Chapter 16
NICK
The quiet afterward is different this time. Calmer. Steadier, now that the fracture that had opened between us last night is smoothed over. What’s left in its place feels stronger than what was there before.
Everything feels different, softer, on the heels of the news that Avery is pregnant.
Her body is warm against mine, her breathing slow and even. I start to ease myself from behind her, and she makes a soft sound of protest, her fingers tightening where she holds onto me.
"Stay here," I tell her, pressing my mouth to her shoulder. "I'll be right back."
In the bathroom, I run water into the tub and adjust the temperature until it's right. Warm enough to soothe, not hot enough to overwhelm. I add a few drops of the bath oil she keeps in the cabinet, the subtle floral scent rising with the steam.
When I return to the bedroom, she's watching me from the pillows, golden hair tangled, skin still flushed.
The sheet has slipped to her waist, and the sight of her bare breasts, the soft curve of her stomach, sends a pulse of heat through me even now.
My body's response to her is reflexive. Constant.
I'm not sure there will ever be a moment when I look at this woman and don't want her.
I hold out my hand. "Come here."
She takes it without hesitation, letting me pull her up and steady her when she sways.
I lead her into the adjoining bathroom, which is humid and warm with steam.
I help her into the water first, my hand firm on her arm as she steps over the edge and sinks down with a sigh that travels straight through me.
Then I slide in behind her, and she settles back against my chest with a contented little moan.
“Mm, this is nice,” she says, resting her head back against my shoulder.
She relaxes naked and warm in the circle of my arms, water lapping at our skin. My legs bracket hers, and my hands find her waist, holding her close while the heat seeps into both of us.
My cock has had more than its fill, but it responds to the feel of her like it always does. The pressure of her round ass pressed against me is a torment I’m happy to endure.
I reach for the soap and work it between my palms before running my hands over her shoulders, down her arms, across the planes of her back.
She sighs again, deeper this time, and sinks into my touch.
Trusting me completely. Surrendering the way she does when we're alone, when the world can't reach us.
My hands drift lower. Find her belly.
I pause there, my palms spread against the soft skin where our child is growing. Five weeks. Our child is barely anything yet, but the knowledge of it reshapes everything I thought I understood about my life.
Avery’s hands cover mine, gently holding me against her.
For a moment there's only this. The warmth of the water. Her body in my arms. The impossible reality of what we've made together settling into my bones.
But my mind won't stay quiet. It never does.
The fear has been circling since she first pressed my hand to her stomach and said the word that changed everything. I've been holding it at a distance, refusing to examine it too closely while we found our way back to each other. Now, in the stillness, it pushes forward and demands attention.
I think about my father. The way he looked at me when I was young, after my mother died, as if I was a problem he hadn't asked for and didn't know how to solve.
The silence that could stretch for days.
The other times, when instead of ignoring me he would erupt with angry words that came without warning.
At least he never touched me—other than that terrible night when I came to him with a truth I’d been holding inside me for too long, and in a fit of drunken anger he struck me. Sent me through a pane of glass at our modest little house in Key Largo.
My past had a monster much worse than my father and his grief-borne neglect. A monster whose crimes surpassed volatile tempers or drunken fists. The damage my grandfather inflicted had been carved into my father's soul and then, later, perpetrated on me.
Two generations of men who destroyed what they should have protected.
Now I’m going to be responsible for another. My child. And the thought that terrifies me most isn't the danger that might come from outside. It's the danger that might already live inside me.
Avery shifts against me, her thumb tracing slow circles on the back of my hand where it rests on her belly. “You’re too quiet. Is everything okay?" Her voice is soft, but it cuts through the spiral of my thoughts. "Talk to me, Nick."
I could deflect. I could tell her it's nothing. But we promised each other no more lies, and this fear that’s simmering in the pit of my stomach is only building. I can’t allow it to poison this moment or corrode any others. Avery deserves more than that. Our child does too.
"I don't know how to do this." The confession is thick in my mouth, my voice a low rasp. "I never learned how a father is supposed to be. All I know is what I don’t want to be."
Avery's quiet. Waiting. Giving me space to find the rest of it.
"What if it's in me?" My jaw tightens against the admission. "The violence. The destructiveness. I know I’ll never be what my grandfather was. But what if our child looks at me one day with the same fear and pain that I felt around my father?"
The water is still around us. She hasn't moved, hasn't pulled away from the ugliness I'm showing her.
"What if I'm already broken in ways that can't be fixed?"
She turns in my arms. Water sloshes against the sides of the tub as she repositions herself, her thighs sliding over mine until she's straddling my lap, facing me.
Her breasts press against my chest, her hands come up to frame my face, and even through the weight of everything I just said, my body registers the press of her naked against me.
The heat of her center so close to where I'm already half-hard again despite everything.
Her eyes hold mine. That clear green gaze that sees through every wall I've ever built.
"You want to know what I think?"
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"I think you're the only one who doesn't see what I see." Her thumbs stroke my cheekbones. "You know what a bad parent looks like, Nick. You lived it. And every single day, you make choices to be the opposite of that."
I start to shake my head, but she holds me still.
"I'm not finished." There's steel beneath the softness now.
