“Castello, could you please loosen this?”
I blinked then reached out to unclasp the ring. I stood up the same time she sat up straight.
“That’s why I fainted,” she started, her eyes looking everywhere except at me. “Doc asked me if there was a chance I could be pregnant.” She shrugged. “And turns out, I am.”
I was a grown fucking man. An intelligent fucking man. Yet every word that came out of her mouth made absolutely no sense at all.
“You’re on birth control. I know you were on birth control.”
She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “I was. And…how did you know?”
“Don’t play dumb, Tatum. You know I did my homework before I—”
“Before you kidnapped me.”
Silence.
“Yes.”
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, her face cast in shadows of doubt and uncertainty. But I needed her to talk. I needed her to make fucking sense.
“Tatum. What the fuck?”
“I was supposed to go for my shot about a week before you…took me.”
“You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry—” her jaw tense and lips taut “—I was too busy trying not to die for me to worry about birth control, Castello.”
My heart and my stomach both fought for a way out my throat. My pulse raced, and every ounce of my blood had gone cold.
Pregnant. Fucking pregnant. We were in the middle of a goddamn civil war and Tatum was pregnant?
My mind started to reel, and I started to pace up and down. “This isn’t happening.”
“I’m afraid it is. There were two pink lines, and I did the test…twice.”
More pacing, more reeling thoughts.
“How far along are you?”
“Not sure. Doc is trying to arrange an ultrasound. Then we should know how far along I am.”
I stopped and pinned my stare on her. “Have you…”
“No. Not since Carlo. There was no one else. Just you.”
With my hands in my hair, I dropped an entire vocabulary of f-bombs. And then it occurred to me.
“You drank champagne while you knew you were pregnant?”
“I pretended. I didn’t even take one sip.”
I looked down at the floor, my hands now on my hips.Jesus Christ. “You let me do this to you. You let me tie you up and beat you with my fucking belt…and you’re fucking pregnant. Tatum, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stop me? And the tattoo.”Oh God, this was all just too damn much.
With shame in her eyes, she dropped her gaze from mine to the floor. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“It’s pretty fucking easy, actually. You just open your goddamn mouth and tell me.”