Page 120 of Black Sheep

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Axel is standing at the side of the bed when I emerge from the bathroom. The pair of low-riding sweatpants hugging his lean hips sends a pulse of electricity through me. It’s good to know my sexuality hasn’t up and died. Every other part of me may as well have. Axel hasn’t fucked me in two days. I feel like shit, and I haven’t stopped throwing up for forty-eight hours straight.

It’s as if my body was waiting for acknowledgement of my condition before going to town. Because right on the heels of finding out I’m pregnant, I’m fully installed in Hurl Town.

Axel is out here only because I banned him from watching me throw up over and over. What I don’t know is why he looks like all the ghosts of hell are stabbing his soul with ice picks.

I shut the bathroom door behind me, leaving the room in semi-darkness. “Axel?”

The head he raises is heavy. The expression in his eyes rips me apart. “Why are you getting calls from Greenwich Memorial Hospital?”

My heart…stops. “What?”

“I put your phone on silent so you would get some sleep. I just un-muted it. It’s eight a.m., and they’ve been calling since midnight. Why?” His breathing alters, shallow pants that stroke the edge of hyperventilation. “Is it…is it the baby? You said it was just morning sickness.” His gaze flies over me, as if he’s developed X-ray powers. They return to linger on my stomach, to my long-healed ribs. His face goes pale. “I swear, if he caused permanent damage—”

“I’m fine, Axel. It’s not…The baby’s fine.”

He raises the phone clutched in his hand. “Everything’s not fine or the hospital wouldn’t have left you nine fucking messages! And why the hell would you book an appointment out of town when I’ve got you an ob-gyn right here in Manhattan?”

Terror and the shattering of my dreams rip through my soul. I stumble forward, hand outstretched. “Can you…give me my phone, please?”

His fingers tighten until his knuckles turn as white as his face. “Tell me why the hospital’s calling, Cleo.”

I shake my head. “No. Please don’t make me. If I do, we can never go back.”

Confusion furrows his brow. “Go back? Back where?”

“Back to this moment. Back to one minute ago, when I was okay with choosing your love over…”

He freezes. “Over what?”

I squeeze my eyes shut for a fatalistic second. “Over the darkness in your soul.” The words are less than a whisper.

He hears them. His breathing stalls. The tendons on his neck stand out as his gaze goes from my face to the phone. Back again.

“Why would…I don’t…Tell me why the hospital’s calling.”

“Because that’s where my mother is!”

Silence. It sucks us into its grim chasm. I don’t want to fight it. Surrendering to it would be so good right now. My knees weaken. I sag against the wall, slide down it, and attempt to wrap my arms around my grief.

He doesn’t come to me. He doesn’t scoop me up into his arms. He shakes his head. Denying us both the numbing blackness that will end all this.

“Your mother is dead.”

The remnants of my ravaged soul refute that. So hard. “She’s not dead.”

“No. She and your father were officially declared dead two years ago.”

My heart bangs against my ribs, every single scenario I’ve ever envisaged for this moment playing out in macabre Technicolor. “Declared dead, but not dead. At least not my mother.”

“Why would you hide something like that—? Finnan? Did he threaten her?”

“He threatened her, yes, but with turning off her life support if I stepped out of line. He knew where she was because he was the one who paid for her care.”

He breaks from stasis and begins to pace. “So…if Finnan knew she was alive and wasn’t the one you were hiding her from, then—?”

“Stop. Please!” I realize I’m weeping when the hand I swipe across my cheeks comes away wet. “Are you seriously playing this game with me, Axel?”

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