Chapter 39
Dual POV
The freezing coastal gale whipped across the weathered porch, driving needles of sleet against the back of my neck.
My knees were locked into the slush on the wooden boards, my soaked jeans frozen stiff against my shins.
My back teeth were clicking together in rapid, violent spasms, my limbs shaking so hard my fingers could barely stay flat against the wet wood.
Every breath pulled in sub-zero Atlantic fog that burned like lye down into my bronchial tubes.
Nylah’s shadow shifted in the doorway.
She took half a step backward into the warm, amber glow of the keeping room, leaving the spruce door open to the storm.
"Get inside, Owen," she said.
Her voice was level, quiet, and stripped of both hatred and warmth.
"Before you die on my porch."
I forced my legs to move.
My quadriceps screamed with agony as I rose, the navicular bone in my left foot shooting a blinding, white-hot flare of pain straight up into my knee.
The joint locked, nearly pitching me headfirst into the doorframe, but I caught the jamb with a numb palm.
I stumbled across the threshold, leaving puddles of melting slush, road salt, and frozen mud on the scrubbed pine floorboards.
The heavy door clicked shut behind me, cutting off the howl of the North Atlantic.
I reached for the buttons of my black wool coat with fingers that were swollen, blue-tinged, and numb.
I stripped the sodden wool off my shoulders; it hit the entry floor with a wet, concussive thud.
Underneath, my grey thermal shirt was soaked through with road grime and sweat, sticking cold and heavy to my bruised ribs.
I didn't walk toward the furniture.
I didn't feel worthy to sit on her chairs or touch her clean blankets.
I took three dragging steps into the keeping room and dropped straight down onto my knees on the thick braided wool rug in front of the cast-iron woodstove.
The dry heat radiating off the black iron hit the damp cotton of my thermal shirt, turning the moisture into thin plumes of white steam.
A violent, autonomic shudder wracked my frame as the warmth slowly seeped back into the ice locked beneath my ribs.
The circulation rushed into my fingertips with an agonizing, prickling burn that made my teeth grind.
I bowed my head, resting my scarred, calloused palms flat on my denim thighs.
I stared down at the braided wool between my knees, listening to the soft, rhythmic scuff of her shearling boots moving across the kitchen floor.
The room smelled of sweet birch smoke, dried peppermint, and clean cedar—a pure, sheltered world that felt millions of miles away from the filth I carried.
I was terrified to look up. I was terrified that if I lifted my head, the scent of her hair would evaporate, and I would wake up back on the floorboards of my dark apartment in Maine.
* * *
I walked across the spruce floorboards, carrying a thick, dry wool towel and a steaming ceramic mug of ginger tea.
I set them down on the low pine coffee table beside his boots.
Ryan remained on his knees, his massive, six-foot-three frame bowed before the cast-iron hearth.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with melting sleet, his soaked thermal shirt steaming in the heat, clinging to the dense muscle of his back and the yellowing bruises on his ribs.
His cheekbones were hollowed out under eight days of dark, unkempt stubble, his hands trembling violently against his thighs.
I stood three feet away, holding the thick knit of my oatmeal cardigan tightly across my stomach.
"Why did you come here, Ryan?" I asked.
My voice was quiet, steady, cutting through the crackle of the wood fire.
"Do you think having Arthur Vance arrested undoes the words you spoke in that tunnel? Do you think freezing on my porch fixes what you broke?"
Ryan didn't lift his head.
His broad shoulders hitched on a shallow, ragged breath that sounded like torn paper.
"No," he rasped, his voice cracked, ruined, and shaking with an unvarnished agony that vibrated against the floorboards. "Nothing fixes it. I know that. I just... I had to clear your name, Nylah. I had to make sure you were safe."
"My name was never your responsibility to salvage," I said, watching the moisture drip from his eyelashes onto the rug.
"It was my fault," he choked out, his throat working on a dry, convulsive swallow. "I let my father get into my head. I let Vance poison my mind. I was so terrified of being broken that I tore down the only pure thing in my life."
