Bolt cleared his throat, but his voice still came out gruff when he spoke. “Why didn’t you go to your parents? Surely at that point, they would have helped you. You were pregnant with their grandchild.”
Sadness and anger rushed over her in equal waves. “I’d tried once to tell them what was going on. They didn’t want to hear it. Said if I could be a dutiful fiancée, Shawn would ease up on me.” Pausing, she swallowed hard, flicking her gaze to his then back to their hands. “Yeah, we were engaged by then. Anyway, after that response, I figured I wouldn’t get any help from them. Shawn was perfect in their eyes, and nothing I said could tarnish that image. It only resulted in a lecture for myself.”
His grip tightened on hers. “Fucking bastards.”
“Exactly,” she replied with a swift smile that died as quickly as it appeared. “But I didn’t have a chance to run. Not when I wanted to. I should have said to hell with waiting, even if he was coming home in a couple of hours… That head start I wanted ended up costing me everything. He came home, looking exhausted, and in an effort to play the part and not raise suspicion, I asked him what was wrong. And that triggered him.
“He went into a rage immediately. He was ranting about how if I’d just been good enough, he never would have strayed. Apparently, all those business trips weren’t really business. He had a mistress. He was seeing her every week, and said it was all my fault. My fault he’d had to go elsewhere, my fault he went so often—my fault she got pregnant.”
He sucked in a breath and she tore her gaze from their hands and met his hazel eyes—only they weren’t really hazel anymore. They were a blazing green that looked inhuman, and they sent a shiver down her spine. But they didn’t make her nervous, or even scared.
It made no sense, but they made her feel safe. Like he could and would take on anyone to protect her. That he’d take on her past if he physically could.
And it had been so long since she felt anything like that. Hell, maybe she never had. Even before meeting Shawn, she’d never felt the kind of safety and comfort she did in this moment.
Her reaction to Bolt should freak her out. He was a man who’d been a stranger a short time ago, and yet she felt like she’d known him forever. She kept trying to remind herself that she couldn’t trust him, not so soon. Hadn’t she learned her lesson with Shawn? Bolt was so much bigger than her ex, and she knew his fists would hurt worse.
And yet, she knew instinctively that he’d never use them on her.
Even with that knowledge, there were other things that should be making her run. He was a biker, for crying out loud. He did illegal shit for a living. And that wasn’t even counting the fact that she knew, she knew, his eyes right now weren’t normal—probably not even possible, not for a regular human.
So why wasn’t she running as fast and far as her legs could carry her? She honestly didn’t know. All she knew was she felt more safe, comforted, and at home with him than she had in possibly ever.
“You were both pregnant at the same time?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she inhaled deeply and focused on their hands again. “I thought so. But he didn’t know about my pregnancy yet. And apparently the other woman didn’t tell him about hers until late in the game. I never got the chance to tell him about mine. He went off about hers and took it all out on me.
“I woke up in the hospital—one I hadn’t been to yet, of course. I was banged up pretty badly. One of the nurses recognized what was going on, despite the elaborate story Shawn gave them. She was nearing the end of her shift, and she helped me get out while he was still in the waiting room. She risked everything for me. She could have lost her job or gone to jail if someone found out, although it never came to that. Still, she risked it. She ran me home, I grabbed my go bag, and then she helped me buy that beat up Toyota. That’s how I got out.”
Bolt was quiet for a long moment, his breathing heavy. His hand was almost painfully tight around hers, but she didn’t mind. The opposite of that, actually. It was comforting, and for the first time in years, she didn’t feel alone, like she usually did.
“You… what happened… there’s not…” Pausing, he cut off his rambling words and looked at her with questions in his glowing green eyes. “The baby?”
Exhaling, she shook her head. “It turns out I was never pregnant. The test gave me a false positive. Which I thank God for every day, because I also had severely bruised ribs. My stomach seemed to be where he focused this beating on, like he was taking out his anger at his mistress on my stomach. Laura, the nurse who helped me, said if I had been pregnant, I almost certainly would have miscarried. I just…”
Thumb gently brushing against her hand, he turned so he was facing her fully, and when he spoke, his voice was achingly gentle, in a way she hadn’t known it could be. “You just what, baby?”
Surprise at the endearment washed over her, followed swiftly by warmth. “I feel shame about nearly every aspect of my relationship with him. Even though,
