by Aly Martinez
Patient.
Kind.
Thoughtful.
Heath.
Finally, I forced myself to sit up, his blanket of warmth sticking with me as he followed me.
“We should probably go downstairs,” I said softly, staring up through my lashes.
His eyes flashed dark as he licked his lips. “You sure?” He smoothed a hand down my back before reassuringly gripping my hip.
This. Man.
I swayed into him. “No. But, if I want to escape back up here with you for the rest of the night, it’s a necessity.”
He smiled, tucking a stray hair behind my ear and peeling another shattered piece of my soul away. “I like that plan. Then let’s get this over with.”
“Okay, Heath,” I whispered. My eyes flashed to his mouth, and he must have noticed, because his smile grew tenfold.
Holding my gaze, he called out, “Tessi, grab your headphones and iPad. We’re going down.”
“Yeehaw!” she squealed for reasons that could only be described as My Little Pony overload.
Heath laughed loudly, and I couldn’t help but join him.
And, looking back, I was glad I did.
It was only those memories with him that pulled me through the darkness.
Again.
Tessa held my hand as we rounded the corner to the living room, her eyes glued to the iPad, her headphones already in place. I hated how much time she spent on that thing, but when you were on the run from a tyrant, little girls got extra screen time.
Elisabeth and Roman were already sitting on the leather sofa flanked by Alex and Ethan at either end. A middle-aged man with horn-rimmed glasses pushed to his feet when he saw us.
“Mrs. Noir, I’m Doctor Hurly,” he greeted.
Just the sound of Walt’s name slashed through me.
“Just Clare. Please,” I corrected.
“Of course. Clare, come have a seat,” he invited, but my feet didn’t budge.
Suddenly, a rush of nerves swirled in my stomach as it all became too real.
I swallowed hard, trying to pack it down, and then Heath stepped in front of me and whispered, “We can wait.”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
Which he easily read. “Try that again.”
I reached out and rested a hand on his chest. “Fine. This sucks.”
He grinned and leaned toward me. A subtle offer for comfort in Heath Light style. I’d take whatever I could get and swayed into him. One of his hands found my hip before sliding around to my lower back, warmth radiating out from his touch.
Bending his head down, he murmured in my ear, “Elisabeth cooked.”
My eyebrows pinched together in question as I craned my head back. “Um…okay?”
“That means, after this bullshit is done, it’s you, me, Tessa, and a pizza. And, this time, I vote we add beer.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed, beaming with excitement. “It’s like you’re speaking to my soul.”
He gave a deep, masculine chuckle, and I did my best not to gawk at his sexy mouth. Well, at least not repeatedly. And failed. Tragically.
His eyes heated as he rumbled, “So let’s try this again: We can wait.”
“I’m okay,” I replied, this time honestly. And I really was.
He was there.
It was time we put this to rest. Tessa was my daughter. She was also Elisabeth’s. Most importantly, together, we could keep her away from Walt.
I drew in a sharp breath and patted Heath’s chest before moving around him.
Ethan lifted his hand for a high five as we passed, and Tessa did not leave him hanging.
Elisabeth was on her feet and wrapping me into a bear hug before I knew what had hit me.
“This changes nothing,” she vowed.
She was wrong; it changed everything. But different could be good. Nothing was worse than standing immobile in Walt’s fiery inferno, waiting to die. And that was exactly what I’d been doing for the last seven years.
I backed out of her hug and lifted Tessa into my arms. “I know. I’m okay. Really. It is what it is at this point. I just want it over with so we can all move on with our lives. This is step one.”
“You’re incredible,” Elisabeth gasped, tears filling her eyes.
I wasn’t. I was just making the best of the shit hand I’d been dealt.
Grinning, I sat down in an oversized chair and arranged Tessa and her iPad on my lap. I reached up and caught Heath’s hand from where he was standing behind me. “Let’s do this. Rip the Band-Aid off, Doc.”
Elisabeth shuffled back to her position with Roman and nodded at Doctor Hurly to carry on.
He cleared his throat. “Of course. Let’s get to it. Mr. Leblanc asked me here today in case there were any questions from either party. However, the results of our testing are quite straightforward.” He flipped through the papers in his hand before passing one to me and another copy to Elisabeth. “First off, our tests were performed—”
I interrupted him. “Please save your explanations for later. Just tell us what you found.”
“Right.” He smiled tightly, glancing around the room. “In the case of maternity, we have found to a degree of a 99.8 percent certainty that Tessa Noir is the daughter of Elisabeth Leblanc.”
My lungs seized for the briefest of seconds.
Quick. Fast. And to the point.
The truth still took my breath away, but then it was done.
I could live with done. Done meant I’d lived through it and come out on the other side. Done meant moving forward.
And then the floor opened up and the demons of Hell attacked me from all angles.
“It also proved to a 99.8 percent certainty that Walter Noir is her father.”
Quick. Fast. And to the point.
I was stabbed in the heart with a verbal blow so painful that I wished I hadn’t lived to see the other side.
The room fell silent to my ears even as chaos broke out around me. Roman shot to his feet, Elisabeth right beside him.
