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While he parrots himself, the slight quake in his voice says he knows the outcome of this, but he needs to hear me breathe life into it.
“He beat your child out of me, Beckett. He kept kicking and kicking me until…”
A loose sob unravels from my throat, and I place a hand to my mouth to steady myself because I won’t break now.
“He kept going, Beckett. He kept going until I could barely see straight and the pain was too much that I begged him to stop.”
I begged for all the things I never should have. I grew up believing I was untouchable, but after that night, I knew that wasn’t the case.
“At least he listened to that. I guess that’s something.” I shrug nonchalantly. “He told me you ordered for me to have an abortion.To get rid of the issue. He said you wanted to make sure I actually went through with it.”
“I never made that order.”
He struggles to meet my gaze, and shame flushes his face, giving him a sallowness I’ve never seen before.
“At first, I knew that, but after what Alistair did, I couldn’t think straight. And when I started to bleed, something in me shifted. He stayed with me until that started, and he knew his job was done. I guess he came home and told you otherwise.”
“He told me he tried to talk you out of the abortion, but you wouldn’t listen.”
I laugh mirthlessly at hearing that.
“He said you didn’t want the baby because then you would be bound to me for life. Nicolas said how The Company was yours, but if you went through with the pregnancy, you were obligated to me like I was to you. The baby meant no get out for you.”
“No get out?” I choke on the words, each clogging my throat. I thought I was angry, but I didn’t know the true extent of my wrath until today. “Wow, no wonder you hate me so much.”
“Yeah, likewise.”
I can tell he doesn’t fully believe me, but he’s trying, and he’s struggling between his obligation to his dad and the one he used to have to me.
“You should ask him how much he paid me to leave town. He told me to not look back because there was nothing for me. Considering the disappointment my father had in me for falling pregnant and what Alistair told me, I was lost. The fact I never heard from you gave Alistair’s story a bit more punch.”
A few seconds beat by, and the silence becomes unbearable very quickly.
“You’ve gone quiet.”
Beckett looks almost squirrelly before he sets a darkened gaze on me. “You believed him…”
“No.” I react almost violently to that. “No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to hate me for being a victim! You don’t have the fucking right to judge me for that.” I advance for him, hitting him solidly in the chest. “You’re an absolute bastard!”
The outburst was a surprise—to me and to Beckett. Something in his matter-of-fact response triggers me, and seeing him hurt for the wrong reasons is enough to push me off the proverbial edge.
“Don’t you dare act like you get to be the one that hurts in this!”
“Stop this, Natalia!” he orders but waits for me to calm enough. “Please.”
I can tell he’s trying to make sense of the hell I’ve just unleashed, and I resist him for a moment, but when he feels my tension start to loosen, he lets me go and I push space between us again.
In those first few days, I felt like my grief would burn me alive. It was as if the moment my eyes would shut, the deep-rooted burning in me would rip free like a wildfire and turn every piece of me to ash.
Some nights I would allow it. Almost beg for that inferno. Others, I’d lie awake, begging my soul to purge itself of the grief because I couldn’t handle losing the man I loved and a baby I barely knew.
Then the devil in my ear would remind me that Beckett wanted it this way - me gone, our baby gone. He ordered this, and as a consequence of loving him, I tiptoed that fine line and began to hate him too.
And what a dangerous line to cross.
So, it’s true what they say. You can die from a broken heart.
What they don’t tell you is you can resurrect from one too.
