Page 22 of Jericho

"What happened?" I yell again, but he turns his back to me.

I'm out of the chair in the next breath and across the room until I'm pulling at his shirt. I'll be damned if something happened to my son and he isn't telling me about it.

Instead of facing me and telling me the truth, he grabs me by the wrists and drags me across the room, shoving open the door on the far wall and pushing me inside.

"Is it our kids?" I hear Samuel scream. "What fucking happened to our kids?"

He closes us into the room together, fully ignoring Samuel's screams.

"Wh-what happened? Is Eli—"

"He wasn't where we thought he was," he tells me in a calming tone, but I can hear an edge of fire in his voice as he speaks. "We'll find him, Peach. I promise."

I pound on his chest. He's the whole reason we're in danger. But if he had never existed, I wouldn't have Eli, so I can't exactly wish I had never met him because our son is the greatest gift I've ever been given. Although, I don't deserve to be his mother for the danger he was born into. There's no going back. I can't change those decisions now, and living with regret gets me nowhere.

He pulls me to his chest, and although I try to resist him, needing more answers, needing to know what the plan is to get Eli to safety, I melt into him, attempting to let his warmth comfort me. But even this hug feels like a lie.

He isn't touching me because he cares. He's comforting a crazed woman in order to get her to calm down because unhinged people are dangerous to everyone involved.

I push back against him because, more than anything, I want to tell him how much I've missed him, how much I wished things were different.

I can't let myself get lost in him. That's what set all this shit into motion in the first place. I let myself get lost in the escape his green eyes and warm arms provided. I put myself in danger. I put him in danger and, in turn, now Eli is in danger. This man and I may deserve everything we have coming, but Eli is a hundred percent innocent in all of this.

He stares down at me, and for the briefest of moments, less time than it takes to fully inflate my lungs, we just exist. For a fraction of time, I can forget all the pain I've felt over the last several years. I can shove away the guilt that always coated me when thinking about him dying for loving me.

All of it is gone.

"I've missed you so much," I whisper, feeling safe in his gaze, but as quickly as he lets the wall drop, it goes right back up.

I can't let this moment pass us by, no matter how much he seems to want to push me away. I stayed silent at the very most important time in my life, and I swore I would never make that mistake again.

"I should've left the first time you asked me to. The life we could've had." I choke back tears as I step closer to him, my hand covering his heart. "I would do so many things differently."

He takes a step back, physically grabbing my hand and pulling it from his chest. "We'll do everything in our power to keep you safe and make sure that Eli isn't left at the hands of an evil father, but thisisn'tme trying to get you back."

I'm left in what I discover is a small bedroom when he walks out of the room.

I eye the window to the right, wondering how far I'd get if I climbed out of it, but they'll either catch me before my feet hit the ground or I'll die of hypothermia before I can flag someone down and beg them for a ride back home.

Damien would expect me to fight with every ounce of life left in me to get back to him, and he wouldn't take anything less as an excuse. Fear can't come into play because I don't think the man fears anything. He sees himself as invincible, the leader of the world. He expects the same from everyone else around him.

For some reason, I have faith that Jericho will do exactly what he has promised, and that's the only thing that keeps me in this room. I may have to consider taking an alternative approach if things shift in a different direction.

Chapter 13

Jericho

"Congrats?"

I squeeze the phone in my hand, pulling it away from my ear, trying to keep enough of my temper in check to not stomp the damn thing into the fucking ground.

"What the fuck are you saying?" I growl.

"What you told me she said checks out."

"How is that even fucking possible?" I snarl.

"You see, when a man and a woman like each other, actually it's more about biology than liking someone, but I digress. When sperm reaches—"

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