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“The trouble is, I was very aware that you weren’t a stranger I picked up at the bar. But what am I going to add to your life? What did you think would happen? Did you think that we would…?” What he was about to say died on his lips, because he had been about to ask her if she thought that they would get married and have a family, and in fact they were having a…

Family.

The word sat acidic and uncomfortable in his gut.

Family.

The closest thing that he had ever known to family was the Brown siblings. Everything else had been a hodgepodge of violence and abandonment. He knew that it was much the same for them.

He had nothing to offer her. Nothing to give her. Money, certainly. The ability to protect. He would do that. He would promise that.

“After all these years, I didn’t think that you would just leave me. How about that? I didn’t think that you would do that to me, not when… You know. You know everything. You know that our father put us on the street, you know that he was abusive and—”

“I do know that,” he said. “And look at everything that you have. Here. You have made it on your own. You have accomplished things that very few people could ever dream of accomplishing.”

“So have you.”

Her words, softly spoken, scraped against a deep wound inside of him. One that he didn’t really want to examine.

“I’m not like you. Somehow, you made it through all of this with… You are soft, Esme. It is a wonder that you made it through everything you did as innocent as you were.”

And he had taken that. He looked at her now, really looked at her. Not just at the evidence of her pregnancy, which had shocked him as soon as he had walked in. But he looked at her face. She looked tired. Her cheeks slightly more hollow. There were circles underneath her eyes, and she seemed like she had less energy than usual.

He had done something to her. Damaged her. As he had feared that he would.

“And I’m not as soft as you seem to think. Do you honestly believe that I lived out there on the same streets that you did and somehow didn’t see anything?”

“No. That is not what I thought. But there is something… There is something about you. And it is not something that I see in myself.”

“What is that?”

“You’re soft, Esme. You deserve to be kept safe. You don’t have the same killer instinct I do. Or even that Alex has.”

“I thought we were friends.”

He looked at her, and he didn’t know quite what to do with that. He had never considered her a friend. Alex, he was his friend. But Esme… She was something else. She was something small and fragile to be coddled and protected. She was something essential to him. Important in ways that no one and nothing had ever been.

He should never have touched her. It had been a mistake.

“No, we weren’t,” he said.

She looked crestfallen then. And yet again he was struck by the incontrovertible knowledge that he had damaged her. Just as he had feared.

The door opened, and Alex popped his head back in. “A moment of your time,” he said, looking nothing like his usual self. Typically, Alex was affable and friendly. The sort of person that anyone might want to talk to. Alex, currently, looked like he wanted to commit a murder. And that was another side to his friend that certainly existed. After all, as Esme had just pointed out, they had all grown up on the streets. It wasn’t like any of them had been dropped into a soft existence.

They were all capable of doing whatever they needed to in times of crisis.

“Alex…” Esme looked furious.

“Just a second,” Adonis said.

Alex was his oldest friend in the world, and he did owe him this.

He found himself being pushed into Alex’s office. “Explain yourself,” Alex said.

“I don’t have an explanation,” Adonis said. “I’m sorry if that’s not what you were looking for.”

“It’s unacceptable. She is my sister. And you know that she is the most important person in the entire world to me. That protecting her matters. Do you have any idea what I did when I found out she was pregnant?”