I watched Liam approach. “Love you too. Kiss my nephew for me.”
Liam stood in front of me, staring at me with an unreadable look on his face.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
He didn’t answer straight away. And when he did, he didn’t answer at all. “Suits you,” he murmured.
“What? Annoyance?” I snapped.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “No, the baby. You’re a natural.”
I froze. My womb froze too. And unbidden, visions of a different life assaulted me. A life with the baby in my arms being mine.
Liam’s.
I jerked myself out.
No.
That life was gone.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated, unable to even address what he just said.
He folded his arms. “Got back to the clubhouse. You weren’t there. You didn’t tell me where you were at.”
I frowned at the accusation in the words. “I wasn’t aware that I had to update you on my whereabouts,” I snapped. “I may still be a prisoner, but it was cleared with the warden.”
He ran his hand over his mouth. “You’re not a prisoner, Peaches.”
I raised my brow.
He sighed and sat down beside me, kissing the baby’s head, then mine. The warmth that erupted in my stomach was painful at the simple, tender gesture.
“It scared me,” he admitted, looking at the muted TV. “Not knowing where you were.”
I bit my lip, stopping myself from saying that I didn’t know where he was for fifteen years.
“I missed you,” he continued.
I swallowed roughly.
I missed him too.
But I couldn’t say that.
So instead, I watched the mute news story. A story I might’ve been covering, had I not been here. I knew the reporter. He was an asshole.
Then, unbidden, an old reel of the same warzone was shown, this time with a different reporter.
I froze.
Jagger’s entire form tightened as he watched me on the screen.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, eyes glued to the television, frozen in horror. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like the newsreel of me was in a particularly shocking situation. It was in the aftermath of a bombing in a small remote town in the mountains of Iraq. Seemingly random. But nothing was random.
So I’d hitched a ride out into territory my security detail refused to go into.
And I got the story.
“Do what?” I asked, laying my lips on the soft head of the baby, inhaling that perfect smell of baby powder and innocence. The scent of a clean slate.
He turned off the television. Stared at me.
I couldn’t hide behind the baby anymore.
So I stared back.
“Why did you live like that?” he asked. It was more of a plea than a question. A plead for some kind lie. Some kind of digestible truth to explain this. Nothing between us was digestible. It was all poison.
I added more poison to the mix. The arsenic known as truth.
“I was so broken over you,” I said, rubbing the baby’s head. “But life goes on, for broken people too. Broken people most of all. In order to carry on, I had to live harder than anyone else.”
He stared at me, eyes shimmering. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t do anything but hold onto the baby and try not to drown in his gaze.
“Peaches,” he murmured.
“You make me wish I didn’t love you.”
“But you do.” It wasn’t structured as a question, but it was. It was a prayer coming from a man who I knew had forsaken a higher power long ago.
I sighed. “But I do.”
“Wishes don’t come true, Peaches. There’s a lot of maybes in this life, but that’s one thing I know for certain. Wish you don’t love me all you like, the fact that you do means everything to me.”
I looked down at the baby then back up at Liam. “It means everything to me too.”
And it was truth. It was both arsenic and sugar.
Chapter Twenty-One
I wouldn’t say we entered into a routine.
Because things were happening at the club that were decidedly not routine.
There was the fact that a DEA agent was being paid to investigate them, and they still needed to run their guns, and then there was the fact that they couldn’t run their guns because they’d killed five of their suppliers.
I wondered if this was the plan after all, to make the Sons of Templar feel cornered, strike out like any other cornered animal might, with only instinct and no brain.
There was no routine with Liam and me really. He watched as I did my stretches in the morning. Sometimes I almost got all the way through them before he snatched me by the waist and took me back to bed. Or before he slipped off my panties while I was in downward dog and, well, slipped right in.
That was a way to make sure I never thought of yoga the same again.
But I’d never think of anything the same again.