Chapter 23
THE FRACTURE POINT
RUBY
The flight back to LA is quiet.
Humming with harmony, quiet in that way people grow quiet when they’re full of something they can’t say aloud yet. For me, it’s the too-heavy weight of the love I have for this man. The weight I’ve accepted as inevitable.
I love Zane Draven.
Zane keeps my hand in his, thumb stroking absently along the inside of my wrist where our tattoos meet, but his mind is somewhere far away.
I can see it in the way his jaw works, slow and relentless. In how he keeps pulling me closer, as if the altitude is trying to steal me and he refuses to let go.
Europe is behind us in a whirlwind of filming, sex, late-night confessions, and dizzying closeness.
London already feels like a dream I’m terrified of waking from.
And yet…
LA looms like a beautiful reckoning, filled with terrifying, life-changing possibilities.
We land far too soon.
His driver is waiting. Security flanks us like dark shadows as we’re escorted into the back of a black SUV.
Again Zane pulls me onto his lap without asking, arms caging me against him. He kisses the side of my neck, slow and deliberate, a silent claiming he doesn’t bother to disguise.
“You okay?” I whisper.
“Perfect,” he says into my skin.
But he’s too still. Too controlled.
And when Zane is controlled, something inside me goes tight because that’s when he’s hiding something.
We get back to the place that’s beginning to feel way too much like home even though I’ve technically never moved in. The house lights warm around us as if welcoming us back, and I feel that old, familiar tug of missing myself.
My space. My routine. My life.
But Zane is kissing me before I can dwell on it.
He carries me to bed.
We make love slowly at first, like we’re trying to postpone the next breath. Then harder, because he needs something he won’t name. And when it’s over, he peers deep into my eyes.
“How do you feel, baby?”
“Umm…jet-lagged?”
“Nothing else? No soreness anywhere?”
I frown, then shrug. “I’m sore everywhere. We haven’t exactly kept our hands off one another for the last two weeks.”
His lashes sweep down and I sense he’s disappointed in my answer. But he nods in the next moment. Presses a kiss to my forehead. “Get some sleep, baby.”
He falls asleep wrapped around me, breath steady at my nape.
I should sleep too.
I try.
But something unsettles me, drags at me and keeps me awake while the house creaks and breathes around us.
Eventually I slip out of bed, padding barefoot into the living room where the shiny new laptop Zane gave me sits open from earlier. I’ve been working on the story I promised him. The anonymous one. Our world, but disguised.
Twisted. Beautiful. Messy and honest.
I just want to get out of my own head and write, just for a little while.
I swipe the mouse.
The screen brightens and immediately, my stomach drops.
Because at the top of the inbox I don’t even recognize is an unread message.
Zane’s email app…somehow connected to my laptop.
Still logged in. It would be a colossal invasion of privacy if not for the heading blaring my name.
SUBJECT: Miss Lane – Blood Work Results
FROM: Dr. H. Rourke, MD
I stare at it so long my eyes burn. Then I blink, hoping the words on the screen will melt away. Hoping it’s a delirium conjured by too much fucking and not enough sleep.
But no, when I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, it’s still there.
Blood work. My name. His doctor.
I click. And the world tilts.
“Positive. hCG levels consistent with early pregnancy. Further testing recommended in one week.”
A buzzing rips through my body, loud and shaky, drowning out everything else.
Pregnant.
Pregnant?
My breath snags and my pulse jumps as my vision narrows. Hands shaking, I scroll as the rock in my throat expands, threatening to block my airways.
Attached are charts, dates, levels, meticulous notes.
There’s another attachment titled Cycle Tracking – R. Lane.
Something I recognize from weeks ago. Something I was outraged over at the time and stupidly brushed off. I stare at with stunned eyes and something deep inside me cracks.
I don’t open it and I don’t need to because I already know.
Because suddenly everything snaps into place. His obsession with my schedule. His watchful eyes. The way he always asked if I’d taken my pill. The distraction in the bathroom in Colorado.
The fucking tweezers lie when I found him rummaging in my bag.
Oh God.
The breeding kink.
The way he loves to fall asleep with his dick in my pussy. So he can…he can…
A sudden wave of nausea hits me so hard I grip the seat to stay upright. I blink, blink again, forcing air into my lungs until the room slowly stops spinning.
I stumble back, every breath a scrape, and that’s when I see it—the half-open door down the hall. His music room…where he’s been writing songs to the baby he’s implanted inside me without my permission.
A faint light spills under the crack. I’m not even sure why something pulls me toward it before reason can stop me. Maybe the lyrics would give me a clue, tell me why I’ve fallen in love with a madman?
I push the door open and I freeze.
Zane is at the piano. His hair is messy and his shoulders are tense.
Music sheets are strewn all over the place but where he’s usually pinpoint focused, his eyes are unfocused, staring into the middle distance at something I can’t reach.
And in his hand, he’s holding a small onesie, the softest white cotton, tiny in his large, tattooed hand.
And as I stumble closer, I see there are more, folded with reverence on the closed lid of the piano.
And next to it, a stack of books. Parenting guides. Sleep training. Prenatal development. What To Expect—
I can’t breathe.
I can’t move.
He presses a hand to the piano keys and plays a single note…the same note he plays when he’s overwhelmed. The same one he played after the first time I ever hummed in front of him.
He doesn’t notice me.
Or maybe he does — maybe he sensed me the second I stepped into the doorway, because his breath stumbles and his fingers curl over the keys.
“Baby?” he murmurs into the stillness, voice roughened by hope he can’t or doesn’t want to hide.
By something deeper.
Darker. Older than either of us.
I step backward. Slow…shaking.
He finally looks up.
And when his eyes land on me, a soft, devastating smile breaks across his face — slow, reverent, full of a rabid love that should feel beautiful but instead feels like a trap with silken walls. And I know he knows.
He’s seen the email. Received confirmation of what he’s done.
To me.
“Ruby,” he whispers, rising to his feet as fevered eyes drop. To my belly.
The room spins and my heart stutters as the email burns behind my eyes.
Pregnant.
He moves toward me like he always does — certain, steady, unstoppable.
I stumble back again and the asshole has the audacity to be startled. “Baby?”
I shake my head once. A tiny, trembling movement. “Are you actually serious right now?”
He freezes. Looks around, confused.
And for the first time since I’ve known him, Zane Draven doesn’t know what to do.
“Just tell me one thing, Zane. Did you plan it right from the beginning? Or when it dawned on you that I was the one woman who might be strong enough to walk away from you?”