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Elodie had never hit anyone in her life, but she threw herself across the room now and pushed at his chest, hard, and when he didn’t so much as flinch, she pushed him again. And then her hands, shaped into small fists, were raining down on him, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. The pit of despair had claimed her.
“Don’t you dare say you can replace me with a nanny!” She threw the words at him. “I’m his mother and I am going to raise him. I will fight you, I will fight you with everything I have.”
He grabbed her hands, holding them against his chest, his nostrils flaring as he looked down at her. “You would lose.”
“No! I have money, I could hire a great lawyer –,”
“And I will hire ten for every one of yours, and I will drown them in paperwork, and I will win, Elodie, because that’s what I do. And meanwhile, our son will grow up to read stories about how his mother wanted to take him away from his own father—,”
“He’ll grow up to see how much I loved him and wanted him.”
Fiero kept her hands pressed to his chest, his eyes locked to hers. “You will not be able to fight me and win.”
“I have to. I can’t let him go. And he can’t live without me.”
“But he could live without me?”
She gasped, his words so filled with grief, and damn it, she felt a twist of sympathy for him even then, when he was threatening to take Jack from her. He had missed so much, and he’d learned of his son’s existence in the most painful of ways. Fiero was living some kind of nightmare, trying to make sense of it as he went along, and his reactions were proof of that. Knee jerk and rash.
“I made a mistake.”
“Christo, si, you made a mistake. And now you’re asking me to forgive and forget.”
She swept her eyes shut, knowing what a monumental task that would be for him. “For Jack.”
“Yes, for Jack.” He ground his teeth together, and she was conscious, out of nowhere, of how close they were to one another. His long fingers were curled around her wrists, and every time he sucked in a breath his chest moved forward to brush against her nipples.
The last thing she’d expected to feel for this man ever again, and especially in that moment, was desire, but there it was, turning her blood to lava and her knees to jelly.
Something in the air around them shifted, changing so that she was conscious of him in a way that was all-consuming and definitely not one-sided. She saw the way his eyes changed, his pupils flexing, his lids lowering; she saw his lips part and felt his warm breath fan her temples and her own lips mirrored his, separating and pushing a soft breath from her lungs.
“You should have told me about him.” And despite the anger he’d thrown at her, the fury, the threats, her stomach looped because she felt what was at the root of everything he’d said and done: devastation.
He was devastated.
She sobbed, but he lifted a finger to her lips, and she gasped in surprise, the touch totally unexpected.
“Stop crying.”
She shook her head a little. “I can’t.”
His hands cupped her face then, holding her completely still, and her hands, now free, dropped to her side. “I will never forgive you for keeping my son away from me.”
His words were like acid and his touch was like silk. She couldn’t fathom how she felt.
“But it appears I cannot make the same decision you did. I will not push you out of his life.” Her heart turned over in her chest.
His thumb padded over her lower lip and her heart rabbited against her ribs for another reason now. Despite the seriousness of this conversation, she could barely concentrate.
“You and Jack will move into my house.” The words were devoid of emotion. “For six months, you will live with me, to see if we can do it your way – and raise him together.”
It was more than she’d expected. Different to what she’d hoped and yet it made a strange kind of sense. “We’ll live together?”
His eyes flashed. “For Jack’s sake, yes, but you and I will remember the truth, Elodie. We will know what we think and feel, no matter how much effort we go to for the happiness of our son.”
His head dropped a little lower, his eyes scanning hers. “You will know that when I smile, it means nothing. That my anger and hatred for your decisions are still inside of me, weighing down on me with the pressure of every single day of Jack’s life I have missed.”
Salty tears clogged her eyes.
