52. CHAPTER 47
SAYLOR
The doctor looks at his clipboard one more time and then holds it to his chest. “We performed a full examination while you were unconscious, Miss Carter. Given the circumstances of how you were brought in . . .” the doctor says, giving Axl a pointed look, “we followed standard protocol.”
I have a feeling I know what he’s going to tell us and tears sting my eyes.
“We found evidence of sexual assault.” His eyes are solemn and kind as he says the words. “Based on the state of the bruising and the semen, it appears to have occurred around the time of the incident or just before.”
I close my eyes. That fucking bastard. It wasn’t enough to try to kill me to hide something he did, he had to rape me one more time too.
I grind my teeth, and I’m so fucking angry that my hands are shaking because I want to rip the IV out of my arm and go find him.
If I’d been quicker with my knife or if my timing had been better, none of this would have fucking happened.
“No! Goddamnit! Son of a bitch!” Axl growls, and I can feel him vibrating beside me.
His grip on my hand tightens, and he cups my face with his other hand.
His jaw is tense from forcing himself to be calm for me.
“Who did this to you, baby? Tell me who it is, so I can break every fucking bone in his body before I slit his fucking throat.”
“Axl.” I focus my watery eyes on his. They’re red, and there’s so much pain there.
I know he’s going to blame himself, and I don’t want him to.
There’s only one fucking person to blame, and he isn’t in this room.
I glance back to the doctor, preferring to have this conversation with Axl in private. “Is that all?”
The doctor hesitates. He glances at Axl again with that same cautious look he gave before.
“What is it?” I ask. How much worse could it be than being raped by my brother?
“Your bloodwork showed elevated hCG levels.” He pauses and takes a sad breath. “You were pregnant, Miss Carter. It was very early. Based on the levels, approximately three to four weeks.”
I bring my hand to my mouth. “I was pregnant? What are you saying?”
“With the trauma your body sustained and the drugs in your system and it being so early—the pregnancy didn’t survive.” He says the words plainly, but his eyes are softer now. “I’m very sorry.”
I stare at him. My brain is trying to process two things at once. I was pregnant and I didn’t know. And now I’m not.
Axl grabs his head, and his fingers tighten in his hair. “No. Please, no.”
But the first thing my mind goes to isn’t grief. I need to know what I just lost.
“Three to four weeks?” My voice is shaking. “You’re sure about the timing?”
“Based on your hCG levels, yes. We are very certain.”
I have been safely in Axl’s bed every night before and after that window. The baby was Axl’s. My throat closes up, and I close my eyes as the tears fall to my cheeks.
The relief and the grief hit me at the same time, and I don’t know which one is worse. A sob tears out of me. I’m relieved not to be pregnant with my psychotic brother’s child, but I want that piece of Axl more than anything. I didn’t even know it was there, and now it’s all I want.
Axl paces beside my bed, fisting his hands and pulling at his hair like he wants to rip it out of his head. He growls and flips a nearby medical cart, sending the instruments and supplies flying against the wall. “Goddamnit.”
“Are you going to be alright?” The doctor asks me, eyeing Axl with concern. “Do you need me to get his friend to subdue him?”
I wave him off, covering my mouth as I choke back a sob. “Just leave us. I think we just need a moment.” I don’t know how I manage to get the words out.
The door closes, and the room goes quiet except for the beeping and Axl’s ragged breathing. He’s standing next to the destroyed cart, both hands braced on the wall. His shoulders are heaving.
“Axl.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand. “Will you please just come here? I need you.”
His back is to me, but I know he’s wiping his eyes. He doesn’t want me to see what this is doing to him.
“The baby was yours, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I say it because I need him to hear it. And then I sob again, whispering my next words. “It was yours, Axl.”
He spins around, and I’ve never seen him like this. He’s completely wrecked. Axl is always in control, and he looks like he’s about to lose it. The tears stream down my cheeks at the sight of him.
Axl wipes his eyes again and rushes to me, taking me in his arms. “I’m so sorry, baby. Please forgive me. I’m so sorry. I did this to you.”
