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“When will you realize? Everything has to do with Celine!”
He shakes his head, but the flexing of his hands at his sides says he wants to shakemeinstead. “The two of you are more alike than you think,” he mutters. “Each of you pointing at the other and saying, She’sthe good one!I’mthe fraud!”
I frown. “She doesn’t think that.”
“Of course she does.” He groans with frustration. “She always has.”
I grit my teeth. “If only she could see me now, huh?”
Those blue eyes of his narrow, and I feel my stomach tighten in response. “I’m taking him back with me, Taylor,” he says quietly. “The only question is, are you coming, too?”
I laugh right in his smug face. “Do you really think I would just let you take my son and leave me in the fucking dust?” I demand. “You’re not really giving me a choice.”
“Just speaking your language.”
I freeze. I want to snap back, but his point lands. I never gave him a choice. I never even asked him to come with me—not that he would have, of course. But after watching him with Adam, I have a sinking feeling I should have at least tried.
“I don’t want to fight,” I murmur, my gaze falling to the floor.
“Neither do I,” he says. “But I will if I have to.”
I sigh. “You won’t have to. I’m not about to start a battle with you that I can’t win.”
He lofts a brow. “So…you’re going to come back with me?”
“Yes. But—I have one condition.”
He nods. “Let’s hear it.”
“Cee can’t know that you’re Adam’s father.”
Ilarion does an incredulous double-take. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not. You go back, you tell her that you managed to find us, and you were just as shocked as she will undoubtedly be when you tell her that I have a son. You don’t know who the father is, just that the baby was conceived sometime after I left. That way, I get to preserve my relationship with my sister, and so do you. It’s a win-win.”
Ilarion laughs brutally. “Have youseenhim? How blind do you think she is?”
“Does it matter?” I retort. “People see what they want to see. And eventually, he’ll think of you as a father figure over time. What does it matter if he calls you ‘Uncle’ instead of ‘Dad’? If you love him and he loves you, that should be all that matters. And most importantly, Cee won’t be suspicious.”
“She might be when I name him my heir.”
My eyes go wide. “You wouldn’t.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I? He’s my firstborn child and my son. It’s his birthright.”
I’m doing everything I can not to splutter incoherently. “What if he doesn’t want it?”
“He will have to be the one to decide that.”
“Ilarion—”
“Iwillclaim him as my son,” he snarls, cutting me off. “I won’t pretend otherwise. Fuck, Taylor, I’ve spent the last five damned years pretending. I’m still pretending.”
The crack and tremble of his voice catches me by surprise. There’s emotion there. Real emotion. The kind I didn’t think he really was capable of feeling. Is it possible that there’s more going on beneath the surface than I thought? No happy person has to pretendthatmuch.
“You don’t want to hurt Cee, do you?” I ask softly.
His jaw thrums with tension. “I don’t want to keep lying to her.”
