Page 104 of Where Broken Wings Fly

My eyes drift shut regardless.

“Willow! Don’t you dare do this to me. Wake up.”

I can hear Arianna screaming my name over his words, but she sounds far away. Everything is spinning, twisting, fraying at the edges. Killian grabs my chin and shakes, but I don’t have the strength to reopen my eyes.

“Mummy!” Arianna shouts again.

I want to reply, but I feel like I’m trapped behind a sheet of glass, unable to utter a single word. The approaching darkness swallows me before I can respond to her, and at last, the pain fades into nothingness.

CHAPTER 20

ZACH

WHERE DO I EVEN START - MORGAN TAYLOR REID

Staring through the frosted glass at Willow curled up in the cramped hospital bed, my hands curl into fists. Killian is deathly silent at my side, his entire frame trembling with barely contained rage.

He looks like he wants to smash the entire hospital to pieces and burn whatever rubble remains when he’s done. I have no idea how he’s maintaining a shoestring of control. It’s like someone’s taken a melon baller to his heart and brutally scooped it out.

Micah is crouched on the lemon-scented linoleum floor with his back to the wall. He stares at his stained hands, bright streaks of oil paint still smeared over each digit. None of us have spoken since the doctor left over an hour ago.

We’ve just stood here since then, stunned and confused, unable to utter a single word. I’m not sure what we were expecting. When I saw that blood gushing out of her, I knew things were bad, but this situation is far more fucked-up than even I realised.

Did you know she was pregnant?

Which one of you is the father?

I’m sorry for your loss.

Killian grunts in fury before his fist sails into the wall. “Fuck!”

Cracking the white plaster, he leaves a smear of fresh blood behind as his knuckles split upon impact. The pain doesn’t even register. The brown-haired nurse in the nearby booth startles, but she quickly looks away when I shoot her an apologetic look.

Cradling his bleeding hand, Killian lets his head drop in complete defeat. Even the usually confident stance of his shoulders is slumped, unable to bear the anguish of the mess we’ve found ourselves in.

“Kill,” I warn him.

“Don’t start,” he hisses.

“Keep your cool. We don’t want to get thrown out.”

“How the fuck did this even happen? When?”

My mind filters back over the past several weeks. I can hardly remember a time when Willow wasn’t with us in Briar Valley. She grabbed my attention from the very first time I laid eyes on her broken smile and sad but hopeful hazel eyes.

I’ve been borderline obsessed with doing everything in my power to inspire that smile ever since. She’s on my mind twenty-four hours a day. It goes beyond being attracted to her stunning looks—I love her personality too, along with everything else about her.

“She’s been with us for what? Six weeks?”

“So, she was still with him seven or so weeks ago,” he finishes, looking nauseated. “The timing checks out.”

Then the awful truth is undeniable. Willow was pregnant with her husband’s child when she arrived in town, beaten within an inch of her life. I’ve seen enough to know that he must have been a piece of shit, else she wouldn’t be here.

The doctor advised that miscarriages in the first trimester are common. Some people don’t even realise they’re pregnant until it’s too late. It happens more often than we realise, especially under stressful circumstances.

She’s been under a lot of stress in general, between the arduous journey to find us to the messy process of navigating a brand new country and life. Killian told us about Lola’s little secret too. That must’ve been the icing on the cake.

“I didn’t get the impression they were…”

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