Page 111 of For Her Own Good

“Starla, love.” He pets my hair, strokes my cheek with the back of his knuckles. Looks at me with those kind blue eyes. “You’re pregnant?”

“Yes?”

He doesn’t look afraid. Or haunted. If anything, I’d describe his expression as hopeful.

“I thought you knew. I thought that’s why you left. I thought—”

He hushes me, wraps a hand around mine, and leans in to kiss my forehead. He murmurs against my skin, his lips brushing where he just planted a kiss. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry you thought that’s why I’d left. I’d never leave because you were pregnant. Jesus, Star, not ever.”

“Then why’d you leave? It hurt so much.”

Like being stabbed in the precise place where I’d been stabbed before. Like a bruise being layered on top of a bruise that was already there, and not by a careful top who knew what they were doing and wanted to hurt but not harm. No, this bruise went so deep, it hit bone.

Lowry shakes his head and then lays his forehead on our joined hands before kissing my knuckles and looking up at me, a supplicant.

“Tad Harding came to me.”

My breath leaves my body all in a rush. Not as though I’ve forced it out myself, but as if it’s been sucked by a vacuum. “Tad?”

“Aye. He said…he said my showing up when I did was rather suspicious and made the board doubt your capabilities. Our being in a relationship made people wonder if I was taking advantage of you. I’m not proud of it, but I let that get under my skin because it’s something I’d scratched at myself. Not because you’re weak, but because that’s been a fear I’ve had. He poked at my worst parts, and I hate the fact that you can probably identify with that, but he seems like the kind of arsehole who uses that tactic as much as possible, so I’d be surprised if he never turned it on you.

“And I…I’d always known how much your father meant to you, but I hadn’t known you felt that overseeing his company was somehow a way to redeem yourself in his eyes, which is just… Fucking hell, Star, if he couldn’t see how incredible you are and didn’t make you feel loved and like he was proud of you every day then I can’t say I have a high opinion of the man. That’s not the point, though. I couldn’t stomach contributing to you feeling like any less than the marvel you are.”

Lowry blows a breath through his nose and shakes his head, bowing it again.

“Being the cause of you losing something you wanted so desperately, it sent me reeling. I can’t say I was making rational choices. All I could think of was to run, get out of here where my presence could hurt you. I didn’t think enough about how myabsencewould hurt you, partly because Tad is… Christ, he’s awful. He threatened to have you committed.”

Any air I’d managed to breathe back into my lungs leaves again, this time through something that feels like a horse kick to my chest, which would explain why my voice comes out as a croak. “What?”

“It’s ridiculous, and it wouldn’t work. No one who isn’t total shit at their job would ever consider it and Lacey knows better, would fight tooth and nail not to let that happen and so would I and anyone else on staff here. But the threat of it…I thought of how that would make you feel, how it would make the board see you. If he made it public, how ugly and disgusting it could get. If I’d had more time and less rage, I might’ve thought of a better way to handle it, but all I could think was that I had to get away from you, needed for them to think I wasn’t a party to your decisions and that I wasn’t influencing you. How I could do that if I wasn’t here, if I’d…”

His skin has gone from its usual faintly ruddy cast to grey.

“If I’d left you again. Made me sick to do it, but I thought it would be easier in the short term, until you figured out what you wanted to do with Patrick Enterprises and got the gears turning well enough no one could stop it. I didn’t want to be the reason you lost something so important to you.”

He shuts his eyes tight before opening them again, and pins me with the intensity of his gaze.

“The truth of it is that I love you, Starla Elizabeth Patrick. I love you with everything I have, with everything I ever will have, and I should’ve told you sooner.”

He loves me? I mean, I could’ve perhaps guessed that. Hell, I even went so far to tell Doctor Gendron I think he might. But once you’ve had voices whispering in your ear for twenty-odd years that you’re unlovable, not worth anyone’s time or attention, and then too damaged or too much trouble to be worth caring for, well. It makes those words far more difficult to believe. Even if I do…

That’s when the tears start to fall in earnest. I don’t tend to cry a lot so maybe it’s the hormones, or maybe it’s that I’m overwhelmed with the emotional roller coaster I’ve been on for the past several months. For someone who’s spent so much of their life feeling somewhere around numb, all of this is a lot. Just, a lot.

“Star, love, why are you crying? Is it really so bad? Would you rather I take it back?”

Under the teasing rhythm of his words, there’s a note of panic, and I try to stamp it out by banging a fist on his solid chest.

“No, you son of a bantha. I’m mad I might not remember this. How dare you tell me this now? You know my memory is shit right after treatments.”

He makes a gruff noise and mutters something I can’t quite make out, but then he’s off his feet and scooping me up before settling onto the hospital bed with me in his lap, cradling my head against his shoulder where I weep. He rocks me and pets my hair—pets, not pats because there’s a goddamn distinction—and murmurs to me, the soft tones of whatever nonsense he’s speaking soothing. When some of the storm’s blown out, he takes my chin between his thumb and knuckle until I’m looking at him, tear-streaked cheeks, red nose and all.

“Did I make you sick by picking you up?”

I shake my head.

“Good. I didn’t think until after I’d done it, so I’m sorry. I couldn’t…”

He tightens his grip on my flank where his other hand is resting.

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