And I stared ahead, utterly numb.
I was vaguely aware of Heath plucking Tessa from my lap. I didn’t have it in me to fight him. My arms fell to my sides, limp and empty. So fucking empty. Just like the gaping hole in my chest where my heart had once been.
Elisabeth is her mother.
Walt is her father.
Embryos hadn’t been swapped.
They’d been created.
Walter fucking Noir had paid someone to give him the egg I couldn’t.
And then he’d used me as nothing more than a vessel to deliver her into Satan’s lair.
I blinked, my entire life flashing on the backs of my lids.
His words slicing me like razor blades.
His hands pounding me unconsciousness because I had the audacity to breathe without his permission.
His insecurities keeping me caged like an animal.
His body becoming a weapon, stealing bits of me until, ultimately, I broke.
Yet, not one of those things came even close to the pain he’d just inflicted.
Walt didn’t even have to be present to destroy me.
I’d only thought I’d gotten free of him the day Heath and Roman had carried us out.
The truth was…there was no escape.
He would never stop.
He’d ruined every last part of me.
And, now, he was going to ruin her too.
The most God-awful, agonizing scream I’d ever heard hit my ears.
It wasn’t until Heath appeared in front of me that I realized it was coming from my mouth.
The scream tore from her throat just as Ethan raced Tessa into another room. It wasn’t far enough. There wasn’t a person in a hundred-yard radius of that house who could have missed her tortured cry.
The visceral devastation gutted me.
I rushed to her, wrapping her in a hug, but she fought against me until I was forced to release her.
Her fists hammered
against my chest as she screamed, “No!” at the top of her lungs.
“Clare!” I yelled in an attempt to snap her out of it, but she was inconsolable. Her feral eyes stared right through me.
“No. No. No. No,” she repeated through broken cries and angry screams.
“Breathe, babe,” I urged as she backed away from me.
“He’s going to kill me,” she sobbed, tripping over the chair and falling on her ass.
I lunged to catch her, but she swatted my hands away.
She scrambled on all fours until her back hit the wall and she threw a hand up to stop me. “He’ll kill us all!”
My body went solid, and despite every fiber of my being demanding I force her to take comfort from me, I managed to take a step back. “He can’t hurt you anymore,” I swore, slowly lifting my hands in surrender.
“He can always hurt me!” Her voice broke as she drew her knees to her chest. “He won’t stop.” Her hands trembled as she swung her unfocused gaze around the room. “He’ll come for her. He’ll kill me, and then he’ll take her.”
“Babe, look at me,” I pushed, careful to keep my voice even. “He won’t. I won’t let him.”
“He will, and he’ll kill you too. He won’t stop until everyone I care about is gone. He’ll kill Roman, he’ll kill Elisabeth, he’ll kill you, and then he’ll kill me and take her.”
After this shit, I wished like hell Walter Noir would come for me so I could end this for her once and for all. I should have killed him that day on his driveway. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. The next time I saw that coward, he would leave in a body bag—my bullet in his head.
“Breathe, Clare.”
“This is not happening,” she choked out, covering her mouth with her hand. “Please, God, tell me this is not happening.”
“What do you need, Clare?” I asked for no other reason than I knew her answer and I needed her to let me in before my arms tore free of my body in order to get to her.
“He’s going to take you both from me.”
“He won’t. I swear to God. Nothing. No one, not ever, will take me from you. Or her from us,” I swore, dropping into a squat to bring our eyes level.
Her wild gaze bounced to mine, but she didn’t see me. Hollow orbs so far from the woman I knew stared back at me. I couldn’t even be sure my Clare was still in there. But I would forage through the pits of Hell to bring her back.
“Clare!” I barked, slamming my palms down on the hardwood floor, desperation overriding my patience.
And, finally, fucking finally, Clare reappeared in the depths of her blue eyes.
But it was Clare the frightened and tortured woman I’d met all those months ago.
It shattered me.
“Get. Over. Here,” I ordered, hating myself for being so rough, but nothing else was getting through to her.
A flash of recognition hit her face for only a second before she tore off the floor, flew across the room, and dove into my arms.
She collided with my chest, knocking me back onto my heels before I was able to right myself.
Sobs shook her chest as she buried her face in my neck, her nails digging into my back.
And, even still, I breathed a ragged sigh of relief.
“I’ve got you,” I swore, rising to my feet.
Her legs encircled my hips the way she had just over a week ago when I’d carried her out of Walter’s gate. Only, this time, I couldn’t carry her out of the darkness.
The best I could do was carry her upstairs, get Tessa, and then shut the door on the entire fucking world.
It wasn’t enough.
She deserved so much fucking more.
But it was all I could do.
That and rip Noir’s head from his spineless body the first chance I got.
That “giving” bullshit was becoming impossible.
Clare had been curled into my side, blankly staring into space, for over an hour. I wanted to force her to talk to me so I could get into her head. I’d told myself to be patient, to let her open up when she was ready, but it was breaking me.
“Say something,” I urged when the silence had become too much.
“Something,” she whispered.
“I’m serious, Clare.”
