Page 76 of Cruel Devotion

A baby. Our baby.

I was so stunned, I couldn’t breathe right. My chest felt too tight. My head spun. But it wasn’t from panic that I locked down with this unexpected news.

It was joy.

It was excitement.

It was the thrill of learning I had a brand-new gift to enjoy and take care of.

“A baby?” I asked.

Both of them spun to face me. My mother snarled with disdain. Haley’s mouth dropped open with too many emotions crossing over her face. Fear, surprise, joy, relief, annoyance. I bet she couldn’t have planned to share this news with me like this, with my mother shouting it out so cruelly.

It didn’t matter how I got the news. The message was all that I cared about.

Haley was pregnant.

We were having a baby.

“You tell her,” my mother said, seething as she pointed at her. “You tell her to get rid of that bastard baby or?—”

“No.” I shook my head, brushing past her to approach Haley.

“You get rid of her and that bastard?—”

“Shut up,” I growled. “Shut up, or else I will make you shut up.”

This was my mother, the woman who gave birth to me and should’ve loved me no matter what. This was my parent, and of course, she deserved some elementary level of respect. But she’d lost it. She began losing it long ago, but this was the final straw.

If she opened her mouth to tell me to get rid of Haley or our child again, she would meet the full extent of my wrath.

A defensive need to protect the only person in this room who loved me had me vibrating with rage. Instead of acting on this dark urge to send my mother away, I hugged Haley and held on tight.

“Eli,” she whispered as she clung to me, shaking and breathing so choppily.

I shushed her, embracing her as if my arms wrapped around her meant she wouldn’t suffer anything from anyone. I would shield her forever. Any threat, any danger. They would all have to get past me to hurt her or our baby.

“Eli!” my mother roared. “You can’t be this stupid. You get away from her right now! I insist!”

I didn’t budge, rubbing my hand over Haley’s back and willing her to calm down now that I was here.

She hadn’t stayed home to want a break from me or school. She wasn’t sleeping in and having a ‘me’ day. She was grappling with this surprise that she was pregnant, and she didn’t need my mother here harassing her.

“Leave,” I ordered. This wasn’t my house to call the shots in, but I was protecting my woman. My child.

My family.

The furious woman scowling at us wasn’t my family. She would always be the woman who brought me into this world, but she was no mother of mine.

“This is it, Eli,” she warned, slashing her arm through the air as if marking a line as a boundary to heed. “This is it. You’re going to end this nonsense now.”

Fuck you.

“You are going to leave this whore with her bastard.”

“No. I’m not. The only one leaving is you. From this moment on, you no longer have a place in my life.”

“I’m your mother! You will respect me and listen to me!” She jabbed her finger at her chest, eyes wild with fury.

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