“I’m sorry, so sorry.” I kept repeating myself, over and over, hoping he’d hear, hoping he’d know how much I meant it, and hoping he’d see how hard this was.
“No.” He froze, leather jacket bunching as he stood eerily still. “Say it. Say what you want, Stevie.”
I shook my head. “Don’t, Aiden.”
“Don’t?” he thundered, spinning to level me with a look of utter devastation, one I’d remember for the rest of my life. A harsh laugh preceded his words. “If you can’t say it’s me, when I’m standing here, fucking begging for you to, then we already know the answer, don’t we?”
I could do nothing. Nothing but chant those useless words. “I’m sorry.”
He roared, hand slamming into a glass window in the brick wall beside me.
Glass showered like rain, mingling with the echo of my scream.
And then something wet trickled down my thigh, my panties flooding and clinging. “Oh, shit.” I staggered, thinking I’d peed myself.
Aiden’s face paled, and he stared in horror before using his uninjured hand to retrieve his phone from his jeans.
Hurried footsteps sounded. Then Everett’s voice, strangled and layered in anger, bounced off the walls. “Don’t bother, I’ve got her.”
Slowing, he reached me in a few rushed strides, taking my hand and checking my face. “You can walk?”
I nodded, and he led me back to the car, laid down a towel he’d been keeping in the trunk, and helped me in. “You came.”
“Jogged over as soon as you left.” His laughter was silent. “Did you really think I was going to be able to wait?” His hands were tight around the steering wheel. “That I’d let my pregnant girl just go visit her ex in the dark?”
“You don’t trust me.”
“No, it’s him I don’t trust. And I just… I don’t know. I had this feeling. Don’t give me shit, okay? It’s a damn good thing I listened to it.”
As a sharp pain splintered and began to band around my midsection, I lost any will I had to argue with him. Not that I had much to say in the first place.
Mason Hendrix Taylor was born at three thirty the following afternoon, welcomed into the world via the form of a knife to the stomach after keeping me in limbo for hours on end.
I’d survived better than I thought even though every time I coughed, it felt like I’d tear my stitches and my insides might leak out.
Staring into his tiny, scrunched face, brushing my fingers over the golden tuft of hair on his head and the planes of his rosy, round cheeks, I fell in love for the third time in my short life.
And I knew that love, combined with the love of the hovering male who wouldn’t leave my side, would be enough.
It was strong enough to fill cracks and cover scars, to ease the bruising left behind, and I had hope that it’d have the power to eventually heal. To release me from the curse I’d willingly walked into.
On our last night in the hospital, I stirred when I felt the soft touch of lips resting upon my forehead, and inhaled a familiar scent. With my heart thudding hard, I forced my eyes to open in time to see Aiden’s dark form slip soundlessly out of the room.
To fall in love twice was a beautiful rarity.
To be in love with two men at the same time was a cruel twist of fate.
Your soul was split right down the middle, a piece of you stolen forever.
Some people walked through life never having tasted the essence of falling in love. Some people fell over and over again until they finally fell the right way and found something true.
I didn’t know if I’d done it right or wrong.
But as I dragged my aching eyes to Everett, dozing in the chair by the window with our son curled into the crook of his arm, I knew I’d travel any path all over again if it would lead me back to them.
My only wish, the one that would keep me awake for years to come, would be for the lost piece of my soul to one day feel that way too.
Everett
One Year Later
They say all that glitters is not gold.
Well, I begged to fucking differ.
Since the first time I’d laid eyes on Stevie Sandrine, her sunshine had branded me with its warmth.
It took her six months after Mason was born to finally wear my ring and another six months to convince her we were getting married today.