“She’d never forgive us anyway,” Max said. “Grow up, Reed. She’s never been your friend. She’s an Atwood. We’re Bennetts. Our families have attempted to ruin each other for generations. You really think she was going to hop back in your bed? Dad held a gun to her head while you raped her. No one recovers from that. She’s just waiting for the right moment to take her revenge.”

“She’s not like that.”

“Then why haven’t you told her I killed her brothers?” he stared at Reed until he broke the gaze. “Yeah. Because you know what she’ll do.”

I wasn’t tolerating this discussion with her in the house. If she learned we were the cause of her brothers’ plane crash, she’d hurt herself just for the chance to avenge those she loved.

If it didn’t destroy her first.

“No one is telling her what happened,” I said. “That secret died with her brothers.”

“You don’t think she deserves the truth?” Reed asked.

“She’s heard enough truths. We kidnapped a girl, let her suffer, and now I claimed a part of her she never meant to give. We should have taken better care of her. We should have helped her.”

Reed wasn’t convinced. “She doesn’t want us anymore.”

“She doesn’t have a choice.”

Max laughed in genuine amusement, as though he expected this complication. “Sarah wants nothing to do with you, Nick. It doesn’t matter how you held her or how much you loved her, bottom line is she only tolerated that bullshit because she never thought she’d get pregnant. And now you’re the man who did it to her. You’re the man who stole her fortune, her farm, and her freedom. She’s going to hate you.”

Like the thought wasn’t hurting every scar I earned for her. “She won’t.”

“She’s going to hate all of us.”

“She won’t.”

“Christ, man!” Max smashed his bottle. The shards showered over the deck. “She’s pregnant! You’ll be goddamned lucky she doesn’t turn a gun on you once Dad is dead.”

“She won’t.”

“Bullshit. We took her family. We took her freedom. We ruined her.”

“She’s stronger than that.”

“Then she’s stronger than me.”

Max cut himself on the bottle. He clenched his fist and shoved the sliding glass door open, leaving a streak of blood in his wake. It hadn’t been his first beer. It wouldn’t be his last.

Now I had two people to care for and neither wanted my help. Reed called to me before I followed.

“Let them be,” he said. “You want to help Max? Give him half of your liver once this is done.”

“I’m not after Max.”

“She should sleep.”

“I have to talk to her.”

Reed didn’t look at me. He stared out over the balcony, toward the ocean and waves Dad forbade him from enjoying after he graduated college.

“If she wanted to talk, she’d be out here. Sarah’s not shy.”

I exhaled. “It’s my baby. I have to…”

“You don’t have to do a damned thing.” Reed pitched a pebble into the woods. “It’s already done. Don’t make it worse, or she won’t call us next time.”

Call us?

She hadn’t called us.

She called Reed for help, not me.

I’d have hated him for it if I wasn’t so damned grateful he brought her back.

Reed surrendered his bed, but Sarah wasn’t sleeping. The light spilled from beneath her door. I rapped against the frame. She didn’t answer.

Any other time, in any other circumstance, I’d have entered anyway.

The situation changed, but I hadn’t. She was mine. She needed me even if she denied just how much she loved me. I wasn’t letting her escape.

I knocked again. Her voice whispered, raw from coughing.

“Go away.”

I twisted the knob. The lock wasn’t sound. I jiggled, and it popped loose. Sarah expected it. She shakily rose from the floor, leaning against the door to the bathroom.

All manner of nightmarish fears passed through my mind. I rushed forward to help her, but Sarah hurried to her feet before I touched her.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Did you fall?”

She didn’t look at me. Instead, she tugged the t-shirt lower. The booty shorts spelled Sexy on her behind. She used to wear them just so Max would have somewhere to aim his occasional smack. Now she hid from me.

Hid everything.

“The floor is cooler than the bed.” She brushed a hand through her sweaty hair but didn’t look at me. “Morning sickness comes at night too…constantly, actually.”

I would have apologized. It felt like the time to apologize. But she wouldn’t have accepted it, and it wasn’t right to ask for forgiveness. Not now.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Sarah curled against the wall, and Hamlet plodded to her side, collapsing with a sigh. His head rested in her lap.

At least she hadn’t been alone.

“You should go,” she whispered. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“It’s just nausea.” Her words hardened. “You knew this was a consequence.”

I hadn’t intended to fight, and I wasn’t ready to leave. “Ginger ale?”

“Nick, please.”

“Saltines.”

“No.”

“You need to eat.”

“I need you to let me rest.”

Why hadn’t she looked at me? She avoided my gaze, flinched from my touch, and hardened with the same shell of anger which shielded her when we first kidnapped her.

This wasn’t the Sarah Atwood who shared my bed and whispered stories of her childhood, the plans for her company and education, and her every secret fantasy.

She trembled with fatigue and stress. Her fists hid within the ginger curls of Hamlet’s coat. For a woman two months pregnant, she looked tinier than ever. Thin, delicate—a little fairy too tired to fly even when danger crept close.

“I’m taking you to a doctor in the morning.”

Sarah refused my hand. She groaned as she stood, leaning toward the bathroom. She breathed deeply, coughed, and steadied.

“I’m fine.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Recently?”

“Don’t.” Now she did look at me, but her warning glance wouldn’t deter me. “Don’t you dare.”

“What?”

“I will not have you tell me how to handle this. I was checked out after I took the pregnancy test. They said I’m fine. It’s under control.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Nick—”

“You said it yourself. You’re not feeling well. You’re exhausted. And your asthma is not controlled. You need to get checked over again. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Then why did you come back to me?”

I edged closer. If she refused my comfort, I wouldn’t offer it, but she’d know how serious I was about it. About her.

“You left me. You ran. If you could have handled it yourself, you never would have returned. But here you are, nowhere left to go. So you might as well ask the father for help.”

“Yeah, I want your help to kill Darius,” she said. “But the baby and my health are my concerns.”

“They’re mine too.”

“Not anymore.”

“They will always be my concern, Sarah.”

“You don’t have that right. Not now. Not after what’s happened. Everything’s changed.”

“Then we’ll change with it.”

She turned, sipping from a glass of water on the nightstand. “You don’t understand.”

“Then let me.”

Silence. A refusal.

What went wrong in the two months since I left her bed? Had we hurt her that badly?

“You called Reed,” I said.

That insult hurt, but it was the only admission of my pain I’d give the woman who caused it.

“I did.”

“Why not me?”

She hesitated a moment too long. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“You never needed to run from me. I would have come.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s exactly that simple. I love you, Sarah. You should never have gone through this alone.”

Her eyebrow arched. “I never should have gone through this at all.”

I had no counter for our past crimes. “Let me help you.”