AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She reaches for the rosary but hesitates for a second, dropping her hand back on her bent knee. “I’m not the girl you once knew.”
“Let me see the other one.” I hold out my hand and gesture for her other arm. When she doesn’t comply right away, I growl, “Eve.”
Her eyes widen but she doesn’t protest, just puts her other arm in my outstretched hand and waits.
I take another breath—please, God—before I push up this sleeve and curse. No wonder she only showed me the other arm. Her left arm has double the amount of scars, these ones deeper, more jagged. I run my thumb over a thickened scar right by her wrist. This one is the deepest, carries the most hurt. Was she trying to kill herself?
“Why did you need to do this?” I bring her wrist to my mouth and drag my lips across the worst scar. If it was possible to heal the jagged flesh with a kiss, I would.
She shivers, but doesn’t pull away. “Why didn’t you come for me? Why did you leave me here?”
My brows crash together and I keep a hold of her hand, pressing it against my chest, right over my quickly beating heart. “How could you think I’d ever leave you?”
Eve is quiet for a second, her head tilted as she studies my face. “Because you did.”
“No, M’fhíorghrá. Do you feel this?” I tap on the back of her hand, holding it steady over my heart. “It belongs to you. It always has, and I suspect it always will. I went through Hell when you left. I went to a really dark place, and I’m not sure I ever really escaped.”
“I never left. My parents sent me here.”
Her words are soft, pained, and they fucking slice right through me. “What do you mean, your parents sent you here?”
“When they found out…” She trails off on a sob, her hand flexing into a fist, gripping my shirt like a lifeline.
I need her to go on. I need to know what she was about to say, even though I have a feeling it’s going to destroy us both.
Hell, it’s already destroyed her, and it rips me apart from the inside knowing she was suffering and I didn’t even have a fucking clue.
Instinctively, I know this secret of hers is why she cut herself. Why she felt like she was nothing more than a blip in the past when she’s fucking everything.
“I’m here now.” I put my arms around her and pull her against me, kicking myself for not being here sooner. For not finding her as soon as I got to Chicago, which I know is ridiculous because I didn’t even know she was here until last week, but at the very least, I should have been here the day after she ran from me.
If I didn’t need the money Phoenix pays me to get my hands dirty, I’d have told him to fuck off instead of helping him clean up some congressman’s mess.
Eve buries her face in my neck—the side without the blood splatter—and her shoulders shake as she sobs. “They were…so…mad.”
I close my eyes, resting the side of my head against hers, and stroke my hands along her spine. “What did they find out?”
“I…” She takes a deep breath, her shoulders relaxing but her grip on the front of my shirt tightens. Her next words are a whisper, and I can barely hear them when she says, “I was pregnant.”
My heart stutters in my chest and my spine stiffens. I take in a ragged breath, the air scorching my throat and corroding my insides.
The devastation I feel is nothing compared to the rage pouring through my veins. Her parents knew she was pregnant, vulnerable, and still they cast her out. They fucked with the wrong man. I’d love nothing more than to show her dad why they call me the Devil.
Never have I been more torn in my life. I don’t know if I want to set the world on fire and watch the entire thing burn, or flay myself open and lay on the broken altar, begging God to give my baby back to her. Fuck. My baby. Was she forced to give it up for adoption? Or did she…?
Motherfucker.
These scars on her wrist can’t be from a baby she gave up for a chance at a better life. These scars are for a baby, a life, that she lost.
My chest tightens and my throat constricts as I fight against the multitude of emotions running through me—anger, disappointment, grief, anguish, more anger, and before I can stop myself, my mind catapults me into the what if.
Eve smiling up at me from the hospital bed, wisps of her red hair plastered around her face, her green eyes bright, and a baby—my baby—in her arms. We’d have a girl, a small miracle with my dark brown hair, light honey eyes, and a smile that melts my heart. The nurse would send me a disapproving glare as I climbed into bed and held my girls all night.
But that’s a future I missed out on the second her parents threatened my family and sent me away.
I tighten my hold on her, pressing my lips to her temple. “What happened?”
“As soon as my parents found out, they sent me here. It was an election year, and having a pregnant teenage daughter would have ruined everything. They told me you knew, that you’d come and get us if you wanted us. I waited. I waited for so long, but you never came.”
