Devlyn squeezed my hand as tears ran down my face. “You’re having a baby,” she cooed.
All I could do was nod. I didn’t have words to describe what I was feeling. I’d thought seeing the baby exactly where it should be would ease my fears, but it didn’t.
Because now there were new fears. Was I eating enough? Was I too stressed out? What if I fell? Could the baby get hurt?What if the cord got wrapped around the baby’s neck and I didn’t know? What if something happened during the birth?
“Morgan, it will all be okay,” Devlyn whispered.
“You don’t know that,” I answered, still staring at my baby.
“You have to believe.”
I looked at my best friend. “I have to tell him.”
She smiled and rubbed my hand. “Yeah, you do.”
I looked back at the screen. “But I don’t have to be with him,” I said, mostly to myself. I was the one who needed to be convinced that a baby didn’t mean I had to be with a man who didn’t want me.
Again, I thought about my parents. I would keep them at the forefront of my mind. A reminder every day of how two people can love each other but not bein love. Work together to raise a child without being in a relationship that would only make everyone involved miserable.
Me, because I was in love with a man who didn’t want me.
Him, because he felt obligated to be with his baby’s mother.
And our child, who would feel that tension, that disconnect between their parents. A child who would always feel like a burden because the two people who loved them the most could never be happy together.
I would tell Jude the truth. I would let him be a part of his child’s life. But not a part of mine. I couldn’t go down that road again. My parents never made me feel like an obligation.
I’d be damned if I let that man make me feel like one.
And fuck him if he ever made my child feel that way.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chasm
I stared at the names on the list in front of me. I’d been through every scrap of paper in this office and hadn’t found shit as to why Steele and Stone had files on these women.
I had my guess about Morgan. Steele must have known she was mine. Unless he’d discovered she was King’s sister. If he had, he never said a word about it. Not to the men who stayed at least.
It was possible he’d told one or more of the men who ran when he did. The men who chose to stay were the men loyal to the club, not the man wearing the president’s patch.
They were loyal to the office as long as that office was honest with them. Respected them. Until that office, and the man who held it, betrayed them.
I still didn’t believe I deserved the patch above my name, but I’d do everything I could to honor it. I leaned back in my chair and stared out the window.
I wondered what she was doing. Not a day went by when I didn’t think about her, long for her. But she wasn’t mine, not anymore.
She belonged to O’Malley.
She belonged to King.
If she hadn’t lost the baby, I’d still have a claim. I’d have a reason to be in her life. An avenue to wear her down and make her love me again.
I still didn’t know what happened. Justin offered to hack her medical records, but I told him no. It was early in the pregnancy, so it probably said some bullshit about it just not being viable with no fucking answer as to what happened.
King knew.
He’d been there for her when I couldn’t. Held her while she cried. Comforted her when it should have been me. I wanted to fucking hate him for it. But knowing who she was now... I was thankful that he was there. I owed him a debt I couldn’t repay.