Untamed (A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance)(95)

“Dad said he would kill the father. He would put Frank on him! You’d have turned up face-down floating in the lake.”

“You were trying to protect me?”

“Of course I was,” I hiss, wiping my cheeks with a shaking hand. I collect myself, take a deep breath. “I never wanted this.”

I can hear the enamel grinding together. Duncan’s gritting his teeth, and the muscles in his jaw tense and relax.

“When did you find out you were pregnant?”

“That morning! For certain, anyway.” I look down. “I couldn’t tell you before the fight. It would have distracted you, you might have lost.”

“I would have cancelled!” Duncan says, his voice rising a little. “We would have celebrated.”

“No,” I tell him. “We would have faced the reality. We were together in secret. We had a secret baby. We were legal brother and sister!”

“Were.”

“Are. Dad would never have accepted it. He would have killed you, Duncan. He would have stolen our baby! Shipped me off into the countryside to live in the middle of nowhere with some old relative! Like they used to do with girls who had illegitimate babies.”

“So you ran.”

“So I ran,” I say. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t wait for you. I’m sorry. I didn’t know where you’d stand. I didn’t want to put you in that position. I didn’t want Dad to put out a hit on you. Everybody back home knows your face, Duncan. You would have been dead before the next morning. I would never have gotten out of the country if you were there by my side. Your face was on flyers, for God’s sake!”

Silence drapes over us like a wet, stifling blanket.

He doesn’t reply, and that just makes me feel guiltier. He sits, broods, doesn’t even sip from his water anymore.

“You need to see my point of view,” I tell him. “Dad had just told me he was going to send me away, and when the baby was born, he said he would raise my child as his own.”

Duncan’s voice cuts in, low, slow. “Our child.”

“Then he tells me he’s going to kill the father. What if he found out you and I… all that time? You think he wouldn’t have sent ten men after you? You know how he is.”

He sighs, and again I see the muscles in his jaw tense.

“I had to protect myself, our child… and you. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see that it was the only way?”

“It wasn’t the only way. There was another way.”

“Tell you before the fight?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t want to distract you!” I cry. “If I had known Dad was going to pull me aside during the fight, I would have told you! But when I decided I had to leave, you were still in the cage, still fighting!”

“You didn’t tell me you missed your period.”

“I thought I was just late. I wasn’t on the pill, Duncan! God, you know this shit. I know you’re not stupid. And it’s not like you noticed, either. I know you were busy preparing for your fight, but you still didn’t notice.”

“I should have.”

“Damn right you should have!”

“I still don’t understand why.”

“What do you mean you don’t understand? I just explained it to you.”

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“Why are you doing this to me? Do you know how hard it’s been? On top of my crazy hormones, feeling sick all the time? Being stressed out of my mind all this time? I did this all alone. I’ve been all alone!”

“You didn’t have to be.”

I look away from him, start feeling angry. Why is he doing this?

“I was afraid,” I tell him. “Afraid for the future. I had to do something. Maybe I didn’t think it through, but it kept my baby safe, kept me out of Dad’s hands. I don’t regret it. I’m not sorry! I’ve been trying to do it all on my own, be strong.”

“I don’t expect you to be sorry.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I ask. Was that some kind of attack on my character? “You think I can’t see how this is? You think it wasn’t hard for me, too? You think I wanted to leave you that night, knowing you’d come home to an empty apartment? I mean that, Duncan. You, in particular. With your history, the way you grew up, you think it never crossed my mind that I was abandoning you? You think that I don’t feel bad about that?”

When he doesn’t reply I grow fed up. I get up, go to the door, open it.

“You need to go,” I tell him. “If you’re not going to talk to me, with me, then go. What the hell has happened to you, anyway?”