‘Summer—’
‘Ask me,’ she repeated, her voice raised this time but stronger.
‘No.’ The word clawed against his throat.
She cocked her head to the side and his heart pounded. He knew where this was going and he wanted to stop it. He wasn’t prepared for this.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t have to.’ He knew that wouldn’t be enough and that she’d be right to demand more. Because he saw it now. She’d had the same look on her face the morning of the argument. ‘Because I know.’
‘Know what? That if I said it was yours that I’d be telling the truth?’
He nodded, shame, anger, guilt making him nauseous.
‘I want to hear you say it,’ she said, her voice trembling.
He gritted his teeth. It was the least she deserved and, if he had his way, the first of everything. ‘I believe you.’
He cursed mentally, knowing the truth of it. Knowing that the child was his, but more than that—Summer was Kyros’s child. She had been telling the truth the day he’d kicked her out of his apartment, treating her no better than a...
He fisted his hands. He didn’t want to know, but the question was burning a hole in his empty chest. ‘Were you going to tell me?’ He couldn’t look at her as he asked the question. He didn’t want to see what her expressive features betrayed.
But she was hell-bent on making him work for his answer. It was only when he met her gaze that she responded.
‘After. When a DNA test would have been safe.’ Her eyes told him that she’d wanted to lie, wanted to say never, but she wasn’t like that. Why hadn’t he seen that then? Why hadn’t he believed her?
A phone ringing in the distance cut through the moment. Summer looked behind her and then back to him. ‘I have to get that.’
‘We will talk about this,’ he warned.
‘Fine. But... I just... I need to get that.’
She disappeared into the bowels of the building before he could argue and suddenly Theron felt dizzy. He turned, with no idea where he was going, just knowing that he needed to get back outside. The corridors were too dark, the house too damp, empty... It was lifeless and he couldn’t breathe. Bursting through a door that led out from the back of the house, he bent over, his hands on his knees, pulling air into his lungs.
Had he missed it? The mole on her collarbone? No. He remembered putting his thumb over it, remembered the strange sense of recognition stirring within him. Something sure and strong tightened in his gut. Kyros had the same mole. He was proud of the strange family trait. Every Agyros had it. Theron remembered it, because once as a teenager Lykos had found him trying to draw one on his clavicle and mocked him mercilessly for it.
Theé mou.How could she be Kyros’s daughter? The old man had been faithfully married to his wife—his incredibly sick wife—hadn’t he? Theron had never known Kyros to leave her side. He’d never spent a night away from her, never had anything but love in his words and actions towards her.
But Theron had only known him for fifteen years. Perhaps something had happened before that? Summer was, what...early twenties?
Early twenties and pregnant. He tried to cast his mind back to that night. How many times had they made love? How many times had they used protection? That he couldn’t quite remember was damning enough. He’d been utterly mindless in his desire for her.
A desire that hadn’t been misguided. He’d thought himself a fool for thinking her so pure and so bright that night. But he’dnotbeen wrong. He hadn’t misread her, been fooled or tricked. Summer was absolutely all of the things he’d thought and wanted that night.
He pulled himself up and tried to fill his lungs with oxygen, but he feared they’d never fill again. He was going to be a father. Something primal, instinctive roared to life within him. A possessive, determined, living need welled inside him with such ferocity it almost scared him.
Was this what his own father had felt? And his mother? Had his birth been planned or, as with him and Summer, had the pregnancy been a shock, a surprise?
He had no one to ask these questions, no one to tell him about his parents, their relationship, their lives, their hardships. Both Kyros and Althaia had tried to help him find someone who was connected to his life, but they hadn’t been able to find anyone who had known his parents.
And now he was going to be a parent himself. The vow didn’t even form words in his head before he felt it in his heart. His child wouldneverhave questions about their heritage. His child would never feel the losses that he had experienced. It would never want for a single thing. And instinctively he knew Summer would feel the same. It was there in her determination, her challenge to him.
Ask me.
It had been as much a demand as it had been a test.
One he had already failed.