."
She immediately stiffens and tries to push away.
"Tell me why you didn't want me either." The words tear out of me before I can stop them. Ragged. Ruined. "No one ever stays. Why don't I get a family, Riley?"
The last word breaks in my throat. I don't let her go. I can't. I am holding on to the only solid thing in a world that has been nothing but ice and blood since I was eleven years old. I press my face to the top of her head and feel the wetness on my cheeks. Wetness tracks down my face, and I do not have the strength to hate it.
Her body goes still. Then it begins to shake. "You're taking mine," she whispers.
Hers?I freeze.
"You want me to hand you the only family I've ever had." Her voice rises, cracking, splintering. "You want me to carry this baby,lovethis baby, and then just… hand it over. Walk away. Be absent from my child's life. I can't, Mikhail. I can't do that to a child."
She pulls back, her hands coming up to grip my wrists, nails digging in hard enough to draw blood. Her face is wrecked—eyes swollen, lips bitten raw, tears streaming down her dark skin.
"I need someone to love me, too. I think you understand that better than anyone," she sobs. "And I can't walk away from it. I can't walk away from him. Or her. I tried. God, I tried to plan for it, to be smart, to treat it like a transaction, but I heard the heartbeat, and it's mine. It's in my body, and it's mine."
She shoves at my chest, pounding once, twice, weak and desperate. "So you'll have to lock me up," she cries. "Keep me prisoner. Chain me to the fucking wall. But I'll never leave my child. Ever. You want me to stay and have your baby? Fine. But if I stay, I'm staying as the mother. Not the surrogate. Not the ghost. Me."
I stare at her. Into her. This girl, who survived foster care, human auctions, and Dante Briggs. This girl who snuck out of a glass tower with nothing but a peacoat and a heartbeat. This girl who is looking at me as if I hold the rest of her life in my hands.
And then, relief breaks out of me as laughter before I can stop it. Startled. Wild. Almost mad.
Riley flinches back, confusion cutting through her tears. Her brows are furrowed, and she bites her lip. Unsure. Riley is never unsure. I laugh and press my lips to the frown lines, smoothing them out.
"Finally," I say like a fucking lunatic. "Fin-a-fucking-ly."
Riley tilts her head. She stares at me like I have lost my mind. Maybe I have.
"I knew it," I say, grabbing her face in both hands, forcing her to look at me. "I knew you wouldn't be able to do it. From the moment you left that test on the counter, I knew. You were never going to have my baby and leave. Never."
I press my forehead to hers, still laughing, the tears on my face mixing with the joy and the terror and the absolute, blinding relief. "I have been waiting," I whisper, fierce and triumphant. "Waiting for you to realize what I already knew. You're not built for leaving, Riley. You're built to fight for what's yours."
I pull back just enough to see her eyes, to watch the understanding bloom there. "Baby Girl," I say, and the words are a vow. "You and any children you have—yes, more than one,if you want them, we will fill every room in that tower—all of you will be mine. As you are already mine. As you have been mine since you shoved that placard under my nose and dared me to look at you."
