Chapter Forty-Two Larissa #2
“Don’t,” I snap, willing the image his familiar scent conjures away, along with the false security it brings. There’s nothing familiar or secure about this man.
“You’re cold,” he objects.
“I’m fine,” I bite out as his eyes again lower to where Alexander and I connect. “Alexander is hot-natured, and I’ve come to embrace the cold.”
“He gets that from me,” he boasts low as I glance around the living room.
“She’s in her bassinet,” he reports, which I know is in his bedroom, my bedroom, as he continues.
“He was fussing so damned loud that I had to take him in here. Little hellraiser,” he muses, lips tilting up.
The look in his eyes one of a father’s pride.
A father’s love. The sight of it jarring as he swivels his pride-filled, loved-soaked eyes to mine.
“It’s like he’s got a fear of missing out. ”
Swallowing the sight of his look away, I hold my tone until I’m able to deliver one I can live with. It’s in staring back down at Alexander that I find everything I need. “He likes being lulled, stroked,” I murmur, running my fingers down his back as he watches dutifully. “He’s all about touch.”
“He gets that from me, too,” he emits roughly as I keep my eyes lowered.
Inhaling my son’s scent to calm my growing animosity, I detach Alexander, who briefly whines in protest as I switch breasts.
Wincing as he latches, when I sigh in relief, Tyler finally rips his absorbed gaze away.
We sit silently for several minutes until he breaks it. “Was it hard … the labor?”
His question lingers in the air as I force myself to see this interaction through, if only to avoid another.
“There were complications with me, but only me.” I run my pointer along the fresh gash on my thumb. The rest of my fingers equally tethered, I can feel it the second he notices the fading scratches on my shoulder.
“Complications with you, how?” he prods.
“Does it matter?” I shrug. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, it matters.”
“Says the man who was seconds from killing me to erase my bloodline from this earth,” I scoff. “More than once.”
“It was the biggest mistake of my life—”
“No,” I sharply inhale, furious with myself. “No. Let’s not talk about it. I shouldn’t have spoken of it.”
Another loaded silence passes until he starts to pry at the door I just sealed.
“Larissa, we have to talk about it at some point.”
“What’s done is done.”
“So, you allow me to come meet my children, but I can only fight for a place with them?”
When I remain mute, he keeps his intent stare, demanding my eyes and answer, until I’m forced to look up at him.
“You can’t truly expect a fucking conversation about this.”
“Expect? No. Fucking die for it? I almost did. Just for the chance to talk to you, and I would risk death for it again.”
“Pretty reckless words from a new father, don’t you think?”
“After what you admitted—”
“That was then,” I snap. “And has no place here.”
Alexander grips my finger, his eyes trained on me.
I keep mine staring right back at my boy, knowing he’ll grow strong and in the likeness of the man sitting across from me.
It’s in the eyes beneath a wall of dark lashes that I find the strength to speak without malice.
“I won’t allow my children to suffer as I have.
Everyone in your life believes you will be a worthy father. You fight for that, and only that.”
Silence ensues, demanding I look up once more to see him simmering with what looks like denial. This time, he doesn’t nod, which I know is his way of disagreeing without arguing with me. Even as I feel his slight retreat, his words oppose any idea he will.
“I’ll wait for another conversation, Larissa. I’ll wait for you to hear me. I’ll wait for you to—”
“You’ll wait in vain,” I issue in truth as I stroke my fingers down Alexander’s back. “There never was or will be anything real between us but our children.”
“There most definitely fucking was and still could be,” he counters instantly.
“Secrets,” I divert, “those we both excel at.”
“Because we’re both soldiers,” he pledges. “And did what we had to do, but that doesn’t mean—”
“He’s you, you know,” I interrupt as I take in Alexander’s brown eyes, the length of his lashes. “He will be you. He’ll behave like you. Talk like you. He will be you, Marine.”
“You think so?” He stares at us, tracing each of us so carefully, I can feel the caress of his eyes. A comfort I refuse for myself but allow for Alexander.
