Pregnant.
He moves toward me like he always does — certain, steady, unstoppable.
I stumble back again and the asshole has the audacity to be startled. “Baby?”
I shake my head once. A tiny, trembling movement. “Are you actually serious right now?”
He freezes. Looks around, confused.
And for the first time since I’ve known him, Zane Draven doesn’t know what to do.
“Just tell me one thing, Zane. Did you plan it right from the beginning? Or when it dawned on you that I was the one woman who might be strong enough to walk away from you?”
24
THE BREAKING POINT
ZANE
It was the soft ping of the email on my phone that woke me.
I don’t even remember reaching for it or unlocking the screen. Don’t remember opening the message the doctor sent at dawn.
All I remember is the breath leaving my lungs in one long, shuddering rush when the words jumped out at me.
Positive. Early pregnancy. Further testing recommended.
For a few stunned heartbeats, I just stared at the ceiling, the room too still, too bright, too fragile.
Then the surge hit me, a rush of emotion so big I almost choked on it.
It was a fist to the ribs.
A baby.
Our baby.
Ruby and me.
A life made out of the one thing I haven’t damaged with my flaws.
I reached for her instinctively, ready to pull her into me, bury my face in her neck, and tell her everything—how the secondI saw the result, something inside me clicked into place. How every word I’d ever written, every song I’d ever screamed into a microphone, suddenly made sense because I finally knew what I’d been trying to say.
But she wasn’t in bed.
The sheets were warm where she’d been but I knew she hadn’t gone far.
I should have gone looking for her. Instead, I stumbled to the piano with my phone clutched in my hand, trying to put the storm inside me into music.
The thoughts poured out too fast, too thick. Every line I tried to write turned into something meant for a child that didn’t even know I existed yet.
I didn’t hear her come in but I felt her in the sharp air and the quieter breath.
But the shift in the room?
Yeah, that snapped every fucking nerve in my body into focus. It was a shift that demanded my attention.
So I turned, and Jesus Fucking Christ…her face—her face guts me. Tabulated every sin I’d ever committed and condensed it into beautiful doom.
