Page 77 of Watch Me Burn
Her expression softens, and she tucks my hair behind my ear. I lean my face into her palm.
“I’m so sorry about the baby, Lu. Just because you didn’t know doesn’t mean it isn’t gutting.”
I go quiet, trying to sort through the mess of feelings tangled inside me. More tears blur my vision. “I don’t know how I feel. I had no idea, but now that it’s gone… part of me is wrecked. Not just because it was mine, but because it was his.”
She nods, and something passes between us. An understanding that doesn’t need words. Senior year, the guy she was dating, the one she thought wasthe one, left her the second she told him she was pregnant. She fell apart. Then she lost the baby a month later. God, I’m dragging her back through all of that. I’m a terrible friend.
“If things between us end, and they probably will because we can’t keep going like this without destroying each other, at least if I’d had his baby, I’d always have something of him.” The tears come harder now. “How sick is that?”
She wraps her arms around me again. “It’s not sick, Lu. It’s human.”
“I’m so fucked, Mar. I’ve gone so far down this road I can’t even see the way back anymore.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you need to tell your wolf the truth. First, because you can’t have sex while you’re still miscarrying. And if he fucking doesn’t take no for an answer, I will kill him, and they’ll never find his body.”
I laugh and cringe at the same time. Her words are almost unbearably ironic.
“But what if he ends it? I’m not ready for that. It’ll break me, even if breaking is probably the healthiest thing that could happen.”
I sag against her, and her arms tighten as fresh tears stream down my cheeks. A wave of grief, held back all day by numbness, releases, washing over me in waves.
Maren holds me through it all, her presence an anchor in the storm of my emotions. She doesn’t try to fix anything or offer empty reassurances.
She just holds me, and for now, that’s enough.
Chapter nineteen
Damien
Luna’s still awake when I arrive, even though it’s after midnight. She’s usually asleep by now. I’m late tonight because I had a target who needed my attention. Cade is disposing of what’s left of him now as I come to my little doe, desperate and aching for her.
I push open the door. She’s sitting on the bed in the dark, bathed in nothing but a thin sliver of moonlight cutting through the gap in her curtains. The look on her face stops me cold. This isn’t the breathless anticipation I’ve come to expect. This is emptiness. A void where emotion should be.
Her gaze lifts to mine, and I’m struck by how wrung out she looks. Exhaustion is carved into every line of her face, weighing down her shoulders.
I spent the entire day trapped in my Denver office, hammering out the final details of a new acquisition, which meant I only caught an early exchange with Maren about errands before my day spiraled into back-to-back meetings. Then I had to attend to my target. But I should have checked the cameras and looked in on her. Because the way she’s sitting here, the emptiness in her eyes—it sets off every alarm bell in my head. Something is very wrong.
I know how to make it right, though. And it involves my cock inside her cunt.
I shoo Shadow and the cats out of the room and close the door. In three long strides, I’m in front of her, my hand already at my belt, impatient as always.
“Stand up. Take that off.”
She rises, but when my hands move to the sash of her robe, she steps back. “Wait.”
I go still, my head tilting. Did I hear her right?
“Wait?”
“I can’t tonight. I… something’s happened.”
I step closer, lifting my hand to cup her pale cheek. “What’s happened?”
“I saw my doctor today. I woke up bleeding this morning.”
“Your period has never stopped me before, you know that.”
“It isn’t my period.”
