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“No?” Cyrus scratched his jaw. “Yeah, you see, you don’t get a say in—”
“I need you to watch over Piper and our unborn baby,” I told him.
“Unborn…” Cyrus sighed. “Fucking hell.”
“You can’t go after these fuckers by yourself,” Sammy added.
“I can. I handled it on my own in jail, I’ll handle it on my own outside of it.” I wasn’t taking no for an answer. They could fight me all they wanted.
“We wouldn’t know, Jaron. You haven’t told us shit about your time in jail. Whenever we went to see you, you redirected the conversations to Piper.” Cyrus raked a hand through his jet-black hair. “You haven’t said shit since you’ve been back, and you’ve been back for weeks. Hell, Brynn is almost a year old. If I was Piper, I would have left your ass long ago.”
“Fuck you.” I charged for him, getting in his face. “You don’t know what I had to do to survive. She’s safer without me here anyway. The mayor—”
“You leaving is not going to keep her safe. It’s what they want.” Cyrus tapped my temple. “Use your damn head, Jaron.”
I slapped his hand away, pushing him back. “Doesn’t matter. You can say whatever you want but it’s not stopping me.” I went to walk by him when his next words stopped me.
“So this is it.”
I paused, slowly turning back around. “She deserves better. You have to know that.”
“No.” Sammy stepped in front of his brother. “We don’t because all we see is how she looks at you. We heard her cry herself to sleep. You don’t know the pain she went through. And when she found out she was pregnant. Jaron, that pain was raw. She was alone even though she had all of us.”
Guilt resonated on my shoulders over everything that I had done but it didn’t matter. I needed to find Brynn and if something happened to me, Piper would be better off anyway. She would be safer.
“Piper needs you. This unborn baby needs you,” Cyrus added. “We didn’t grow up with parents. Look at how we turned out.”
“Hey.” Sammy smacked his brother’s shoulder. “I turned out just fine.”
“Brynlee needs me too.” I wouldn’t rest until I had her back in Piper’s arms. Even if I died trying, knowing that my daughter was safe was all that mattered. . Piper would be pissed, angry, hurt, enraged. So many different feelings would course through her. I knew because I felt them too. But she would get over it. She had to. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
***
(Piper)
I no longer had a sense of time. When I saw the look of agony on Jaron’s face after I demanded to know why he never brought Brynlee and me to his parents to keep us safe, I knew that I had fucked up. My mouth had gotten the better of me and made it seem like I blamed him. Did I? No. Not really. I couldn’t even be sure anymore. But what I did know was that I needed him. I needed our daughter. I just needed us to go home and move on. I knew the mayor had it out for Jaron, but I never expected him to go this far.
Jaron had tucked me safely in his bed. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him to make love to me in it. To distract me and himself. Even if it was just for a moment. But those words never left my lips as he backed up and slowly left the room.
I cried myself to sleep then. I couldn’t help it. I could already feel him pulling away. He was going to go after the mayor. I knew because it would be what I would do if I knew exactly where he was. And if I wasn’t pregnant.
A light but firm knock sounded on the door. My heart jumped.
“Come in,” I called out, sitting up.
The door slowly opened, revealing Cyrus and Sammy.
A hard sigh left me at the sight of them. “When did he leave?” I heard myself ask.
“How did you know?” Cyrus asked, leaning against the wall.
Sammy came into the room and went to the window. He opened it and lit up a smoke. “She knows him, that’s how.”
“He’s going after him. The mayor.” I couldn’t even cry, I was so damn furious. It was like this newfound rage coursing through me, closed up my tear ducts.
“He is, kiddo,” Cyrus said gently.
“And neither of you could have gone with him?” I asked, my voice a little more curt than I had intended.
