Her.
CHAPTER 12
Just FYI, with a 100% certainty, you will experience shitting your pants outside of childhood.
-Secret of life
BRAM
“Don’t get too close,” she whispered. “I have demons inside of me that my brother put there.”
I tilted my head to look at her and said the one thing that I could in that moment. “You can get as close as you want to me. My soul’s been living in hell for a while now. Your demons can come play with mine. Or I can straight up take them from you if you want.”
She looked startled for a long moment before saying, “Because of my brother?”
I shrugged. “Because of a few things. But your brother’s definitely part of the reason.”
She looked sick to her stomach for a few seconds, and I hated seeing that look on her face.
“The last eighteen weeks.” I shook my head. “I never want to experience that again. Not ever.”
She didn’t look convinced. In fact, when she pulled out of my hold and leaned away from me, I felt my heart break a little more.
She looked so far from convinced that I had a feeling I had a very long road ahead of me. Our relationship wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Not to mention, there’d been divorce papers that she’d had drawn up.
She wanted this relationship to end.
And I had a feeling the only thing saving me right now was the fact that she was carrying my baby.
“When were you going to tell me?” I asked carefully as I sat on the edge of her bed.
“Tell you about the divorce?” she asked. “I sent you papers. I figured that was about as good as telling you.”
Her attitude. God, I wanted to kiss it out of her.
“No,” I said. “The baby. When were you going to tell me about the baby?”
She looked at me sharply, as if I’d just said the wrong words.
“I just learned about it,” she grumbled. “I would’ve told you once I had my head wrapped around it.”
I sighed, blowing out a relieved breath before looking toward the door where Gary came in.
“Here, daddy-O. Sign here, here, and here. And she’s free to go.” He tossed a pile of clothes onto the bed. “Since yours were discarded when you were brought in, I grabbed you some scrubs.”
Then, with a flourish, he whipped the signed papers out of my hands and was gone.
I looked at the scrubs on the bed between us and said, “You need help?”
I had no doubt in my mind she needed help.
She swallowed hard, but she didn’t fake it.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I’m not sure how high I can lift my arm right now. I felt like he pulled it out of the socket when he yanked me up off the ground.”
I held my anger in check as I got her dressed. Which was hard since she wanted to shield almost every inch of her body with her hand or the hospital gown as we did.