I know.
Cherry keeps going, voice cracking open wider. “Then Lady showed up all hips and attitude, and you looked at her like you could breathe again. Do you know what that felt like?”
“Yes,” I say.
She blinks.
I look at her and force myself not to look away from what I made. “No. That’s a lie. I know what guilt felt like. I know what losing the baby felt like. I know what being too much of a coward to tell you I wasn’t going to love you felt like. I don’t know what it felt like to be you. I should’ve fucking asked.”
Cherry starts crying harder.
Magic shifts behind her, uncomfortable in a way I have never seen. He can watch a man bleed without blinking, but a woman crying over a lost baby has him looking at the floor like it might save him.
I keep my voice even because if I let it soften too much, this turns into the old pattern.
“But you gave them Lady’s code.”
Cherry nods once, broken.
“You texted me so she’d see it.”
Her face crumples.
“Say it,” I order.
“Yes.”
“You wanted her hurt.”
“No.” Her head jerks up. “Not taken. Not beaten. Not that.”
“But hurt.”
The silence answers.
I nod slowly. “That is what I thought.”
She leans forward. “Shady, please.”
“No.”
The word ain’t loud.
It ends something anyway.
Cherry freezes.
I sit back, and the chair creaks under me. “If the baby was mine. I should’ve done right by that grief. I should’ve done right by you after. I left you half-open because I was too much of a selfish prick to close the wound I helped make.”
Her tears spill silently now.
“If?” she asks.
“Cherry. I know you. You weren’t only with me.”
Drying her eyes, she lifts her chin. There’s no use denying it. “But…” she starts.
“And you were not my woman,” I say. “You didn’t owe me that.”
