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She was worried about a little nick when the prick who'd caused it was six feet under already.

"Can I come home with you tonight?" she asked then, looking up at me with the loneliest blue-eyed expression I'd ever seen.

"Do you plan on staying home with me?" I countered. "Because if the answer's yes, then I'll take you home right fucking now, sweetheart."

Hope sighed wearily. "Hunter, it's complicated."

Yeah, I didn’t need to hear about complicated.

I wanted a goddamn commitment from her.

Something that told me she was as invested in me as I was in her.

She would never know just how badly I wanted to take her home with me.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t fucking go through another night of empty promises, and then having to drop her back off tohimtomorrow?

I couldn’t do that again.

Last time, it almost killed me.

"You need to go home to your husband," I forced myself to say as I took a step back from her, breaking all physical contact.

She flinched, physically flinched at my words like I had just slapped her, when it was me who had been fucking wounded.

"Hunter –" she began to say, but I cut her off.

I couldn’t hear it.

I couldn’t fuckingbearit.

"Get in your car, go back to Denver, and don’t call me until you're done with him…until you're ready to bemine," I instructed, masking the absolute fucking horror and pain I was inflicting on myself by walking away from her. "Because Ican'tshare you."

I turned around and walked away before she could finish me off with another teardrop.

One more plea from her and I wouldn’t have the strength to go.

****

Chapter Thirty-Five

Hope

When I was younger, I always scoffed and rolled my eyes at the idea of a woman not knowing she was pregnant until she was too far along, or giving birth on a toilet bowl.

I used to be so convinced that it couldn’t be physiologically possible.

My opinion towards the concept did a one-eighty when my own best friend didn’t discover her first pregnancy until she was almost five months along.

I'd seen her.

She was skinny.

There had been no signs.

Teagan's situation with Einín had made me believe that there were circumstances when a woman truly didn’t know she was pregnant.

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