Chapter 39
Dual POV
"Get inside, Chosen."
Her voice cut through the howling Adirondack wind, flat, level, and colder than the slush soaking through the knees of my jeans.
"Get off that wet wood before you die of exposure on my grandmother's porch."
I didn't stand up like a man.
I hauled myself upright using the wooden handrail, my right knee locking under the strain, my boots dragging heavily through the threshold as she backed away into the warmth of the cottage.
The heavy front door clicked shut behind me, the brass deadbolt sliding into place with a hollow thud that shut out the roar of Lake Champlain.
The heat of the room hit my freezing skin like boiling water.
The living room smelled of burning split oak, dried cedar shingles, and the sweet, steaming peppermint of her tea. In the corner, the cast-iron woodstove glowed a deep, dull orange through its mica windows, throwing waves of dry warmth across the braided rag rugs.
I left a trail of gray, salt-crusted water across the pine floorboards.
I didn't step toward the furniture. I didn't look at the antique sofa or the clean blankets.
I dropped straight down onto my knees on the braided rug three feet from the woodstove, my wet jeans slapping the fibers with a soggy thud.
A violent, uncontrollable shudder ripped through my broad shoulders, my teeth knocking together in rapid, metallic clicks as the ice in my clothes began to melt into hot steam against my skin.
I bowed my head, staring at the braided pattern beneath my palms.
I was terrified to look at her.
I felt like an infection in her sanctuary, a violent, filthy beast that had tracked blood onto her clean floor.
I listened to the soft padding of her wool socks moving across the kitchen linoleum, listened to the rustle of the oversized cream cable-knit cardigan she wore, my lungs dragging in shallow, burning gasps that ached behind my ribs.
I stayed on the floor where I belonged.
* * *
I walked back into the living room carrying a thick gray bath towel and a steaming ceramic mug of hot water.
Chosen hadn't moved an inch.
He was kneeling in front of the woodstove like a condemned prisoner waiting for the ax. His dark hair was dripping wet, steam rising off his torn black henley in faint, ghostly wisps, his broad shoulders convulsing with bone-deep shivers that shook his massive frame.
I set the towel and the mug on the floorboards beside his knee.
I didn't touch him.
I stood two feet away, pulling the thick sides of my cream cardigan tightly across my torso, my right hand resting flat, protective, and warm over the lower curve of my abdomen.
"You think dragging Samuel O'Connor to the sheriff fixes what you did, Chosen?" I asked.
My voice was quiet, steady, cutting through the crackle of the burning oak.
"You think driving eighty miles an hour in an ice storm and throwing an exoneration letter at my feet proves you aren't the coward who looked at me with disgust in that tunnel?"
Chosen didn't lift his head.
His forehead sank lower toward the braided rug, his hands flat on his thighs, his knuckles bruised and bleeding into his denim.
"No," he whispered, the single syllable shattered, raw, and bleeding from his throat. "It doesn't fix a damn thing, Marie. Nothing fixes what I did to you."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because I have nowhere else to breathe," he rasped, a dry, ragged shudder tearing through his chest. "Because if I don't bleed for you, I don't deserve to exist. I don't want you to forgive me. I just want to stay at your feet until you tell me how to atone."
My throat tightened until the air tasted of copper.
My fingers curled into the deep pocket of my cardigan.
"You told me I was an academic study," I said, every word dropping like a lead weight into the heavy heat of the room. "You told me I was a calculating parasite who used your dead teammate's memory to win a fellowship in Colorado Springs."
"I was blind," he choked out, his shoulders heaving. "I was a sick, terrified animal—"
"You told me I was the biggest mistake of your life," I whispered.
I pulled my hand from my pocket.
Between my trembling fingers, I held the white plastic casing of the pregnancy test, wrapped in its linen handkerchief.
I stepped forward, bent down, and set the test on the low oak table right beside his bowed head. Beside it, I placed the printed appointment confirmation bearing the letterhead of Lake Mistassini Health: Dr. Elena Rostova, Attending OB/GYN.
