Page 116 of Oblivion

I guess I assumed that once Evan realized what lengths I’d gone to, to claim him, then he’d realize that I’m just as crazy as he is. That I’m willing to cross those lines because I love him. I thought maybe he’d see that when pushed, I really am one of them.

Never once did I consider that when he discovered the truth, he’d leave.

He doesn’t get to run.

If things were the other way around, he wouldn’t allow me to run away, so he doesn’t get to either. Rushing into the hall, I throw the front door open just in time to watch the cart squeeze through the half opened gate and speed away from the house, and me.

He left. He actually fucking left. That asshole drugged me and knocked me up, and now he thinks he gets to leave. But he has. He’s gone, and I don’t know what to do.

“Are you okay?” Starling asks from the doorway to the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“Did you and Evan have a fight?”

“He knows.”

“Knows what?” Starling asks.

“Everything,” I admit.

“Everything?” a male voice asks, stepping past Starling and looking between the two of us with curious dark eyes. “What exactly is…everything?” Sebastian asks.

“He knows that Starling and I planned it all.”

“Planned what?” he demands.

“All of it. We planned my engagement. We planned the video call. We planned Starling telling Evan to come and get me. We planned it all because I love him. Because he’s mine.”

“He’s yours,” Sebastian repeats, but his voice isn’t hard anymore. It’s soft and…impressed. “You played him at his own game.”

“Yes, we did,” Starling confirms, moving to stand at my side.

“Not well enough, though,” I confess. “Because he one-upped me in a way neither of us ever considered.”

“What did he do?” Starling asks.

“He got me pregnant.”

34

EVAN

When my cell rings for the first time, I reach over and reject the call, then turn it off completely. I can’t speak to Sammy right now because I need a little time to process everything.

My wife is pregnant.

My wife is pregnant because I drugged her, had her birth control removed, drugged her again so I could inject her with fertility drugs, and then fucked her over and over again bombarding her body with my cum with the sole intention of making a baby.

But the whole time I was doing that, she was basking in the success of her plan to manipulate me into claiming her.

Honestly, just thinking about everything we’ve both done to get to this point in our relationship doesn’t seem real. Our lives right now read like the plot of one of the books Sammy and I have been reading. Where the heroes are all crazy psychos, and the women are all too soft until they’re forced to become diamonds beneath the pressure.

I’ve always known Sammy was strong, but I never in my wildest dreams believed she was capable of playing me at my own game…and winning. With Starling’s help, my wife didn’tjust win the battle. She rewrote the whole war, and I have no idea what to do with that.

I’m not mad at her, but I’m just not sure I even know who she is right now. I’m not sure if I know who I am anymore. Her confession has turned my entire world upside down, and I’m floundering, adrift in a sea that’s suddenly red, instead of the blue I’ve always known it to be.

Pulling my car to the side of the road, I look at the unfamiliar surroundings and realize I’ve been driving for long enough that I have no idea where the fuck I am. I’m not lost—it’s the twenty-first century and I have GPS—but being parked on a road in the middle of fuck knows where feels like the perfect metaphor for my feelings right now.