Page 20 of Adoring Delaney

“It’s too late.”

“Baby, it’s not. It will never be too late for us. It’s always been you—always. I’m sorry, so fucking sorry I was so stupid. Never shoulda pushed you away. I thought I was doing right by you. I thought I was protecting you. I was wrong, Laney. Please forgive me—please. We can work this out. We can have everything. It’s always been us—Carter and Delaney since we were old enough to understand what love is.”

All my life I waited for this chance, for us to be together—really together. But now, every word he spoke felt like he was plunging a knife into my heart. No, my soul.

“We can’t fix—”

“Laney baby, we can. We will. Let me dig it out, whatever’s inside of you that’s hurting you, let me take it from you.”

Anger flashed. Take it out?

“You can’t take it out, Carter. It’s already gone. It was beaten out of me. There’s nothing left inside. Gone. Gone. Gone.”

“Tell me what happened with Derek Lowe.”

“No.”

“Laney, you have to let it out, you have to talk about what happened. Mercy had to. Before she went back to work, the DEA made her talk to someone.”

I knew Mercy had talked to a shrink; she’d begged me to go see one, too, but I’d refused. I didn’t want to think about what happened. So I really hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

“Just go away. Please. Let me go. I can’t do this, not today.”

“Why not today?”

I stared into his green eyes and remained silent. Exhaustion hit and I was so damn tired I could sleep for a year. I just wanted him to leave. I wanted to wallow in my misery alone.

“Talk. To. Me. Dammit. Tell me what happened. I’m dying, Delaney. It kills me to know you were taken and I was on the other side of the world. I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t hold you after it happened. I couldn’t—”

“You weren’t there!” I shouted in his face. “But that wasn’t the worst part. Not even by a long shot. You know what was worse than being taken by Derek Lowe? Taking a pregnancy test by myself and seeing a plus sign. Being so happy I could burst but I had no one to share it with. Because you weren’t there. Going to the doctor and having that home test confirmed. Hearing our baby’s heart beat for the first time—alone. You weren’t there. I did that alone. That was worse. Something that should’ve been happy and exciting was sad and scary because I was going at it alone.”

“Pregnant?”

If I’d been paying attention to Carter, I would’ve seen it, the confusion, the hurt, the cold fury in his eyes, but instead I’d snapped. I was lost in my own grief. My own personal hell, a place I kept myself locked in.

“Then I left the doctor’s office on cloud nine. We were having a baby. Even though I was alone, I was happy. The happiest. I had this little baby growing inside of me, a part of you I’d always have. I was driving home in a haze of excitement. That lasted thirty minutes. Then Derek took me. All I could think about was protecting our baby. I didn’t care what he did to me as long as he didn’t hurt what was inside of me. I failed, Carter. I hadn’t even had confirmation I was a mom for more than an hour and I failed. There is no fixing what I took from us.”

“Pregnant?” Carter’s voice was unrecognizable—so thick with emotion the sound shredded me.

“Today should’ve been beautiful. We should’ve been welcoming our child into the world. Instead I was selfish and stupid. I didn’t listen to my brother or Mercy.”

Carter reached for me and I batted his hand away. “All I could do was lie on the floor next to Mercy curled into a ball. I felt it, I knew the second he kicked me in my stomach my baby was gone. And you were not there. I was all alone. Always fucking alone.”

“Delaney.” My name sounded like it’d been tortured from his lips, hoarse and overwhelmingly sad. “Fuck, baby, fuck.”

I blinked away some of the tears swimming under my eyelids and with them went some of the fog. Carter was on his knees in front of me, anguish clear as day, tears that matched my own streaming down his cheeks. His head came down into my lap and I was forced to sit back. His big hand went to my empty stomach and he wailed out his pain.

Hell.

I was living in hell.

Now he was, too.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Carter’s head in my lap, my hand in his hair trying to comfort him the only way I could.

Then he was on his feet, I was in his arms and he was walking us down the hall to the master suite. Carter gently laid me on the bed and followed. He rolled me to my side and fitted his broad chest to my back. He threaded our fingers together and brought our hands over my heart and held on tight.

This was familiar. He’d done this hundreds of times, one of the many things I loved about sleeping with Carter. He always held me close, like he was trying to meld our bodies. So close nothing could come between us.

---