“I know so,” I state. “All you have to do is look. He’s got your eyes, nose, lips, and chin. He’s you. Physically, at least—I don’t know about his personality.”
“I want you to.”
Black wrath surges, but I mute it for the baby, knowing he can sense any unrest in me. “We have proved we can be in the same room for their sake. At least for a short time—what more do we need?”
“More,” he states emphatically, “there’s a lot to say, and you’ve hidden yourself from me the entire time I’ve—”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I whisper evenly, “I’ve been working with my family to harvest the grove.” The ache from that truth screams throughout my limbs as I glare at him. “You have no right to demand a conversation.”
“I’m not,” he cuts in, “I’m not demanding anything, and won’t, but I’m asking you to give me a chance to speak to what I’ve done. Without excuses—”
“It’s your selfishness,” I stamp out. “Or regret, or fucking pity, or whatever else has you pointlessly thinking I want your words. But that’s your need, not mine.
So, allow me to free you of that burden,” Alexander grips my finger, which has me pushing back just enough of the festering rage.
“You owe me nothing, and I want nothing from you. Your decision to be and remain a father is your choice.”
“I made that decision the second I saw those test results,” he replies instantly, “and I owe you everything. But know that I was coming to you before I saw it because I don’t pity you, Larissa. I respect you for how you survived what you have—”
“Including you?” I dart my glare at him as his eyes flutter closed.
“Especially me.”
“This is guilt,” I conclude.
“This is a lot of things.” He opens them just as quickly. “Will you tell me this much? Are you with him?”
“Babies can sense tension,” I say, standing up, and seeing my intent, Tyler quickly grabs his gun to make room.
After placing a sleeping Alexander in his bassinet, I begin rocking him with the intention of seeing this through.
“Rock him for a few minutes just after, and he’ll sleep for a few hours. ”
“Do you sleep?” he prompts softly, standing opposite me, hand on the bassinet as he rocks it gently. “Without nightmares, now that Ciro’s gone? I would give anything to know.”
Lifting the straps of my dress, I refasten it around my neck. “Tula was going to relay this to you, but I might as well. After all, your time is valuable, Marine.”
His eyes dim at my dismissal.
“You’re the right hand of the American president,” I continue without pause. “So, when your time is up here, resume your life as it was, and Tula will contact you when you can come back.”
Eyes beseeching mine, I feel a familiar rattle start to emanate from him.
“The opposite of love is indifference, not hate. I feel anger and resentment, but not indifference. Is there anything inside you that could trust me? Is there any part of you that wants to talk to me? I will never ask you to forgive me—”
“Secrets are what you hold onto so successfully”—I pin him with my glare—“and so if you want a place with your children, to father them, I charge you with this—Alexander and Macey are the secrets you will keep from everyone aside from your parents and the Ravens who already know.”
He pales. “What?”
“They are safer here than they’ll ever be in your ring of fire,” I continue. “Tula, a donna, successfully and safely raised nine children in this villa. Children who thrive to this day. Only two of them have chosen this life. Our children are safer here than they’ll ever be under your watch.”
“That’s—” He drops his head, cupping the back of his neck. “Fuck … I know that’s true,” he whispers, eyes shining with defeat. “And it’s more than I hoped for, thank you.”
I nod. “She will call for you again when I feel it’s safe to visit.”
“And Alonzo?”
“Is none of your fucking business,” I snap. “Nor will he ever be.”
“He’s not their father,” he relinquishes through clenched teeth.
“Maybe not, but he will guard them with his life, and you want that, Marine, even if you’ll resent him for it.”
Swallowing, eyes flaming with molten fury, he grudgingly nods.
“Those are my only terms,” I state, satisfied, before moving toward the door.
“I’ll accept them for now, but talk to me,” he urges, stepping forward to block me, “we can’t leave it like this.”
“You want a miracle?” I scoff. “Those don’t fucking exist. What Tula has with Capo is the exception. Every time I’ve bought into that foolish notion, I’ve become a laughingstock. Especially now, to myself, and I fucking hate you for it.”
