“Big ones.” She holds out her hand. Leo abandons the truck and grabs her fingers, and Shelby walks with him to the doorway.
“We’ll be in my room.” She scoops up Leo into her arms. “Take your time.”
She carries my son out the door. Duke closes it behind her.
We’re alone.
He leans against the dresser. Crosses his arms.
I’m nervous. Really nervous.
His face is all wrong. Not angry. It’s worse. He looks hurt.
I don’t say anything. I give him the space to speak when he’s ready, but every few seconds, I glance at his face, trying to read him.
Duke unfolds his arms. His hands lock around the edge of the dresser on either side of his hips, and his knuckles are white. “Leo is mine.”
I forget how to breathe. “Duke...”
“He’s mine, Violet.” His chin lifts. “Same eyes. Same fucking birthmark. I did the math. You were pregnant when you left.”
My hands go flat on the mattress. He figured it out before I had a chance to tell him. This is not how I planned for this to happen.
“How long?” Low, rough, scraped raw. “How long were you going to let me think he belonged to someone else?”
“I don’t know.” It comes out cracked. Useless. “I don’t know, Duke. I was scared.”
“Scared.” He pushes off the dresser. One step toward me. The room shrinks to nothing. “You were scared, so you took my kid and disappeared. You let me spend years thinking you left. That I wasn’t enough. You let me believe you found someone better and had his baby and built a life without me.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Then you came back. You’ve been lying to my face since the second you drove into this town.”
Tears are running down my face. I swipe them with my knuckles, and it doesn’t help. More come.
“Why?” He’s close enough to touch. “Tell me why, and make it make sense. I’m about to lose my fucking mind.”
“You never talked about the future.” It tears out of me before I can organize it, raw and messy. “We spent almost every night together for years, Duke. I asked you. I brought it up, and you changed the subject, kissed me, or told me we were good. Twoyears ofwe’re good, and I never knew if that meant forever or until you got bored.”
He stares at me. “I was with you every night I could be.”
“I know.”
“My bike was at your apartment so often that your neighbor thought I lived there. I brought you food. I fixed your car. I held you when you couldn’t sleep. You met my mom. And yeah, we were good. What the fuck did you think that meant?”
“I thought it meant you liked having someone to come home to. I didn’t know if it meant more than that. You never said.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I needed you to say it.” My nails cut into my palms. I’m sitting on the edge of his bed, and he’s standing over me. “And when I found out I was pregnant, I was alone in a bathroom with a positive test and a man who’d never once told me I was his. So I panicked, and I ran.”
He’s quiet. His breathing is ragged, and his body is rigid, and he’s standing so close I have to stop myself from reaching out to him.
“That’s not all of it,” he says.
He’s right. It’s not.
“Your life, Duke.” I swallow hard. “You’re a one-percenter. You’re part of an outlaw MC. You have enemies. I was twenty-three and pregnant, and I couldn’t picture raising a baby in a world where his father might not come home.”