“I feel a lot of things right now...”
“I’m sorry,” Reid blurted it out before the courage left him. Hewassorry. He was sorry when she drove away from him two months ago, when he saw nothing but red for the next several days; he was sorry when he finally caught up with Santino and maimed him, deciding to let the fucker live the rest of his life as half a man in a prison system he’d never escape from. Sorry that he hurt her. Reid was a lot of things then but life moved on, and eventually, that life picked him up and took him with it.
She stared at him, her violet eyes sad and wide, and it stabbed him in the heart. The silence killed him.
“I love you,” he said.
Tears trickled down her cheeks. Reid watched her cry and when the silence bore on, he mustered up enough courage to catch some of her tears with his fingertips. “You really are beautiful when you cry,” he whispered.
“I think it’s the pregnancy,” she sobbed, dramatically, and the floodgates opened up in full force. “It’s not because of you. I’m not crying because of you!”
He snorted, unable to help it, and lifted her from her seat to hold in his arms. The way he wished he had months ago when he had her in his bed—and filled with his seed.
Clara buried her face in his chest as he held her, smelling her delicious scent, made only for him, and petted her hair.
“You really are a horrible, nasty liar,” she sniffled out.
“Not anymore. Not when it comes to you.”
“How can I believe anything you say?”
“Because I’m going to make it up to you every damn day for the rest of our lives. Even if you don’t believe me now, you’ll believe me soon.”
She lifted her face from his chest and looked up at him. Reid brushed the loose tendrils of her hair behind her ears, relishing the silken feel of it against his skin.
I forgot how much I missed this.
“But you’re leaving...”
He caught her chin and pressed his lips to hers. “Come with me,” he begged.Please come with me. I can’t be without you. I can’t live without my pack.The press of her swollen belly made his heart skip a beat. Reid knew if he lost her, it would be the end of him. His soul had been broken too many times when he was young; he knew he couldn’t go through it again—the solitude, the loneliness, the endless, tormenting need to have someone belong to him, and to belong to another.
No matter how human he looked or how much metal was in his body, he was still a mutt at heart. A dog that wanted a family to protect because they were his. The years had made him into a mongrel, but they had also led him on the path toher.He looked into her bottomless violet eyes, and only saw himself reflected in them.
“I can’t leave Earth,” she said.
Reid brushed the tip of his nose against hers. “You can.”
“I’ll never be allowed to.” Her voice was sad.
“You will.”
Clara turned her face and looked out the musty window and he slid his fingers over her damp cheek, over the bridge of her ear, slipping his fingers into her hair and cupping her head. Her hair fell in waves from its band.
“Do you have a spaceship?”
“I do,” he said. She glanced back at him, eyes alight.
“You do?”
Reid chuckled. “A damn decent one too. What kind of Cyborg would I be if I didn’t have my own ship?”
She sniffled but laughed with him. “A normal one? Making a normal living wage? One who apparently wasn’t ungodly rich and can afford his own spacecraft!”
“Yeah, well, this doctor knows how to doctor anything. Even getting a pregnant female off Earth.”
Clara sobered again at his words. “Even so. I wouldn’t be able to leave without processing. I’ve looked into it... a lot, and even if we were—” Her lips went thin.
“Married?” he finished.
