Page 123 of Vow to Claim You

His expression hardens, and I frown faintly, searching for what I’m missing.

“She said he was obsessed with her. That she didn’t want⁠—”

“He raped her.”

The words ring through the silence long after he’s finished speaking.

I stop breathing. Everything stops. The snow. My heartbeat. The whole spinning world.

“She didn’t want him.” His voice stays flat, as though dulling every edge is the only way he can force the words past his throat. “She loved another man. She refused Vidar. Told him no.” His jaw flexes, clenched so tightly I swear I can hear his teeth grind. “He took what he wanted anyway.”

He looks back through the window.

“She got pregnant. With me.” His tone hardens. “The child she never wanted. From the worst night of her life.”

My heart aches so much I don’t even know what to say. Or whether I should say anything at all.

“She stayed long enough to give birth. Then she ran.” The tendons in his neck tighten as he swallows. “Saved herself.”

His eyes come back to mine.

“And left me behind.”

“Aric—”

“Do you understand what that means?”

It isn’t really a question. He takes a step toward me—just one, but it feels like a collision.

“Every time she’d have looked at me,” he says, “she’d have seen his face. The monster’s face. The night he—” He exhales as though to pause, unable to keep going. “How do you hold a child that’s the product of the worst thing that ever happened to you?” His voice frays at the edges. “The product of rape. That’s what I am.”

I’m crying. I don’t know when it started. The tears are just there, trailing down my cheeks.

“My father had one lesson he cared about teaching me.” His voice darkens, his gaze sinking somewhere far beyond me. “Love makes you weak. Attachment gets you killed. A man is made by carving the softness out of the boy he used to be.” The memory hollows his expression.

He drags a hand through his hair, and when he looks at me again, whatever’s left of him is barely holding.

“So you want to know what I’m afraid of?” He takes a heavy breath before continuing. “I don’t know if I can love you the way you deserve, Ayanna. I was raised by a man who beat every instinct I have into me. And the only person who might’ve shown me something different left me on the floor the day I was born.”

His lips press into a thin line. A faint shake of his head follows.

“I’m afraid whatever he made of me can’t be undone. That one day you’ll look at me and realize there’s too much of him left in me.”

I close the distance between us. My hands lift, cup his face, and force him to look at me. His skin is warm under my palms. His eyes are wary, braced, waiting for me to flinch now that I know the full shape of what he is.

Product of rape. Unwanted child. A monster’s face.

This is not what he is.

“You are not your father,” I tell him. “You are not what he did. You are not how you were made. You are not the violence that created you, or the abandonment that came after.”

His eyes close for a fraction, then settle back on mine.

“You were a child, Aric. An innocent child. You didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t choose any of it. And your mother leaving⁠—”

I swallow hard, my heart breaking quietly beneath the weight of every word.

“That wasn’t about you. That was survival. She was broken, and she was trying to get out alive. Maybe it was the wrong choice, or maybe it was the only one she had left—but either way.” My thumbs brush his cheekbones, wiping away something I pretend not to notice. “It wasn’t because you were unlovable. It was because she was destroyed. And destroyed people make impossible choices. That was never your fault. Never.”