My vision tunnels.
The noise in my skull ramps up faster than I can manage. The lights flicker and tremors seize my hands.
She sees it all happen. And she turns away anyway.
“Ruby—” It’s a roar torn from my soul.
Security lifts their hands, not touching her but to forming a wall in front of me.
My breath saws in and out as every instinct in me screams to push through them, take her back upstairs, put her in my arms and beg until she forgives me.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe.
I barely hear the sound growing in my head until I work it out.
Footsteps echo down the hall. A presence that twists the air. A soft, knowing hum. But it’s not hers. Not my Ruby’s.
Mama.
But Ruby doesn’t see her yet because Ruby is sobbing as she tosses her bag to the side. And runs away from me, down the hall.
Slams the first door she finds and the turning of the lock is loud enough to thunder through me.
And I stand there in the center of the foyer, heart shredding inside my chest, the silence enormous, terrible, absolute…
While the woman I love breaks apart behind a locked door.
25
CARNAGE
RUBY
Ilock the door, twist the bolt so hard it scrapes metal, and stumble back until my spine hits the far wall.
My heart is pounding in a frantic, uneven rhythm, my breath coming too fast and too shallow to do anything but feed the panic tearing through me.
The room is silent except for the ragged sound I’m making, and the muffled chaos outside—Zane demanding, security refusing, my name snapped like a warning then like a plea.
I slide down the wall, knees pulled up and hands shaking so badly I can barely hold myself together.
And when it comes, the sobs that surge out of me feel like they’re ripping me from the inside out.
I never cry. Humming was always my coping mechanism.
Zane Fucking Draven has ruined that too for me now.
So what? From here on out, I’m going to be a slobbering fool every time I’m in pain? The thought makes me cry harder, because this pain? It’s real as fuck and relentless and twisting deeper with every breath.
Because the truth is spilling faster than I can hold it in.
I’m pregnant…because he replaced my pills…tracked my cycle, then sabotaged my choice.
And I loved him. I still?—
God.
It hurts so much I can’t breathe.
