The Nail in the Coffin
The room was quiet now, the only sound the low, mechanical whir of the box fan in the window and the uneven, ragged rhythm of our breathing.
The sheets were a tangled mess at our waists, leaving her skin warm and soft against mine.
Her hair was damp with sweat, clinging to my chest in dark, silken threads.
I knew I should've moved. Every logical cell in my brain was screaming at me to get up, to get dressed, and to pull away the second the echoes of our climax faded. I should have been halfway to the shop by now, putting distance between me and the massive, irreversible choice I'd just made.
But my arm stayed right where it was. It stayed wrapped tight around her, my palm still curved possessively over her stomach. It was like my body had reached a conclusion my mind was still too terrified to voice: there was no turning back.
I'd crossed the line in every way that mattered.
The "off-limits" sign had been torn down and trampled into the dirt.
She wasn't just Anthony's kid sister anymore.
She wasn't just a girl trying to rebuild a life after a city heartbreak.
She was mine. At least in this moment, in this bed, with her lips still swollen from my kiss and her body still trembling from the way she'd taken me, she was entirely mine.
I leaned down and kissed the crown of her head, slow and careful, my chest aching at the way she shifted closer even in her sleep.
God help me, I wanted every jagged piece of her.
I wanted the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn't watching—that mixture of hope and fear that made me want to burn the world down for her.
I wanted the quiet strength she carried even when she was breaking inside.
And the baby growing under my hand.
Especially the baby.
It wasn't mine—not by blood. The DNA belonged to a man who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as her.
But as I felt the slight, firm curve beneath my palm, I wanted it all the same.
I wanted to be the one steady thing Aubrey could count on.
I wanted to be the man who showed up and stayed when the light turned gray and the path got hard.
Brandon had forfeited his right to this the second he touched Chloe; he'd traded a miracle for a moment of weakness, and he'd never even know what he'd lost.
But the reality of Willow Creek burned hot in my gut. Anthony.
If he knew—if he so much as suspected that I'd been in this bed, that I'd touched her like this—I'd lose everything.
I'd lose my best friend, the trust we'd built over decades of fires and failures, and the only real family I had left.
I was playing a high-stakes game with a man who didn't know he was even at the table.
But lying here with her, watching her chest rise and fall against me in the dim light, I knew the truth. I wasn't walking away. I couldn't. Not from her, and not from this tiny life I was already starting to claim as my own.
I brushed my thumb slowly over her stomach, mirroring the circles I'd drawn before she fell asleep. It was a silent vow, a marking of territory that went deeper than skin. I leaned in close to her ear and whispered to the dark, my voice a rough, barely audible rasp.
"You're mine, baby girl. Both of you."
She stirred faintly, a tiny, unconscious sigh escaping her as she pressed deeper into the heat of my chest. That was it—the final nail in the coffin of any half-hearted promise I'd made about stopping.
I was in this now. Too deep, too far, and for the first time in my forty years of living, I didn't want a way out.
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