My hand moved slowly inside the deep pocket of my cardigan.
My fingers curled around the soft linen handkerchief resting over my left ribs.
I pulled the cloth out into the warm firelight.
I stepped forward, stopping inches from the low pine table where he knelt.
With deliberate, unhurried precision, I unfolded the white linen, laying the plastic test stick flat on the polished wood right in front of his bowed face.
The black digital display stared up into the amber light:
PREGNANT.
Beneath it, the secondary indicator read: 2-3 WEEKS.
"I was running down that concrete corridor to tell you this, Ryan."
My voice broke on the words—a raw, fractured whisper that carried eight days of suffocating silence.
"I had this test wrapped in my pocket when you threw that crumpled paper at my boots. I was carrying our baby while you were looking at me like I was a parasite. I stood in that hallway, terrified and alone, while you told me I was the biggest mistake of your life."
Ryan’s frame went rigid.
The violent shivering stopped in an instant.
The air left his chest in a sharp, concussive gasp that sounded as if an anvil had fallen straight through his sternum.
His bloodshot eyes widened, fixing on the small digital screen. A deafening, ringing silence swallowed the room. The color drained from his face, leaving his skin an ashen, bloodless grey as a single, scalding tear broke from his lash line, carving a clean path through the dark stubble on his jaw.
He didn't blink. He stared at the word PREGNANT as if the plastic stick were rewriting the laws of physics right before his eyes.
"Nylah..." The name was a ruined, airless wheeze.
"I didn't come to Nova Scotia to run from an academic scandal," I whispered, looking down at his bowed shoulders. "I came here because I refused to let my child be an extortion chip. I refused to hand our baby to a man who looked at its mother with disgust."
* * *
The word burned through my optic nerves like a brand pressed into bone:
PREGNANT.
My lungs collapsed inward.
A concussive shockwave ripped through my chest, an unyielding weight that pulverized every remaining fragment of my pride into fine dust.
A baby.
My child.
My flesh and blood was growing inside the woman I had shoved into the dirt.
She had stood in that freezing arena runway beneath the bleachers, carrying my life inside her body, while I stood on my skates and called her a calculating transaction artist. She had been protecting our child from Arthur Vance while I was sharpening knives to drive into her heart.
The horror of what I had done tore through my skull like black ice fracturing beneath a blade.
I didn't think. I couldn't draw air into my lungs.
I dragged my knees across the braided wool rug, closing the two feet between us until my chest pressed against the soft hem of her cardigan.
My hands came up.
My palms—large, rough, scarred, and trembling with a violent, autonomic spasm of pure reverence—splayed wide.
I reached out with infinite gentleness, settling my shaking hands flat over the soft curve of her lower abdomen beneath the thick knit sweater.
The warmth beneath my calloused fingers was real. It was alive.
My forehead dropped flat against her knees.
A ragged, choked sob tore from the center of my chest—a raw, broken sound of absolute devastation that shattered the quiet of the cottage. I wept openly, my face buried in the soft wool over her shins, my arms wrapping around the backs of her thighs, anchoring my existence to her frame.
"Nylah... God, Nylah, I'm so sorry," I choked out, my gravelly voice cracking into ruined fragments against her skin. "I'm so sorry... I will spend every second of my life at your feet. I will crawl across this country for you. I will tear down the world before anyone ever touches you or our baby."
I lifted my head, my palms pressing with fierce, gentle devotion against the soft swell beneath her sweater, my tears burning cold against my cheeks as I looked up into her face.
"You're my family," I rasped, my lips brushing the soft knit over her stomach. "You're everything to me, sweetheart. Please."
Nylah stood above me in the firelight, her amber eyes swimming with tears.
Her small hand trembled for a single, agonizing second before her fingers slowly slid into my damp, dark hair, cradling the back of my head against her stomach as the first tear slipped down her cheek.
The bleeding stopped.
The healing began.