AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And it shatters.
He rises from his seat and leaves the room without a word.
Chapter15
KANE
My hands are trembling,and my heart is cracked in half. One part sits on the table in the room with Alice next to the little stick showing a plus sign. The second part is on the heels of my first beloved, who didn’t say a word as James explained to him why I was on the verge of shaking apart.
It wasn’t what I expected.
This was always the plan—at least, once I admitted to myself that the last thing I could ever do was raise a hand to Alice. Any tears on her face should be from pain she begged for, from ecstasy, from joy. She’s on the verge of becoming my queen and now the mother to the child of the misfits, and they all knew that was the point.
Seeing the stick on the bathroom counter with the evidence that everything was falling into place sent me reeling. I stood there in shock long enough that I lost time, and when I finally set my sights on Alice, I lost complete control. Not since Phoenix tried to take his own life have I ever felt this close to hysterical. I want to wrap her up and keep her in a cage just like I’ve done to him so no one—not a goddamn soul in this universe—can get their hands on her.
Instead, I kiss her.
The moment is shattered by Phoenix storming out, and I don’t know what it means.
“I need some water,” Alice mumbles, and James is quickly running off before I can react. Which is fine because I’m not sure I can step away from her at the moment.
With a touch more tender than I thought I could ever be, I brush a few strands of hair off her forehead. “You still have time to change your mind, princess.”
Her dark eyes shoot up to mine, narrow and accusing. “Right. Because that reaction right there tells me exactly how on board you’d be with an abortion.”
She’s not…wrong, but she’s also not right. I got snipped, making it impossible to bring another Walsh into this world. I have enough extended family that the name will never die, but I have nothing to offer to the genetic pool. And I never will.
Ari felt the same, when he asked me to make the appointment with the doctor, and Phoenix had done it long before he was shot.
So there’s no way I’d force a child on her.
I stroke my thumb over her jaw. “If you don’t want this, we will find another way to hurt him before we take him down,” I promise her.
I pretend not to notice the way she absently lays a hand over her lower belly, but something powerful is rising in me. “It’s fine. I know what I signed up for.”
“You can always withdraw your consent.” I will remind her of that until my last breath. I can’t read her face, and it’s driving me slowly mad, but she doesn’t seem angry. She doesn’t even seem afraid. She just seems a little lost.
She swallows thickly, and then her gaze cuts through the door Phoenix walked out of. “Is he angry at me for being pregnant?”
“I think he’s angry at me for the deal I made with you,” I tell her. Phoenix sees a lot of himself in Alice. He sees the trapped, injured bird being constantly promised freedom and only being offered larger and larger cages. I don’t even know if relenting on keeping him inside has actually offered him any measure of his independence back, and maybe he hates me a little for setting this up.
“You should go talk to him. Let him know that I understand. That I’m fine.”
My brows fly up as I look down at her, but I say nothing as James comes back and presses a cool glass of water into her hands. I wait for her to take a drink, stepping back to rest against the table because my leg is aching.
“She’s not wrong,” James says after a beat. “And I can sit with Alice.”
I look at him and wonder if maybe those two need a moment to process the news. We might be part of this—we might be a family tighter than any blood could ever allow—but there’s a piece of it that Ari, Phoenix, and I will never share.
“I don’t know what he’s thinking,” James goes on, “but whatever it is, he needs you.”
I look down at Alice, and the expression on her face tells me I should listen to them both. Forcing myself to take a breath, I lean in and lay a kiss to Alice’s forehead. “I will be back shortly.”
Turning, I see James is holding my cane, and I feel a surge of frustration, but I take it and let the silver handle burn cold against my palm. I debate about checking Phoenix’s location on my phone, but I don’t need to.
I know exactly where I’ll find him.
It takes me longer than it ever has to get to the terrace door, and longer than that to navigate the steps since my balance is still pretty shitty, but I manage it without falling on my face. The path is clear and flat, so I limp my way through the collection of trees until I find him. It takes me seven full minutes to get there.
