Chapter 24
THE brEAKING POINT
ZANE
It was the soft ping of the email on my phone that woke me.
I don’t even remember reaching for it or unlocking the screen. Don’t remember opening the message the doctor sent at dawn.
All I remember is the breath leaving my lungs in one long, shuddering rush when the words jumped out at me.
Positive. Early pregnancy. Further testing recommended.
For a few stunned heartbeats, I just stared at the ceiling, the room too still, too bright, too fragile.
Then the surge hit me, a rush of emotion so big I almost choked on it.
It was a fist to the ribs.
A baby.
Our baby.
Ruby and me.
A life made out of the one thing I haven’t damaged with my flaws.
I reached for her instinctively, ready to pull her into me, bury my face in her neck, and tell her everything—how the second I saw the result, something inside me clicked into place.
How every word I’d ever written, every song I’d ever screamed into a microphone, suddenly made sense because I finally knew what I’d been trying to say.
But she wasn’t in bed.
The sheets were warm where she’d been but I knew she hadn’t gone far.
I should have gone looking for her. Instead, I stumbled to the piano with my phone clutched in my hand, trying to put the storm inside me into music.
The thoughts poured out too fast, too thick. Every line I tried to write turned into something meant for a child that didn’t even know I existed yet.
I didn’t hear her come in but I felt her in the sharp air and the quieter breath.
But the shift in the room?
Yeah, that snapped every fucking nerve in my body into focus. It was a shift that demanded my attention.
So I turned, and Jesus Fucking Christ…her face—her face guts me. Tabulated every sin I’d ever committed and condensed it into beautiful doom.
Fear and shock and betrayal so deep I felt myself split under it.
“Ruby…” I pushed to my feet, heart punching against my ribs as words, for the first time in my fucking life, deserted me.
As she stepped back, and the cold in her eyes hollowed me out.
“Just tell me one thing,” she said quietly, her voice trembling, steady, fierce all at once. “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?”
The words hit harder than the diagnosis.
Harder than the rages.
Harder than anything I’d survived before.
I swallow, because lying would only make this worse. I’ve never lied to her. Not verbally. The sins were in the silences. In the rabid longing and the secret scheming.
“Ruby…” I take a slow breath, hands open, palms visible, as if that can make any difference now. “I didn’t plan it from the start. I didn’t even think about it when we met. But once I knew…once I felt—” My voice breaks, too raw. “Once I realized what you were to me, I couldn’t let the chance slip.”
Her jaw tightens.
“Define chance,” she says sharply. “Because I already know the answer, but I want to hear you say it.”
Heat crawls up the back of my neck. Shame, yes, but not regret. Never regret.
“I tracked your cycle,” I say quietly.
Her eyes flash, wet and bright. “I know that already. I saw you do it, but I thought…” She shakes her head. “What else?” she whispers fiercely.
I inhale again, deeper this time, bracing myself. “I sabotaged your pills in Vegas.”
A broken, incredulous laugh escapes her. “Jesus. And?” she pushes.
I drag a hand through my hair. “And then I had them replaced with vitamins in Colorado.”
“The blood in London?”
Fuck. “He insists on it with new clients but…yeah, he would’ve done the tattoo without it. I…needed it.”
She pales and sways on her feet.
I lunge for her but she shrinks back and fuck…she should stab me right now. It would be less agony.
“So…you developing a breeding kink and suddenly want to warm your cock inside me while I slept? It was all part of the grand plan to knock me up?”
I wince at the acid in her voice. “I… didn’t lie about the way I like falling asleep inside you. It calms me.” My voice cracks again. “And I did think, if it happened, if it was meant to—then it would be the best thing that ever happened to me. To us.”
Ruby’s hysterical laughter breaks open like glass shattering on tile.
“Meant to?” she chokes out. “Are you insane? You sabotaged my contraception and then you’re calling it meant to?”
“Baby—”
“Don’t you dare ‘baby’ me. And don’t you dare pretend this was fate. This was you. Your control issues. Your obsession. Your—your—” She can’t get the words out. “Just admit it. Admit every last thing.”
“I did,” I say simply. “Because I don’t want there to be secrets between us.”
Her laughter stops. Instantly. Like a blade to the throat. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “You have the audacity to say that to me? After everything you’ve done behind my back?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” I say, desperate now. “I wasn’t trying to trap you. I love you. I need you. I want a future with you and—”
“Stop. Stop.” Tears spill over now, furious and terrified and wild. “If you need me so much, then why didn’t you trust me? Why didn’t you just—ask?”
“Because I was afraid you’d say no.”
“Well guess what?” she snaps. “Now my answer is a thousand times no.”
She storms out of the room.
Panic freezes me for far too long. Then I charge after her.
In the bedroom, she’s grabbing her bag, her clothes, anything she can find to stuff into it.
“Ruby.” I stand in the doorway, heart pounding, voice barely holding together. “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”
“I’m leaving.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’re not walking away from me. Not now.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Yes, I fucking do,” I snarl with every ounce of terror inside me.
She freezes. Turns. Eyes blazing. “Watch me.”
She pushes past me, flies down the stairs and strides toward the foyer.
I sprint after her, move to block her, but one of my security guys—where the fuck did they come from?—steps between us.
“Boss,” he says carefully.
“Get out of my way.”
He clears his throat. “Miss Lane requested an escort.”
Ruby’s breath hitches and her hands shake. Her panic spikes so sharply I can feel it under my skin.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I repeat.
“Sir,” he replies, voice steady, “we’re acting on her instructions.”
“You work for me,” I snap.
“And she’s in distress.”
That stops me.
Only for a second. Only because I see it in her eyes—the crack, the fracture, the terror I never meant to put there.
“Ruby,” I say, stepping forward, softer this time. “Baby… let’s talk about this. Let’s…hum for me. Please. I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t…just hum. Let me calm down. Then we can—”
“No,” she whispers and her face crumples with the denial. “No, Zane. Not this time. You can’t break me then ask for me to help you fix what you’ve broken.”
A chill invades my body. I can’t quite feel my legs. The knowledge that I’ve fucked up. Colossally. It’s too much to fathom right now. “Please, baby. Please.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t.”
My vision tunnels.
The noise in my skull ramps up faster than I can manage. The lights flicker and tremors seize my hands.
She sees it all happen. And she turns away anyway.
“Ruby—” It’s a roar torn from my soul.
Security lifts their hands, not touching her but to forming a wall in front of me.
My breath saws in and out as every instinct in me screams to push through them, take her back upstairs, put her in my arms and beg until she forgives me.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe.
I barely hear the sound growing in my head until I work it out.
Footsteps echo down the hall. A presence that twists the air. A soft, knowing hum. But it’s not hers. Not my Ruby’s.
Mama.
But Ruby doesn’t see her yet because Ruby is sobbing as she tosses her bag to the side. And runs away from me, down the hall.
Slams the first door she finds and the turning of the lock is loud enough to thunder through me.
And I stand there in the center of the foyer, heart shredding inside my chest, the silence enormous, terrible, absolute…
While the woman I love breaks apart behind a locked door.