I don’t open it and I don’t need to because I already know.
Because suddenly everything snaps into place. His obsession with my schedule. His watchful eyes. The way he always asked if I’d taken my pill. The distraction in the bathroom in Colorado.
The fucking tweezers lie when I found him rummaging in my bag.
Oh God.
The breeding kink.
The way he loves to fall asleep with his dick in my pussy. So he can…he can…
A sudden wave of nausea hits me so hard I grip the seat to stay upright. I blink, blink again, forcing air into my lungs until the room slowly stops spinning.
I stumble back, every breath a scrape, and that’s when I see it—the half-open door down the hall. His music room…where he’s been writing songs to the baby he’s implanted inside me without my permission.
A faint light spills under the crack. I’m not even sure why something pulls me toward it before reason can stop me. Maybe the lyrics would give me a clue, tell me why I’ve fallen in love with a madman?
I push the door open and I freeze.
Zane is at the piano. His hair is messy and his shoulders are tense.
Music sheets are strewn all over the place but where he’s usually pinpoint focused, his eyes are unfocused, staring into the middle distance at something I can’t reach.
And in his hand, he’s holding a small onesie, the softest white cotton, tiny in his large, tattooed hand.
And as I stumble closer, I see there are more, folded with reverence on the closed lid of the piano.
And next to it, a stack of books. Parenting guides. Sleep training. Prenatal development.What To Expect?—
I can’t breathe.
I can’t move.
He presses a hand to the piano keys and plays a single note…the same note he plays when he’s overwhelmed. The same one he played after the first time I ever hummed in front of him.
He doesn’t notice me.
Or maybe he does — maybe he sensed me the second I stepped into the doorway, because his breath stumbles and his fingers curl over the keys.
“Baby?” he murmurs into the stillness, voice roughened by hope he can’t or doesn’t want to hide.
By something deeper.
Darker. Older than either of us.
I step backward. Slow…shaking.
He finally looks up.
And when his eyes land on me, a soft, devastating smile breaks across his face — slow, reverent, full of a rabid love that should feel beautiful but instead feels like a trap with silken walls. And I know he knows.
He’s seen the email. Received confirmation of what he’s done.
To me.
“Ruby,” he whispers, rising to his feet as fevered eyes drop. To my belly.
The room spins and my heart stutters as the email burns behind my eyes.
