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He was the man she adored with every breath in her. He was the man who showed her to be strong, who showed her what she was made of.
He would fight for custody, she knew. He would do what he deemed to be right by their child. He would tie her up in clauses and contracts, he would use the fact that she hadn’t instantly told him to tie her to him.
To achieve what he had wanted two months ago.
Even as every inch of her thrummed with pain, even as every inch of her recoiled at subjecting her coming child to separate parents living across the globe, Clio made her decision as the woman he had helped her become.
It was better her child had two parents who loved him, rather than a mother who would forever be in agony, living with the man who would never love her back, a mother who would so easily become a shadow of herself.
She straightened her spine and faced him. Waited for the hardest battle of her life to commence. “No. I wouldn’t have hid it from you. But I...” she swallowed the tears in her throat, “I would have given myself a few weeks to prepare first.”
* * *
“Prepare for what?” Stefan threw back at Clio, finding it unbearable to meet her eyes. How deep and sharp her words cut, how easily she had turned him into this mass of ache and love...
Her denial didn’t bring him even infinitesimal relief. His gut still ached, his breath rushed out of him unevenly.
She would have taken a few weeks to prepare herself...that he had driven her to this, it traveled through him like a missile launched specifically to torture him.
He turned, not sure what he would say, and stilled.
With her palm splayed against her stomach, her green eyes shining with tenderness and determination, she faced him. The wide curve of her mouth trembled. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen and it only brought home again how much he loved this woman. How fortunate that she would mother his child...
“Please answer me, Clio. Preparing for what?” he asked again, fisting his hands at his sides, stifling the urge to take her in his arms.
She shrugged, but the casualness she was going for didn’t come through. There was a wariness in her eyes that he decided he would never be the cause of again.
“I knew that if I had told you immediately, you would come armed to the teeth with clauses and contracts. That you would want this child and me and the whole family thing. That you would seduce your way into my life and convince me this was for the best. As sad as it sounds, I need to shore up my defenses against you.”
“You think I will bind you to me in the name of our child? You think me that heartless, Clio?”
Tears ran over her cheeks and she swayed. Cursing himself over and over, Stefan caught her.
“What am I supposed to think, Stefan? Two months have gone by and you didn’t call me once. Two months in which I wondered if I would ever see you again. Two months in which every minute felt like an eternity. Two months in which I battled the urge to come to you, to beg you to take me back any way you wanted.”
He grabbed her hands, willing her to understand him. “I hurt you so much that day. I couldn’t face myself in the mirror thinking of what I had ruined. The minute you had walked out, I realized what I had done, how wrong I was.
“I have been cursing myself, wondering if I could ever take back what I had done. I was terrified that I would hurt you even more after everything you have been through, Clio. I’m terrified that I might never be worthy of you, bella.”
He knelt in front of her, wrapped his arms around her. Bent his head, burrowed into her warmth, the love he felt for her unmanning him.
And even as he trembled at the thought that he might have lost her, he could feel the rightness of this, feel everything in him slide into place. Striving for control that was out of his reach, he pulled her fingers in his hand and kissed her.
“Stefan?” she whispered. There was so much pain and hope in it that he ached.
He raised his head and met her beautiful gaze, poured the emotions flowing through him into words. “I’m desperately in love with you. With every breath in my body. With every cell in my being. I come to you today with nothing but my heart in my hands, Clio.
“All I want is to be part of your life, a chance to show you how much I adore you. Every moment of my life, every decision I have ever taken, it...it has made me into this. But it also brought me to you, bella.
“The bastard that I am today, I’m still all yours to do with, Clio.”
Sinking to her knees, she clutched him. “Oh, Stefan...”
And just when Stefan thought he couldn’t fragment anymore, that he could feel no more, the sound of her pain pierced him again.
