AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re right.” I step back, too, and collect myself, but I feel everything spiraling around me. “I’m sorry. You have to give me some room here, Darcy. I come here thinking you’re a single woman with no attachments. I find out you have a daughter on your own, and you’re the woman I slept with…” My stomach twists. “You’re thenieceI fucked.”
Her skin goes pale, but her voice turns strong, coming right back at me. “That panic coursing through you was me twenty-four hours ago when you showed up here. I had no idea who you were that night. I woke up that morning at Carney’s, and you were gone. Did you leave me a number or even cab fare to get home?” She knew all along it was me. It didn’t even take her a minute to call me out for being an asshole who just left her.
Giving as good as she can take…
“I thought leaving money on the dresser would send the wrong signal.” I scrub a hand down my heated neck and worry I may have a heart attack. “But you’re right. I should have left you something.”
She swallows. “You left me something all right.”
“What do you mean?”
She picks up the book and puts it back on the shelf. “Ewan,you’reSadie’s father. I’m sure of it. I told you that night it was my first time. And you didn’t pull out like you promised.”
I remember vividly not pulling out. And how amazing it felt. I figured, why bother? I couldn’t leave her with a wee one. Why not enjoy myself? She was pure, which meant I wasn’t at risk of any diseases. I just remember that night as so sublime and perfect.
“No…” I say, quietly. “Darcy, love… I can’t be Sadie’s father.”
“Why not?” She gets defensive as fuck on me.
“I’m sterile,” I bite back, the words tasting bitter on my tongue.
“What?”Darcy blinks at my response and then falls onto the couch. That look on her face is the exact reason I don’t do relationships, to avoid these conversations. “Oh, God. No. No, no. That means…”
“That means what?” I kneel in front of her. The woman who I never forgot, the only one-night stand to stick in my head is right here. I should be thrilled, but she’s my niece, and I’m arranging for her to marry my best friend. “Talkto me.”
“A few weeks after you left…” She clutches an embroidered pillow against her chest. “Callum cornered me in an alley.”
The mention of that name makes me see red, and heat fires through my veins. “Go on.”
“Hewanted to be my first. It was stupid, but when I told him someone else broke my cherry, he… He…” She dumps her face into the pillow.
“What happened?” I say through clenched teeth. When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes, and I pull her into my chest. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to say the words.”
“I didn’t fight him. I was afraid he’d hit me. Hurt me worse than just…choking me. I let it happen.” She cries in my arms, and I’m ready to lose it.
Choking her? I’m going to find that son of a bitch and kill him. “Darcy, you didn’t let it happen. He forced himself on you. Did he use something?”
“No. He’s a piece of shite. I was so worried I’d catch something.” Her eyes raise to mine. “I didn’t. I’m still clean, Ewan.”
“Oh, Darcy.” I hold her against my chest. “Sadiecan’tbe mine. I took a bullet in the femoral artery. Almost bled out. The shady backroom butcher, who patched me up so it didn’t look like a gunshot wound, screwed me up further. The surgeon at the hospital told me I’d lost too much blood. Too many veins to the…scrotum were damaged. I was barely out of anesthesia when they told me I wouldn’t be able to have children. My ma was more devastated than me.”
“Ewan, I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Her strangled reply to my confession means little when there’s a bigger issue laying at our feet. “This means…” Darcy holds her chest and starts rocking. “If Callum is Sadie’s dad…”
That scum’s words storm through me:
Darcy is mine.
Her parents will force her to marry me.
I only met that lickarse for five seconds, but I know guys like that. He doesn’t want to be a father. He sounds like a brutal ass wipe who just wants to possess Darcy. Now he has ammunition.He’sSadie’s father.
“I have to get out of here.” Darcy grabs my shirt, her fingers scraping the skin underneath.
“Aye.” My protective instincts must be firing on all cylinders because I immediately turn hard as steel.
“I have to go with you. We have to leave. Now.”
I pull her against my chest again. “Shh… It’s okay, love… He doesn’t know. He won’t know. It will be our secret.” Thank fuck, he tipped me off that he’ll wait until I leave before asking Darcy for a paternity test.
