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He grinds his jaw again before exhaling a resigned breath and filling the silence. “First, I want you to know that I’m clean. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
It takes me a few seconds to really get his meaning.
When I do, my cheeks get even more heated because I didn’t think of that.
In everything, I didn’t think of that at all.
“Yes,” I whisper.
A grave look enters his eyes. “I mean it. I’m clean. I haven’t had sex in a long time. I wasn’t lying when I said…”
“You said what?”
Another tic of his jaw. “When I said you haunt me. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve tried. But I…” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t. Mostly because I spent a lot of time in the past two years, either drunk or angry. At the shitty job, at my fucking father. So yeah.”
My heart twists at the shitty job.
The thing he has to do because he made a deal with his dad. For me.
God, what a sad, awful pair we make.
“So you… d-didn’t?” I whisper, the only thing I can do at his big revelation.
He swallows. “No.”
Oh God.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t. Like me and I…
"I –"
He doesn’t let me speak though. “If I wasn’t clean, if I didn’t know that I was clean, I never would’ve fucked you raw. Nothing you could’ve said to make me do that. To put you at risk like that. I want you to know that.”
I nod. “I know. I know you wouldn’t have.”
I absolutely do know.
I know his crazy protectiveness. His crazy need to keep me safe.
Which has been the biggest irony of my life ever since I met him.
Ever since he made me dance for him in the woods.
The villain I fell in love with somehow acts like a hero.
And maybe that’s why it didn’t occur to me. That he’d put me in jeopardy like that.
As soon as I realize this, I realize something else too.
I realize that he pulled out in the end.
I mean, I knew that. I remember that. I felt him come outside of my body but I hadn’t grasped the real importance of it. The true importance of him pulling out.
It was smart, yes, but more than that, he did it to protect me.
He did it to keep me safe.
Even after I asked him not to, he protected me that night in so many ways.
As if he knows what I’m thinking about, he says, “Not that it did much good, did it?”
Before he glances down again and my belly feels warm at his comment.
Heated and alive.
“Reed,” I say, and he looks up.
Thank God.
I don’t want him looking at my belly.
Not right now.
Not yet.
“You know what else happened that night, don’t you?” he asks, studying me. “Besides me taking your virginity.”
The quickening in my belly grows.
It grows to epic proportions and I feel this absolute stark need to touch it.
To cradle my flat belly.
Just because he’s watching it.
Just because he’s waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, he asks, “Is there something you want to tell me?”
My chest starts to heave and the craving to touch my belly reaches the sky.
The answer to his question almost bursts out of my mouth and shocks me. I didn’t think that this would be my answer. I swear I didn’t.
I didn’t think my answer would be yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
There is something that I want to tell him.
There is.
For all my running and hiding and denying, I never thought that when he asked me point blank, when he looked at me with those possessive eyes, the urge to tell him would be this strong. That I would have to stop myself from saying it.
That I would have to tighten my body and clench my teeth to keep this thing a secret.
But I have to.
“I’m on the pill,” I blurt out.
I’m not.
I tried once, for my bad periods. But it messed me up so much, my hormones and made me throw up so badly that I had to get off it.
“Yeah?”
I jerk out a nod. “Yes.”
He licks his lips. “That’s an excellent lie, Fae. And it would work on me, if I hadn’t bought you dozens of your fucking cupcakes when you get your periods. Because those are the only things that make you feel better. Because you can’t even take a pill for it, can you?”
Oh God.
I didn’t… I didn’t think of that. I’d forgotten that he knows me so well, that he has seen me on my periods and I can’t tell him.
Not yet.
I have so many things to figure out. So many things to think about.
All I’ve figured out so far is that somehow that night wasn’t the end. No matter how much I wanted it to be.
That’s all.
And I need to think.
I need space. I need…
“One week.”
His words break my frantic thoughts. “What?”