“I’m fine,” she replied with absolutely zero conviction.
“Do you want me to get Tessa?”
“Is she with Elisabeth?”
“Yeah.”
“Then no.”
I groaned.
“You want to eat?”
“No.”
“You want—”
“Please stop.”
I closed my eyes and sighed.
For seven days, I’d watched her bruises fade and a completely different woman emerge.
For seven days, I’d listened to her laugh with abandon and watched her smile as if her mouth had never known anything else.
For seven days, I watched her rise up stronger and more confident than ever before.
Or so I’d hoped.
It had taken one sentence to crush her.
Maybe I was delusional thinking I could fix her so easily.
But that fucking cloud of denial we’d been living on was the sweetest thing I’d ever experienced.
I hadn’t laughed as much in my entire life as I did when I was with her. And, every night as I watched her fall asleep, her lips curled in a serene smile, it filled me in unimaginable ways.
The first time I’d kissed her forehead as she’d slept, I had known it was wrong. It was taking at its finest. But I couldn’t stop myself. My body ached to touch her and not just when she needed me. Sometimes, I needed her. And, as the days passed, the ache became agonizing. It sure as fuck didn’t help when she stared at my mouth as though the ache had found her too.
No lines had been crossed. Yet.
But they would be eventually. A fact that taunted my dreams on a nightly basis.
I was fucked.
And not in a good way.
I’d managed to keep my hands off her for a full seven days.
Swear to God, I deserved a medal of honor for that act of heroism.
One thing had become blatantly obvious to me in that time: Letting her go was no longer an option.
But, after today, it was clear keeping her wasn’t going to be easy, either.
Yes, I could make her laugh and keep her safe. But I couldn’t fix her, no matter how much I wanted to. She needed help that I just couldn’t offer. She and Tessa both.
“I think it’s time you talk to a therapist,” I announced.
“I think it’s time I talk to the police.”
I jerked my head back so I could get a read on her face. “What?”
Despite the fact that the DEA had offered Clare full immunity in exchange for her testimony and cooperation in their case against Noir, she was still a nervous wreck about it. After a fair amount of talking in circles, I’d convinced Tomlinson to give us time for her to heal physically before dragging her through questioning. I’d yet to tell her that that time had run out—days ago. It was all I could do to keep them off her back until we had gotten the results of Tessa’s DNA.
“He’s going to kill me, Heath. It’s better we get everything documented before he does,” she stated emotionlessly.
My body tensed. “He’s not—”
She suddenly pushed up on an elbow and looked at me. “You know what I don’t get? How the hell a disgusting piece of shit like Walter creates something as perfect as Tessa.” She sat all the way up and folded her legs to crisscross between us. “I mean, how does that happen? Meanwhile, I can’t have kids. Roman, either, ya know? When we did in vitro, I was twenty-five years old, in tip-top health, with shit for eggs. And, somehow, drug-dealing, slime-of-the-Earth Walter fucking Noir can jerk his dick in a cup and create something as perfect as my baby girl.”
I would have rather gouged my eyes out with a rusty coat hanger than think of Walter “jerking” anything into a cup. But that wasn
’t her question, and at least she was talking.
“She’s perfect because of you.”
“She was perfect when she came out.” She leaned forward, her blond hair slipping from behind her ear. “How did he do that?”
“I don’t know.” I reached up, caught the lock of her hair, and twisted it between my fingers. “I honestly have no fucking idea.” I gave her hair a gentle tug, pulling her down as I rose up on an elbow to bring us nose-to-nose. “But one thing I can tell you is that his role in her life is over. I don’t give a fuck what that DNA test reads. He is not her father. He’s not even a sperm donor. That man is nothing to her. Nothing to you, either. You two do not exist for him anymore.”
She scoffed, so I released her hair and caught the back of her neck.
“Swear to God, Clare. You do not exist for him. At all. Ever again. He won’t kill you. He won’t take Tessa. Because I will have his head on a stake before he so much as looks at either of you.”
Her lips thinned in a patronizing smile. “You’re sweet.”
I arched an incredulous eyebrow. “I’m sweet?”
“I know you believe that—”
I didn’t give her a chance to finish. Releasing her neck, I caught her at the back of the legs and forced her back to the mattress.
She squeaked as I followed her down, landing my hands on either side of her head, my body hovering above her as I supported myself on my knees.
“Do you trust me?”
She blinked a few times before nodding.
“This is serious. Do not lie to me. Do. You. Trust. Me?”
She licked her lips then nodded again.
Slowly, I lowered myself down on top of her, her legs parting and my hips falling between them. I kept my weight on one elbow but brought my other hand up to cup her jaw.
“Tessa believes in Santa Claus. And the Easter Bunny. And the Tooth Fairy. You believe Walt is going to kill you. And he believes you belong to him. But, Clare, I don’t believe any of that. Beliefs are bullshit. I know for a fucking fact that you do not exist for him. Because, I’ll repeat: I will have his head on a stake before he so much as looks at either of you. That is my word.”
She stared up at me, tears filling her eyes. “Heath,” she sighed, wrapping her arms around my neck, bringing our chests flush.
