Page 54 of Under His Embrace

“I can explain?—”

“Why?” I roared, fisting my hands. “How could you? All this time.” I shook my head, needing something to make sense about this. “All these days you’ve been here with me again. How could you ever say that you love me and keep this from me?”

I staggered a step toward her, wishing I could shake sense into her.

But she doesn’t.She didn’t reply that she loved me that night I told her.

“I can explain.” She winced as she took a seat. “And I can explain why I will never tell you that I regret leaving you back then the way I did. I had to.” She swallowed as she hunched over, her elbows on her thighs, her hands wringing together with her fingers turning white at the knuckles. She was tense and coiling in, but she powered on.

“I had to leave to save him.”

“What?” I paced in front of the couch she sat on, too wired up to stay still.

“I was trapped.”

“Not by me!” I shouted.

She shook her head. “No. You didn’t trap me.” She whooshed out a deep breath, as if she were bracing for a long speech. “My parents tried to force me to have an abortion. The weekbefore graduation, I took a test when I missed my period. It was positive, and I was so shocked, I didn’t think straight to hide the test in my garbage. My mother must have either snooped in the trash or the housekeeper found it and told her, but she confronted me, telling me under no uncertain terms that I was to abort the baby. Because it was yours.”

I rubbed my hand over my mouth, fighting the need to roar.

“She threatened to take my allowance. My car. My trust fund. Everything that was ‘mine’. So I said fine. I was worried about it all—having a baby so young—and I wanted to tell you. But you were away for training and I wouldn’t see you until after graduation.”

I remembered it well. She was only going to the ceremony to appease her parents. She’d already graduated ahead of time the midterm before, already meeting her requirements with a perfect GPA, but her parents wanted her to walk and get her diploma with the rest of her class. Our plan was that I’d pick her up from graduation and drive her here to the city. Where she could start a future with me.

Only, she was never there. She’d already left.

The week I was in training was rough, and I hadn’t had cell reception.

“She tricked me, driving me to an abortion clinic, and it was so scary, Franco. She walked me inside. The nurses were so firm. They wouldn’t listen to me. I… I…”

“What?” I frowned at her.

“I punched one of the nurses so I could run out of there. I ran. But I didn’t get far. They had the cops find my car and bring me back home. I was so desperate to tell you, but I knew that your cell reception would be spotty. I almost called Dante, the number you gave me for him, but I was scared that my parents were listening in on my calls.

“The day before graduation, I was kidnapped. They hired someone to kidnap me.” She gestured at her hands. “They cuffed me.” She pointed at her mouth. “Gagged me.”

“Fuck, Chloe.Fuck this!” I couldn’t ever hate her parents more than I did at this minute. They weren’t parents. They were closed-minded assholes.

“The men who kidnapped me brought me to another abortion clinic. My mother was waiting there with these thugs they hired. She said she’d be damned if she’d let our family be tainted with a bastard from a Mafia criminal.”

I shook my head, vibrating with rage.

“I was terrified, so I got desperate and lied. I said it wasn’t yours, that some football player at school knocked me up and that was why you and I broke up. They didn’t know that you were at a specialized training and unreachable that week. I think I figured they assumed we broke up. And I tried to spin it like that. That you weren’t around that week because I got knocked up by someone else and you were mad.” She shook her head sadly. “She didn’t believe me. She ordered them to take me back into a room and abort the baby. But I…” She drew in a deep breath. “But I resisted. I fought and fought, so furious and scared. A nurse helped me, breaking her orders, and helped me get out of the room. And that was when I ran.”

It destroyed me to envision this. The fear she had to have faced. The determination she had to find and keep our baby.

“I went to Santa Fe because it was the furthest from home, and I prayed that my parents would assume that the abortion had gone through. The nurse said she’d lie and cover for me.”

I shook with anger. That she went through this. That she suffered at all. Her parents had taken it too far.

“I couldn’t go to you. It was too close to home. I was terrified that they’d find me and have more cops look for me somewhere near you. You were a place and a person they could use to findme through. I gave birth at the college’s vet clinic, trusting a classmate who knew a few faculty members to hide it. I paid someone to lie on his birth certificate so it wouldn’t be tied to me. I had to hide him from my parents, Franco. From the world. And so, I was a single mother. I worked and studied. I had to drop out when it was too hard to manage it all.”

“And Wes?”

She sighed. “They sent him to look into me, still suspicious of my going through with the abortion. I went no-contact with them from the day I left. They weren’t allowed in my life as far as I was concerned. I went out of my way to hide Caleb from their ever finding out. I was scared they’d take him from me, and he was all I had left of you. Of our love.” She wiped away the tears that fell.

“But he saw Caleb.”

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