Page 44 of Callum

Not that they helped.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The crack in his voice nearly gets me, but I know the words aren’t genuine. “I did.”

“No, you didn’t. I would have come home.”

“Callum, stop.” I’m too fucking tired to be this mad—too exhausted to deal with him lying to my face like this. “I know you didn’t want anything to do with her. You don’t have to—”

He’s in my space before I can even finish speaking, heat radiating from every inch of him as he straddles my hips. He sways his body into mine until there’s barely an inch of space between us. “What are you talking about?”

The anger is there, lacing his voice, sitting in the bunched muscles of his shoulders, and etched in the lines of his face, but I can’t understand it.

“I told the Father, and he said that you didn’t want the baby.” Violence floods my veins at the memory of the Father’s cutting tone, and I shove Callum with my unrestrained hand. “‘Why would you trust the word of a prostitute? The baby could be anyone’s.’”

“I will kill him.”

That isn’t what I’m expecting him to say, and it draws me up short. I thought he would be all apologies. Fake apologies, but apologies nonetheless. “Don’t blame him for your—”

“He never told me. He never told anyone,” Callum defends, leaning back into my personal space. What is with him crowding me all the time? You would think he’d want to put as much space between us as possible, but every time I turn around, he’s right. fucking. there.

“Well, he knew.”

“I’m so sorry, kitten.” There it is! There’s the bullshit apology I’ve been waiting for. It feels like we’re back on even ground now.

“I don’t want an apology, Callum.” He’s going to ask what I do want, and I’ll tell him I want out. I need to get out of Forest Falls. I need out of—

“What happened next?”

“What?”

Callum’s eyebrows scrunch, a deep line forming in the center of his brow. “What happened after you told that useless cunt that he was going to be a Grandfather again?”

“Oh, well,” I try to lean away from Callum, but the headboard doesn’t allow me to get very far. “He said you didn’t want the baby, so we had to go to plan B. Ginetta started looking for somewhere we could go that would be better suited for raising a child. And I…pretty much just kept growing a human, ya know? Honestly, I wasn’t super useful during that time.”

I was so sick the doctors were concerned I might just keel over. Add in a healthy dose of depression and self-loathing, and I became a walking, talking Molotov cocktail the size of a small house. “I made it seven and a half months.”

Callum reads through those lines, his eyes darting across my face. I’m not sure he even notices when he leans so close our chests touch. “Then what happened?”

That’s the million-dollar question, it would appear. “The Docs came to check on me, and…” Fuck. I don’t want to do this.

“Look at me.” He doesn’t force me, doesn’t use his hands to tip my eyes to his, even though he could. Callum waits until I look at him on my own. “I’ll never make you say it again. No one will ever make you say it again, but I need you to tell me. Just this once.”

“They came to check on me early, and something was wrong.” My words are barely more than a whisper.

“Early?”

“I wasn’t due for another check-up until later in the week. I remember being surprised they showed up so late at night, but I was glad they did. Something had happened, and they had to rush me to the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t…” What had they said? They used all those long-ass doctor words that don’t make any sense to me. Callum would have gotten it; he knows all that medical jargon bullshit. “I don’t remember. I just know that we got to the hospital, and they hooked me up to a bunch of machines. Then someone was in my face talking about an emergency C-section, and they knocked me out.”

“They knocked you out?”

“Yeah, Doc. Need me to spell it out for you?” I snap, trying to put space between us again, but he doesn’t budge at all when I shove him this time. “They knocked me out, and when I came to, my body was empty, and I…she…”

I lose the words then. I can’t say them. I don’t even want to think them. Why is he making me do this?

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