Page 16 of The Bastard's Lily
“Don’t you dare.”
Two inches lower, and I’d swear she shot me with that voice alone.
“You kept him from me.”
My words taste like blood. Like betrayal. Like every night I sat wondering why she left and never came back. Her jaw trembles, but her eyes don’t flinch.
“I kept us alive.”
The silence cracks again, louder than the thunder that brought her in. And I get it. Not all of it. Not yet. But enough.
Enough to feel the hollow in my chest finally explain itself. Enough to realize the universe played me like a fucking fiddle. Enough to know I have a son. A whole damnson—and I didn’t even know his name until five minutes ago.
And Calla? She’s standing there with lightning in her bones and fire in her chest, daring the world to come for them again. And fuck me—she looks like a storm I’d let destroy me all over again.
I take a step. Just one. But she feels it like an earthquake. Beau’s tiny hand is still wrapped in the fabric of her shirt when she rises, slow and sharp, like a blade pulled from a sheath. She pushes him behind her with one hand. The other? It raises the gun. Pointed right at me. The metallic click echoes like a thunderclap in the stunned quiet.
“Easy now, sweetheart—” Grimm says, hands up as he backs away, eyes flicking from the muzzle to me and back again.
“Whoa—” Wren mutters, dragging his chair back with a scraping screech.
A few of the guys shift behind me, not aggressively, just that subtle club instinct to assess threat, protect, react. But no one steps forward. No one says a goddamn word. Because the threat?
Isn’ther. It’sme. It’swhat I didn’t know. It’swhat she’s been through. And, fuck me—I don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t evenblink. Because I’m not staring down a gun. I’m staring down the wreckage of every choice I never got to make.
“Calla…” I say, softer now.
But she’s not soft. Not anymore.
“Don’t come near us.”
Us.Us.She’s shaking. Barely. But it’s there. In her wrists. In her voice. In the way she shields him like muscle memory. She’d kill me if I got closer. And maybe… Maybe I’d let her. Because I sure as hell don’t know how to survive this either.
Beau peeks around her legs. Big blue eyes. Sticky fingers. Still holding that goddamn fox like it’s the most precious thing in the world. He tugs on her arm, a small voice piercing the silence.
“Mama… I didn’t finish my root beer.”
Calla flinches. Like she forgot the world existed beyond the barrel of the gun and the storm outside.
I take a shaky breath. “Calla…” My voice is rough. Raw. “Whose kid is that?”
She doesn’t answer. Just keeps staring at me like I’m a ghost she never buried deep enough.
“Calla.” I step forward. Her spine goes ramrod straight. “I swear to god, don’t play dumb with me.”
She lifts her chin. Sharp and proud. “Mine.”
The word slices me open. I blink. My heart doesn’t. It just…stops. Mine. Mine. That little boy.Mine.
My jaw locks so tight it aches. “He’s mine too, isn’t he?”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. It’s all there—in her eyes, in his face, in the fucking sandwich.
“You kept him from me.”
Her expression shatters. And then sets like stone.
“I kept usalive,Rook.”