"Look at the table, Chosen," I commanded, my voice trembling with an ancient, terrifying gravity.
He didn't want to look.
Slowly, dragging his chin upward as if the motion weighed a thousand pounds, his bloodshot, dark eyes lifted from the rug.
His gaze caught the white plastic stick.
In the small indicator window, illuminated by the orange glow of the woodstove, two dark, indisputable, vivid pink lines burned through the casing.
Chosen went rigid.
The violent shivering in his shoulders stopped instantly, frozen as if he had been submerged in lake ice.
His pupils dilated until the dark brown vanished beneath pitch-black void.
His jaw went slack, his mouth parting on an inhale that never reached his lungs, his gaze tracking from the two pink lines to the appointment receipt, then slowly, agonizingly, rising to the cream wool cardigan wrapped across my stomach.
"Marie," he whispered.
The name wasn't a word. It was a suffocated, broken sob that died in the back of his throat.
"I was running down that corridor on Saturday afternoon because I had that test in my pocket, Chosen," I said, a single hot tear finally spilling over my lashes, tracking a burning line down my cheek.
"I came to tell you that we were having a baby.
I came to tell you that you weren't alone anymore.
And you threw my research at my boots and told me to get out of your life. "
* * *
The world detonated behind my eyes.
A physical anvil slammed into the center of my chest, so heavy and concussive it crushed every breath from my lungs.
A baby.
My child.
Her flesh and my blood, knit together in the dark of that Adirondack blizzard while I held her against my ribs and swore on my life that she was my home.
And forty-eight hours ago, I had backed her against a cinder block wall and hurled venom into her face while she sheltered my baby beneath her coat.
A choked, strangled roar tore from deep in my sternum—a sound of pure, unadulterated horror that shattered the silence of the room.
I didn't think. I didn't breathe.
I scrambled forward on my hands and knees across the braided rug, dragging my soaked, trembling weight across the floorboards until my chest hit the soft wool of her socks.
I reached up with both hands.
My fingers, thick, calloused, and scarred, shook with a terrifying, sacred reverence as they parted the edges of her cream cardigan.
I pressed both of my large, fever-hot palms flat against the soft cotton of her sweater, right over the lower curve of her abdomen.
The contact was a lightning strike through my central nervous system.
Beneath my hands, warm and fragile, my baby was alive.
My forehead dropped forward, slamming into the fabric covering her knees.
The dam in my chest broke completely.
I wept.
I broke down into heavy, ragged, ruined sobs that tore through my cracked ribs, my broad shoulders heaving in violent, unreserved convulsions as I pressed my face into the wool of her cardigan.
The tears poured hot and heavy from my eyes, soaking straight through her clothes, washing the grime and dried blood from my cheeks against her legs.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed into her lap, my voice ruined, shattered into bleeding fragments. "I'm so sorry, Marie. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. Oh, God, forgive me... forgive me."
My hands stayed locked over her stomach, my thumbs tracing slow, desperate circles across the fabric, feeling the fragile rise and fall of her breath beneath my touch.
"I will spend every second of my life bleeding for you," I wept, kissing the knit wool over her belly, my lips trembling against her skin.
"I will crawl through fire for this baby.
I will never let another hand touch you.
I will give you every dollar, every breath, every heartbeat in my body.
Don't cast me out, Marie. Please... please let me be a father to our child. "
The room fell quiet, save for the crackle of the oak in the hearth and the ragged, broken sound of my weeping against her knees.
I stayed there, a broken titan pressed flat against her feet, offering my entire soul for judgment.
Then, high above my head, a soft, trembling breath hitched in her chest.
A small, warm hand moved through the air.
Marie’s fingers, delicate and trembling with her own unshed tears, slid into the damp, dark curls at the base of my skull.
Her touch was gentle as rain. She cradled the back of my head, drawing my face deeper into the warmth of her stomach, her palm resting steady against my neck as she looked down at the ruined man holding her life in his hands.