38. Reid
Chapter thirty-eight
Reid
Genevieve sat before me, perched so small on that metal stool, hands shaking, eyes already glossed with fear she couldn’t hide.
My heart clenched before I could stop it, an involuntary reaction I’d spent the last few weeks trying to kill.
If three years apart hadn’t managed to cauterize the wound she left inside me, I was a fool for thinking confinement would.
I wasn’t supposed to feel anything when I saw her. Not wanting, resentment, especially not hope. Because hope was the exact thing that would ruin me.
Ruin her and whatever fragile thread existed between us.
And that’s what I’d told myself, over and over. And the second I sat down, the second she lifted that phone, something in me hardened.
I told myself I wouldn’t soften, wouldn’t let her see what her absence had done to me or feel anything when I saw her. I had to push her away somehow. I had to find a way to distance myself from her.
Because I was in federal custody. The elites behind these walls were watching everything… Always watching me, now her. As of right then, I was not the powerful arrogant bastard that stormed back into her life.
I was contained leverage, an asset being re-assessed until they decided what they wanted from me.
But the moment her voice cracked, all those empty promises went to hell.
The moment she cried, I felt the urge to reach through the glass to hold her, to storm over to the guard and knock him clean out for even allowing her in to see me like this.
I was ready to break every rule in this building and every rule I’d tried setting for myself to get to her.
Every strategy I constructed in my mind to keep her away from me fell apart the longer she cried. And I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her crying from in here.
At some point it was no use lying to myself either. Because I still wanted things I had no right wanting. Still wanted the family I was deprived of and the son who already looked at me like I meant the world to him. I wanted the woman I’d dreamed of every night since I met her until now.
I couldn’t let her hear those thoughts, clinging to the idea of us. Not while I was locked away and she was drowning in chaos. The men who put me in here could turn her into collateral without blinking.
But I couldn’t fucking let her go either.
Eventually, something in her expression shifted. Then her voice wavered, barely audible through the receiver. “Reid… I have to tell you something.”
My chest tightened, but I kept eyes on her as she mustered up the courage to say it.
“I’m pregnant.”
And my world went silent.
Genevieve. My Vieve. Pregnant. Again.
My pulse roared in my ears. My grip on the phone tightened, my breathing growing labored. Behind the glass, she looked afraid, like she expected me to reject her, ridicule her, do something to make her even more afraid than she was now…
None of those instincts came. What came was darker. I dragged my gaze down her body, slow, involuntary, hungry… like I could already see it.
See the change. What was mine. If this glass wasn’t here, she’d already be bent over the table after that confession. My voice was low when it finally came out, steady only because I forced it to be.
“…How far along?”
Her lips parted in a shaky exhale. “Seven to nine weeks.”
My Adam’s apple bobbed in my throat. My eyes flicked to her stomach, then to her neck, then back to her eyes. I couldn’t explain the rush of emotions surging through me. Happiness, anger, lust, joy, it all felt like a blur the faster my heart pounded in my chest.
And then she uttered the words that made it go still:
“I-I don’t know who the father is.”
Her voice cracked, barely above a whisper, and I was rendered silent. Because I knew the timeline. I knew the truth behind her hesitation.
She’d slept with Gregory once, out of obligation and performance that same night I watched her come undone from my gaze alone.
And after that? I was the only man inside her.
The only man claiming her when her fiancé couldn’t even satisfy her.
We both knew what that meant. But the implication…
that sliver of possibility she still clung to for the sake of her image, her safety, the Newman legacy, the fucking press watching her every move… that was the part that mattered here.
I saw it all on her face. The hesitation, and fear. Hope she didn’t know how to express, excitement she tried to bury, guilt she didn’t deserve but carried anyway.
And I knew what I had to do. I had to say what needed to be said, the words that would put the much needed distance between us, protect her from me, from this place, from the men watching my every move.
“I don’t want to know.”
She blinked like she hadn’t heard me correctly. “What?”
My jaw clenched. “When you eventually find out… don’t tell me who the father is.”
Her throat bobbed, trembling with emotion. “Why?”
My grip strangled the phone.
Because if it’s mine, I’ll break out of here to get to you.
If it’s Gregory’s, I’d probably do the same.
Either answer would destroy us and I can’t let hope devour me while I’m trapped behind bars.
Wanting her, that baby, the little family she always dreamed of would make me reckless in ways I couldn’t afford in here.
“Because knowing won’t change anything while I’m in here.”
“You don’t know that.”
But I did. I knew exactly what knowing would do to me. What it was already doing.
“Reid… Please.” Her tone was pleading now, but I didn’t give into it.
“Genevieve.” The mask was back, settling over everything that had cracked open in the last hour. “Go home.”
She was still talking when I set the phone down. I didn’t let myself look at her hand when it pressed against the glass.
I didn’t turn back as I stood. Nodding to the guard, I walked away from her for the second time in my life, telling myself it was the right thing to do, reminding myself I couldn’t be a part of her anymore, that I couldn’t want her anymore.
But this time… I wasn’t so sure I believed myself.