I hold onto him. My arms are weak, and the IV pulls when I reach for him. I press my face into his neck and breathe him in, because he’s the only thing that makes sense right now.
“You didn’t do this.” I fist the back of his shirt. “This isn’t your fault, Axl. Don’t you dare put this on yourself.”
His arms tighten around me, and his face is buried in my hair. I can feel how tense his body is. “You don’t understand.” His voice is muffled against my hair.
I pull back enough to look at his face. His eyes are hard, and the pain there scares me more than anything.
“I switched your birth control.” He says it while looking me dead in the eyes. “About five weeks ago. I replaced your pills with ones to make you ovulate.”
The words hang in the air between us. I hear them. I understand them. And for a few seconds, my brain refuses to connect them to anything that makes sense.
“What?” I drop my hands from his shirt. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“You’re mine, and no one is going to take you from me. I told you I wasn’t going to marry anyone else.” He doesn’t look away. “I wanted you pregnant so I could guarantee the Sinclairs would push the Council to make you my wife.”
I stare at him. I don’t know what to fucking feel.
These men in my life make decisions for my body.
This is nothing like what my brother did, but I still didn’t get a fucking choice.
I do want to marry Axl and have his children.
It’s all I want. But for him to decide for me and having to face the heartbreak of this loss every day for the rest of our lives.
I’ll always long to know what our baby might have looked like and who they might have grown up to be. That’s never going to go away.
“How could you?”
“I told you.” He doesn’t defend himself. He doesn’t try to explain it away or soften it. “I won’t lose you, Saylor.”
“I’d have said yes.” Tears are running down my face, and I can’t stop them. “If you’d asked me, Axl. If you’d come to me and told me what was happening with your father and said you wanted a life with me and children—I’d have said yes. I’d have thrown those fucking pills in the trash myself.”
His jaw tightens, and I can see that hit him harder than my anger would have.
“You didn’t give me the chance to actually choose you.
” I press my palm flat against his chest. His heart is pounding under my hand.
“Have I not proven every fucking day that it’s you I want?
I chose you when I let you claim me. I chose you when I let you carve your name into my skin.
And I’d have chosen this. But you didn’t let me. ”
He puts his hand over mine on his chest and holds it there. “I’m sorry, baby. I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right. I can’t give you back what was taken from you. From us. I wanted that baby too. More than anything. I want every part of you. And I can’t lose you too, Saylor.”
“I’m not ready to forgive you, Axl.” I pull my hand back.
“My body is mine to give to you. I trusted you more than anyone in this world. You’ve always been there every time I needed you.
You saved my life. But I can’t give myself to you if I can’t trust you.
Too many people in my life have betrayed me. ”
I sob into my hands.
“Saylor.” His voice is raw. “I have so many things to say to you, and I won’t say them yet. But just know, I can’t live without you. I don’t need your forgiveness or even your love right now. I just need to know you aren’t going to leave. Because, truthfully, I can’t let you go.”
I believe him. I’m furious and I’m heartbroken. I’m grieving something I didn’t even know existed before this, but I believe him. We want the same things. I’m not mad he did it. I’m mad he didn’t give me the choice. My heart still breaks knowing he’s suffering the same loss I am.
“I just need some time. All of this is too much right now.” I wipe my eyes. I want to curl up in a ball and cry over the baby I lost, but my brother is still out there. “And there are other things you need to know. But I need you to remain as calm as possible so I can tell you what happened.”
He searches my face. He’s bracing himself, but he doesn’t know what’s coming. He has no idea.
“It’s Justin.” I hold his hard stare. “It’s always been Justin. Justin raped me.”
Fury overtakes Axl’s face, and his jaw tightens. His chest heaves from how hard he’s fighting to keep from flying off the handle.
I continue before he has the opportunity to say anything. “My brother has been drugging me and raping me for years.” I keep my voice steady because if I break now, I won’t get through all of it. “The nightmares aren’t just nightmares, Axl. He was raping me. I wasn’t fully aware he was doing it.”