“Truth,” he whispers with stinging eyes.
“And maybe I shouldn’t hold it against you, because it’s my own fault for buying into the fantasy, but no matter how it played out—” I lift my chin to him.
“I accept my fate.” I nod down to Alexander.
“They are all that matter to me. Go home when your time is up here, and keep your fucking secrets, or next time I will pull that trigger, Marine, and you’ll become a secret from them. ”
“Truth,” he utters brokenly, “but you didn’t pull it on me.”
“Because I thought I loved you,” I mock. “Even then, it truly hadn’t dawned on me how malevolent you are.”
“And now?”
“Now that I conceive of how brilliantly deceptive you are, I realize you were hiding in plain sight. I should have known. That’s the brilliance of you Ravens. The way you’ve always worked.”
“Because the best lies are mixed with the truth, and the truth is that some of it was fucking real,” he counters urgently. “Our babies are proof of that.”
“Our babies are proof that I fucked an unhinged man in the woods who was dead set on hating and killing me.”
“Jesus, you really believe that.”
“I should have believed the truth when you spoke it to me. If anything, I’m guilty of ignorance for want,” I say.
“I am too,” he states, “believe that.”
“You were never ignorant of anything, which is why I’m well acquainted with a side of you reserved for those you want to feel your wrath. Those you don’t love or care for—But your children will never see that side of you, will they?”
“Never,” he swears as an oath, “and you should know, need to know—you’re the only one alive who’s lived past knowing that side of me exists to that extent, Larissa.
There’s a reason for it. There’s a reason you survived it, and it’s because you were meant to know all of me,” he presses.
“Tell me, what did you think you saw when you were with me?”
“The stars,” I admit honestly. “And after, the idea of them, and what you saw and know—they are for those who believe in fairy tales. Thankfully, I’m all grown up now.”
“Larissa, don’t think I wasn’t—”
Macey’s cries interrupt his ramblings, and my body instantly reacts, breasts aching as I palm them. Tyler’s eyes instantly drop as I fight my need to flee his presence and lies, instead shifting my footing as her father remains in my path.
“Move,” I rush out as I catch the heave of his chest with his slow inhale, and lift my eyes to see his blazing with desire before he rapidly starts to confess.
“I blinked out after you left me on the ground,” he offers as I press past him, and he follows, pushing more words out as he trails me. “I saw you walking the grove, palming your belly, talking to our baby. I’ve been here, with you, the whole time.”
Ignoring the desperation in his tone—the same that’s haunted me for months since his confession in the grove—I stalk down the hall, stopping abruptly at the closed bedroom door just as Macey’s cries stop.
On my heels, when his chest bumps into my back, he doesn’t free me.
Instead, he surrounds me with the hard lines of his body and his scent as his breath hits my neck.
“I won’t dare ask you for forgiveness, but … can you try to understand I was too faithless in everything by the time you got to me to believe it was so simple? I couldn’t believe in you, Larissa. Couldn’t risk everyone I loved for a woman who could cost them all their lives.”
Palming the door jam, he presses in, engulfing me in his radiating heat.
Craning my head, I see his lips an inch away.
The span of his black lashes fluttering as his eyes blaze into me.
A fast pulse ticking in his jaw as he speaks.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel every second of what happened.
The only thing I truly faked was my immunity to you.
Walk away from me today knowing that much. ”
“I’m the mother of your children, Marine, nothing more. Accept it.”
“You’re my miracle.” His lips skim my ear as I push past him, his declaration following me down the hall, threatening to restoke the burn in my chest. A burn I was forced to bury while it was still on fire.
With every liberating step away, I reinforce the barricade I forged just after that burial.
My blockade made mentally whole by the time I exit the villa.
Every word he spoke becoming more meaningless as my heated skin cools in remembrance of his actions.
Even if, for our children, I want to believe some of his remorse is genuine, I can’t and won’t for myself.
Ever.