I bury my face in my hands, choking on everything at once—rage, betrayal, grief, heartbreak, the humiliating realization that I saw the signs and still walked straight into the fire.
No, I wasn’t so blind as maybe stupidly hopeful.
Or willfully blind because every instinct I had from day one told me he was dangerous, obsessive, and wired to consume anything he decided was his.
How do you even come back from that?
Do I even want to?
My stomach knots when something inside me whispersyes.
I hate that voice. It should be outraged.
It should be screaming at me to plot revenge, to burn his mansion to the ground, to unleash my own feral storm against this rockstar monster, this shameless manipulator, this…
This man.
This man who is the father of my baby.
My breath stutters as a new sensation floods me, and God, it’s sharp and terrifying and reverent.
My hand drifts to my stomach before I can stop it.
My baby.
It’s the first time I’ve let myself frame it that way and something inside me lurches. I press my palm gently over my belly, fingers trembling as if the slightest pressure might disturb a secret still too new to understand.
A soft sound catches in my throat, grief and awe braided together.
And that’s when the door knob rattles. “Ruby.”
He’s not shouting or furious. Hell, he’s not unhinged. It’s soft and wrecked. And I find myself listening when I should be screaming.
“I know you hate me,” he says. “But I can’t bear to hear you cry. Baby, please. Come out and talk to me.”
I shake my head, even though he can’t see me.
His presence hovers and the air shifts. And then— A knock.
Again it doesn’t sound like Zane’s. Three gentle taps, a pause, then two more. “Ruby?”
Mama Draven.
Of course. She was his hinge before I came along. Makes sense she’d be here now when I’m…leaving.
Are you?
“Sweet girl,” she calls gently. “The air in this house changed. I felt it the moment the frequencies shifted.”
I almost laugh. Hysterically. Of course she did. “Go away,” I manage, voice hoarse. “Please. Just…just give me a minute.”
Another pause. Then, “Minutes don’t stop storms, sweetheart. They only delay the lightning.”
I wipe my face on my sleeve, shaky and soaked. “Please,” I whisper. “I can’t do this right now.”
There’s a soft shuffle of fabric and the quiet scrape of someone sitting on the other side of the door.
She isn’t leaving.