“And this is what you’ve been keeping from me?” He grips the rail of my bed so hard that I think he’s going to break it. “Why were you dealing with this alone when you didn’t have to, baby?”
“I couldn’t tell you. A few days ago, I realized what he’d been doing, and he threatened me. Told me that if you knew, you’d kill him and Kynlee would go to auction.” I swallow hard. “And that you wouldn’t want me once you knew my brother had been fucking me.”
“He didn’t fuck you.” His voice is dangerously quiet. “He fucking raped you.”
“He’s lost it. He told me he loved me.” I force myself to keep going. “He said I’ve always been his. And he’s been reading my texts, Axl. He was intercepting your messages. He set up the whole thing with Tracy.”
Axl releases the bedrail. His hands drop to his sides, and his fists are clenched. The bandages are turning red where his knuckles are bleeding through.
“He tried to have you killed.” I watch his face when I say it. “The ritual. He gave those men weapons and adrenaline. He told me if you’d just died, none of this would have happened. He’s tried more than once, Axl.”
He groans and runs his hands down his face.
I can’t stop talking. I’m just going to get it all out.
“I went to my dad.” My voice cracks because this is the part that still hurts.
“I told him what Justin did. He said he’d protect me.
He said he’d handle it. And then Justin showed up in our room and told me that Dad wasn’t going to help me.
He told me that he had no choice but to kill me. ”
I tell him every detail I can remember about what happened in our room with Justin and the conversation with my dad, including finding out that Axl visited him.
Once I’m done, Axl sits on the bed beside me. He takes my face in his hands, and his thumbs press against my cheeks. He looks at me with an intensity that I feel in my bones.
“I need you to hear me.” His voice is low and steady.
There isn’t a trace of doubt in it. “I’ll always want you.
There’s nothing that your brother or anyone else could ever do that would make me see you differently.
You’re mine. You’ve always been mine. That hasn’t changed. It’s never going to fucking change.”
I nod because I can’t speak. My tears fall onto his bandaged hands.
“Justin Carter is a dead man, Saylor.” He says it the way he says everything, like it’s just a fact. “I don’t care what it means to kill him. I’ll do what I can to help Kynlee, but we can’t let him live.”
“I don’t want him to live.” He raped me, which is bad enough. But he also caused an even more painful loss that I can never get back.
The door opens before either of us can say anything else. Priest steps in, and his eyes move from me to Axl and back to me. He doesn’t say a word about the destroyed cart or the supplies scattered across the floor.
“Dane is here.” Priest’s tone is serious. “He wants to talk to you.”
Axl doesn’t move from his spot and shakes his head. “Not right now.”
“It can’t wait, Axl.” Priest holds his stare, and there’s something in his expression that tells me this isn’t a request. “He said it’s urgent.”
Axl looks at me. He’s warring with himself over what to do. His jaw works, and his fists open and close at his sides.
“Go.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He leans forward and presses his lips to my forehead. “Just rest and I’ll be back. Try to forgive me while I’m gone, because it’s going to get awkward fast when I have to force you to marry me.” He gives me a small smile, and the pain is still in his red eyes.
Then he crosses the room and leaves with Priest. The door clicks shut behind them.
The room is too quiet without him. The beeping from the machines is steady. I press my hand flat against my stomach where there’s nothing anymore.
I didn’t know. I didn’t feel any different. I’d been nauseous, but I thought that was due to everything else going on in my fucked-up life.
I curl onto my side and pull my knees toward my chest. I press my face into the pillow, and I let myself fall apart because there’s no one here to be strong for. Axl is down the hall doing whatever the fuck Dane needs him to do. Justin is somewhere out there breathing air he doesn’t deserve.
I don’t know how long I cry. Long enough that the pillow is soaked and my ribs ache from the force of it. I’m furious at Axl, but I still want him here to hold me so bad my chest hurts. I cry for the baby I’ll never hold.