"Those kids in Chelsea, at the rec center.
The ones in Key Largo at the sailing school you built.
You don't just write checks. You show up.
You see yourself in them, and you refuse to let them fall the way you almost did.
That's not a man who doesn't know how to be a father. "
"That's different."
"Is it?" She tilts her head. "Because I think it's exactly the same. You're already showing our child who you are, Nick. You're showing our baby right now, with every choice you make."
The resistance in me wants to argue. It wants to list all the ways she's wrong, all the evidence that points to the damage being too deep. But her certainty is unshakeable. Her faith in me makes it harder to hold onto my own doubt.
"I'm scared too," she says. "You think I know how to do this? I’m still learning how to take care of me. As for my childhood, it was nothing close to perfect. I made mistakes I'm still paying for."
She's never put it to me that way before. The cost of her own survival. She carries it so well it’s easy for me to forget everything she went through to become the strong, resilient woman I love.
She touches my face. "I look at Tasha with Zoe and AJ, and I think, how does anyone make this look easy? How does anyone know what they're doing?" A small, rueful smile crosses her lips. "We're both terrified, Nick. That's probably how it's supposed to be."
I release a short breath, considering everything she’s saying. “I don’t like feeling I don’t have control of the situation.”
"I know you don’t, but here's the difference.
" Her hands slide from my face to my shoulders, her fingers pressing into the muscle there.
"You already know what you won't do. You know what your child needs to be protected from because you lived without that protection.
You'll spend your whole life making sure they never feel what you felt. "
I want to believe her. Want it so badly the ache of it spreads through my chest.
Her gaze holds mine, more intense than I’ve ever seen it. "Our child is going to have a father who loves them completely. Who protects them fiercely. Who believes them when they speak."
Her voice catches on that last word, and I know she's thinking of the moment I told my own father what his father was doing to me. The moment he called me a liar and looked the other way.
"You will never be him, Nick. Neither one of them. You couldn't be if you tried."
The conviction in her voice is absolute. And something in me cracks open enough to let it in.
I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her, burying my face against her neck. She holds me back just as tightly, her fingers threading through my hair, her body warm and solid and real.
"I don't deserve you," I mutter against her skin.
"Yes, you do." I can hear the smile in her voice. "And that’s a good thing, because you're stuck with me anyway."
The tension in my chest releases another degree. Not gone entirely, but manageable now. Shared.
I lift my head, and she pulls back enough to meet my eyes. The steam has curled tendrils of hair around her face, and I brush one back, tucking it behind her ear.
"There's something else," I say, my voice quiet. "Last night. The Rennick thing." I force myself to hold her gaze. "You were right. It wasn't just about protecting you."
Her expression doesn't change, but I feel her attention sharpen.
"If they were willing to dig into your past, your mother, Martin Coyle, all of it, they'd dig into mine too. It's what these people do. They find the wound and they press until it bleeds."
My hands have tightened on her hips without my conscious decision. I make myself ease the grip before I bruise her delicate skin.
"My father. My grandfather. What was done to me.
" The words feel like glass in my throat.
I take a breath, then blow it out slowly.
“I've spent my entire life making sure I was protected. Building walls. Controlling what people see. The money, the power, the reputation. The shadow mogul, right? That’s what the press likes to call me.
It's all armor. And the thought of having it stripped away, of standing naked in front of the world with my worst damage on display. .. Fuck."
"That's what drove the response," she says quietly. It's not a question.
I nod slowly. "When you accused me of making it about control, you were right. But it wasn't about controlling you. It was about controlling what can never be exposed about me."
She's silent for a long moment. Processing. I watch her face, trying to read what's happening behind those gentle, yet strong, eyes.
"You built those walls to survive," she says finally. "They kept you safe when nothing else would. When the people who should have protected you were the ones hurting you."
“Yes.”
Her hand comes up to touch my jaw. "I understand now.
But you need to understand this. You don't have to carry that alone anymore.
Whatever anyone might dig up, whatever they expose, we face it together.
Your past isn't your shame, Nick. It's proof of everything you survived.
Everything you became despite what was done to you. "
She holds my gaze, her eyes fierce and unflinching.
"I still don't want a hundred people to lose their jobs because of one ugly story. But now I understand why you feel the way you do." A tender look softens her lovely face. "So, do what you need to. Protect yourself however you decide. Protect us. I trust you to know how far is too far."
The weight of what she's giving me settles into my chest. The permission. The understanding. The steadfast support. All the things I didn't know I needed until she offered them.
I pull her against me and kiss her, slow and deep, tasting the salt on her lips and the promise beneath it.
Her fingers curl into my shoulders, and for a moment there's nothing but this.
The heat of her mouth. The press of her body.
The future opening up in front of us, terrifying and beautiful and ours.
When we finally break apart, she settles against me again, her cheek on my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck. The water has cooled, but neither of us moves to get out. Not yet.
My hand finds her belly again. Rests there.
"I'm going to protect you both. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs."
Her hand covers mine on her stomach.
"I know," she murmurs. "That's who you are."
I press a kiss to her hair and let myself breathe.
Tonight, everything that seemed broken has been mended.
Tonight, everything is beginning again.