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I can’t lose them now. Not when they’re wrapped around me and the baby inside me.
“Go home,” Mom whispers in my ear. “Get some rest.”
“Come,” Ilarion murmurs to me when I linger a moment too long. “She needs to rest, too.”
Reluctantly, I tear myself away from her and rise. She’s asleep before the hug even breaks. Eyes closed peacefully, her breath a mere trickle through her parted lips.
He presses his hand to the small of my back and steers me towards the door. The soles of my shoes scrape the clean white tile on my way out, leaving a few faint scuff marks in my wake. I don’t even manage a backward glance at Mom. I’m too far inside my own head, fighting a battle against a relentless rush of dread.
It’s a battle I cannot win.
27
TAYLOR
The moment I’m in the corridor, I double over and brace my elbows on my knees. Tears sting hot in my eyes and my stomach burns. “Oh, God…”
“Taylor.”
He’s right. He’s only said my name but I hear the whole damn speech contained in those two syllables.You can’t lose your shit right now. Pull yourself together. Get back up and keep going. Accept it and move on.
You want me to fall to pieces?That’s what he asked me on the way here. It was obvious what he thought—that falling to pieces serves nobody. You can’t help anyone else hold themselves together if you yourself are scattered to the wind.
So—for my mother, for my sister, for my father—I take a deep breath and stand up tall.
I round on Ilarion. “You have to do whatever it takes to get them back!” I demand. “You saw Mom in there. It’s going to take all three of us to rally around her, get her to stop this insane—”
“Is it so insane?” he asks abruptly.
I stare at him like he’s suddenly sprouted three heads. “Excuse me?”
“You’re being selfish.” He shrugs. My mother is literally dying on the other side of the door, and he’sshrugging.
“I’m being selfish?” I ask. “I’mbeing selfish?!”
Of course he nods. Of course he doubles down. He’s not the kind of man to take back his words. He’s certainly not the kind of man to throw them around loosely, either. I’d suspected as much the night we met, and it struck me as an attractive trait at the time. But now…
Now, I want to slap them out of his fucking mouth.
“You clearly don’t know the first goddamn thing about family.”
His eyes narrow and those dusky blue irises grow darker. “I know far more than you do,” he hisses, boxing me in so close that I can count each and every last one of those thick lashes. “I know that you don’t force someone you love to suffer simply because you’re bad at goodbyes.”
My hand twitches with the urge to hit something. Him, preferably. But I have a feeling I’d just hurt myself in the process, so I keep it fisted at my side.
“Listen, motherfucker: you may be engaged to my sister,for now. But that does not make you part of this family.”
“No?” He puts a hand to my midsection to push me back against the wall. I feel his palm, flat and huge, against my stomach. “And what about the baby you’re carrying? How does that factor me into the family?”
“It makes you the sperm donor. Nothing more. A mysterious sperm donor with no name. There’s no reason you need to be a part of my baby’s life at all.”
“If you think I’m the kind of man who’s going to walk away from my own child, then you’re fucking dreaming.”
“I’m doing the exact opposite of dreaming, actually.” I’m furious at how shaky my voice is. “Ever since I met you, my life has been one gigantic nightmare. Why does it come as such a shock that I want to wake the hell up?”
“You—”
Whatever he’s about to tell me is drowned out in a siren call that has the nurses looking panicked. They start darting around, pressing buttons, grabbing equipment that I don’t recognize. Then they form a stampede heading…
