Page 109 of Anthem of Love and Loathing

Her admission lands like a gut punch. If I hadn’t ended up on the couch with Sonatina the entire last two years would have been completely different. Unlike my own father, I would have been there every step of the way for Kelsey and Harlowe. Kelsey and I would have stayed together. I fucked it all up when I slept with Sonatina.

How can one moment that I can barely remember cause this much damage?

“I get why you didn’t tell me that weekend. But you could have told me at some point. You could have come to me.”

“How? There’s no way the label would have let me near you?”

“Then you could have gotten to me through my brothers. You know they wouldn’t have turned you away. Keeping my child from me—”

Kelsey starts to shake her head vigorously. She pushes away from me and moves to the edge of the bed. “Why do you think I stayed in L.A. to start with. I was never going to keep her from you. I wouldn’t do that. I wanted her to know you.”

I snag her wrist. “Then where is she, Kelsey? Did you put her up for adoption? Or did you send her to foster care? Please tell me you didn’t put our daughter at risk of ending up in a situation like the one you were in.”

She sobs. “No. I would never. I wanted her. I wanted to be a family. I wanted it with you.”

“Then tell me where she is. We can go get her. Or we can at least check on her. If she was adopted, I’ll convince her parents to—”

“She wasn’t adopted.” Her tears fall thick and fast.

I get off the bed and kneel between her knees. “I can’t not be there for my child, Kelsey. You have to tell me—”

She sobs wetly into her hand.

“Kelsey, I am on my knees begging. Please, tell me.”

“I lost her,” she says.

“Lost?” My ears fill with static as Kelsey’s head drops and her shoulders shake. “Lost as in—”

“I was nineteen weeks. I’d had the ultrasound and found out Harlowe was a girl that morning.”

“The photo in your box.” My chest is tight. My heart is cracking at the pain washing off Kelsey.

She nods. “And there you were, with Sonatina, in a poster on the wall. Taunting me with your perfect life while mine was floundering in every way, except for her. And I knew I had to reach out and tell you, even though I was scared of how you would react to the news.”

She goes quiet.

“I need to know,” I plead. I need to be as broken as she must have been. I don’t want to be spared the pain that she must have lived with these last couple years. I should have been there for her. I should have held her while she was in agony. I should have the details of what happened to my family while I was stewing over the hurt I thought she’d caused me.

“I was bumped. Or maybe pushed.” She wrings her hands together in the sheets. “It all happened too fast.”

“Marco?” Had she crossed his path and not realized?

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. No one saw anything, and I can’t be certain. But it seemed like Marco thought luck had put him in my path when he chased me from the Scarlet that night. If he’d been aware of where I was—and that I was on my own—all this time, he wouldn’t have left me alone. He would have tried to take me. That’s not what happened.”

I clasp her face between both of my hands. “Tell me.”

“All I remember is it felt like I was shoved. I lost my balance, and the next thing I knew I was falling off the curb. A car hit me... or clipped me. There was so much noise. Horns and screeching and glass breaking. People screaming. Someone yelling for 911. And then I was laying in the middle of the road. The pain was excruciating.” She presses her hands to her temples as though she has a headache. “I must have lost consciousness because I woke up in the hospital a couple weeks later. And our baby was dead.”

Her pain destroys me.

I was supposed to be there. I should have protected her. Or if I couldn’t, I should have at least been there while she was going through this heartache. We should have grieved our loss together. “I’m sorry you went through that alone. I’m sorry I failed you. Forgive me? If I had known—”

“I can’t forgive you,” her voice turns cold. “It’s likely I will never be able to forgive you.”

For a while there I had let myself believe she could be mine again. I didn’t think she would let me Dom her, fuck her, and she’d hate me through it all. “But we—”

“There is no we. There will never be a we. I needed to be fucked, and you’ve made it clear that I can’t go to anyone else but you, unless you say so.” She pushes me away, and I fall on my ass. “Tell me how I am supposed to forgive you when you chose that bitch over me? You let her get between us. You let her ruin my life. Everything that happened to me after L.A. Riot happened because you couldn’t keep your cock in your pants.”