Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,96

me one,” he answered evenly, his forlorn eyes filled with so much grief and confusion. “Then she slapped me in the face.” He brought the bottle to his lips and took another sip.

She agreed to a paternity test?

A new level of panic seeped into my body. Why would she agree to do the test when we all knew it would show that Trace was not the father? Did she know something the rest of us didn’t, or was she really that delusional?

What if the baby did have some of Trace’s DNA since it was Trace’s body that Lucifer was using as the vessel?

No, that’s dumb, I told myself.

It was already clear to everyone that Nikki’s baby was a descendant of Lucifer, and not Trace. Hence the Horsemen. Plus, we all knew how the whole demon-reproducing thing worked anyway, and this was no different from that, so unless she was planning on doctoring the results of the test in order to trick him into believing it was his, we had nothing to worry about.

Then again, she definitely had the ability and lack of integrity to do the latter, and that was before she was carrying Lucifer’s spawn in her belly which would probably corrupt even the saintliest of people.

“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath, drawing me back to the present. Everything about him looked broken and defeated and it made my heart ache for him.

Wanting to comfort him, to be near him, I moved to the sofa to sit next to him, but he quickly hopped up on his feet as though he couldn’t stand to be close to me.

My heart splintered as I watched him move to the window and rest his forearm against the frame. Taking an extra-long sip from his bottle, he stared out into the empty street as though he had the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. I imagined in the moment, he did.

“You should go to bed,” he said without meeting my eyes. “I need to clear my head.”

“I’m not leaving you like this.”

He puffed out a humorless laugh and shook his head. “This isn’t your problem, Jemma.”

“It isn’t yours either. She’s lying,” I blurted out and then slammed my mouth shut, unsure of how I was going to follow up such a loaded statement. “I mean, she has to be.”

He didn’t flinch. “I saw her. She’s pregnant,” he said definitively.

As weary as I was about how much I could share with him, I knew I couldn’t stay silent on this either. Not about this. She was wreaking him, wholly and completely, and I refused to let her get away with it.

“Fine, she’s pregnant, but it’s not yours. It can’t be,” I said as I ventured closer to him like I couldn’t stand to be away. “The timeline doesn’t match—she’s too far along,” I offered, feeling it was safe to point that out without having to spill the entire truth. “And—”

His glassy sapphire eyes burned through the darkness to meet mine.

“And we would’ve been together at that time. You wouldn’t have cheated on me.”

He stared back at me, as though trying to siphon the past from my eyes; to be able to see us as we once were. It speared my heart to know that all the good parts had been wiped out from his memory right along with the bad ones.

“She’s using the fact that you can’t remember the past against you.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, and I wished for the hundredth time that day that I could know his thoughts the way he always seemed to know mine.

He leaned his back against the wall and met my gaze, his eyes searching. “What if it is mine?” he asked softly.

“It’s not,” I insisted with the kind of confidence I should not have had on a matter in which I was supposed to know nothing about.

“But what if it is? What does that mean for us?” he asked, his face a blank canvas of emotion. He may as well have been written entirely in a foreign language.

“It wouldn’t change anything,” I said, answering his hypothetical honestly. The truth was, I had no intention of letting anyone get in between me and Trace again. Not this time. And definitely not Nikki. “I mean, not unless you’d want it to.”

“So, I should just ruin your life then?” he asked, darkness riding his tone. “Make this your problem too?”

I erased the gap between us. “You could never ruin my life, Trace. You’ve only