Reid strokes my back as his arms encircle me. “When you caught me taking a strand of your hair the first time we met, I took another I’d spotted on your shoulder.”
The confession might have made me laugh, or hit him under other circumstances, but not today. Today it’s the reason I get to bring my sister home. “Can we find a way to get her body back?”
“Mace can make it happen.”
I take a breath, thinking that’s the worst of it, but Reid’s looking down. When his gaze comes back to me, the pain in his features has only intensified. He’s making my legs tremble for the second time today.
“Quinn, the autopsy showed she’d been dead for at least a year.”
The violent stab to my heart has me swaying. I’d fall if it wasn’t for Reid holding me up. “Ilya must have killed her not long after our argument.” My horrible, nasty words would have been ringing in my sister’s ears when she died.
When Reid shakes his head, I’m too absorbed with grief and guilt to process his warning. I’m not prepared for the next shock.
“Strider questioned the timelines, so Mace took a look at the AI chat Ilya set up to trap you,” Reid says. “The very first conversation was from a year ago. It was your argument with Blake. It wasn’t real, Quinn.”
My body jerks as if I’ve been physically struck. “No!” I gasp. “It can’t be.”
“She was already gone.”
As my world tilts, I try to wriggle free from Reid’s grasp, but he doesn’t let me go.
“Your sister wanted to escape, but Ilya was never going to let her go,” he says softly. “All those things you thought you said to her, you were saying it to a computer-generated ghost, nothing more.”
I fist his shirt, pulling almost hard enough to pop the buttons. “It doesn’t matter! I still wanted to say them. If anything, this is worse. I said all those horrible things… I said she was dead to me… And she already was.”
Reid hooks one arm around me while his fingers hook under my chin, forcing me to hold his gaze. Forcing me to still. “Listen to me, Quinn. The AI prompts Ilya used for the conversation were to provoke you into an argument. I know you’ve spent a long time fixating on what you said in that call, but the AI Blake said some pretty foul things to you first. You can see the transcript if–”
“No, I can’t… I can’t endure that again.”
“That’s OK, I don’t want you to go through it either. But I’ve just read it,” he explains. “Do you trust me?”
As I nod, the first heavy tear trickles down my cheek.
“Then take my word for it. The conversation was designed to escalate. You were being primed to say things you would never have said to your sister. You and she didn’t have that argument. You wouldneverhave had that argument. She didn’t die thinking you hated her. She died knowing you were right to tell her to get away from Ilya,” Reid says, his voice scratching. “She knew you’d go to the ends of the earth to save her. And she knew how much you loved her.”
I don’t want to accept what he’s saying. I want to suffer the punishment I think I deserve, and if anyone else had tried to convince me, I’d refuse to listen. But this is Reid. Atthis moment, I trust what he’s saying more than I trust my own judgement.
“Tell me I’ll be able to forgive myself,” I beg. “Because I just can’t feel it yet.”
He rests his forehead against mine. “You will,” he promises.
I tip my head and Reid’s lips find mine. I let him kiss me, and as he relaxes into it, so do I. His grip moves to the back of my legs and as he scoops me up, I wrap my arms and legs around him. I kiss him until I run out of breath.
“You deserve to be loved, Quinn,” he whispers as he carries me down the corridor. “Your sister loved you. I love you. My family loves you. And our baby’s going to love you too.”
I blink away my tears. “We have to get to our appointment.”
“Already on our way.”
The gel is cold and I hold my breath as a doppler is pressed to my stomach. Reid grips my hand tightly as the grainy image we’re watching on screen shows little more than a snow storm.
“You’re allowed to breathe,” the sonographer says. Katie is middle-aged, and I imagine she’s carried out hundreds of these scans, but her eyes light up when she finds a dark blob. “There’s our baby.”
Goosebumps prick my arms as I turn to Reid. “Our baby,” I repeat.
Reid’s eyes glisten as he nods.
Neither of us speak again as Katie continues with the scan, freezing images and taking measurements. She’ssmiling when she’s done. Turning her attention to us, she points out a tiny pulsating blob on screen. “That’s baby’s heartbeat.”
