And then I’m crushed, crushed inside arms of steel, crushed beneath tender lips, crushed with a love that feels as steadfast and true as my own.
Reese leans back just enough to let me catch my breath. He cups my face, his thumbs stroking the tears from under my eyes.
“Please don’t cry anymore, baby. Not for me.”
“These are happy tears,” I admit with a shaky smile.
“Then cry yourself to sleep on me,” he says softly, bending to pick me up. “Let me hold you until there are no more tears.”
Reese pulls me in tight against him and I wrap my arms around his neck, turning my face into the curve of his throat. I taste the salt of my happiness as it pours down my cheeks and wets his skin.
Reese carries me to the sofa. Minutes or hours or days later, I wake to find that I’m still curled in his arms. He’s fallen asleep beneath me, upright on the couch, his fingers laced at my waist so that he won’t accidentally let me go.
CHAPTER THRITY-NINE - Reese
Each time I wake up, I glance down to make sure Kennedy is still with me. And she is. Curled up in my arms, sleeping like she hasn’t slept in days. Which, if her last few days were anything like mine, she probably hasn’t.
Maybe this means things are getting better. Maybe we can finally have what we should’ve had all those years ago.
As I close my eyes and drift back to sleep, my last thought is to wonder when she’s going to tell me about the baby.
CHAPTER FORTY - Kennedy
My mind wakes not to the ultimate peace and happiness that it should. No, it wakes to the knowledge that now the only person who hasn’t come clean is me.
There’s something I have to tell Reese, something that he has a right to know. My intentions were good in keeping it to myself all this time—I thought only of Reese and how it would affect him—but now I wonder if I made a huge mistake.
There’s only one way to know for sure…
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - Reese
I decided days ago that I’d wait for Kennedy to tell me about the baby. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t have told me already, but I have to give her the benefit of the doubt. So I’m going to give her time. Well, at least as long as I can before others start to find out.
I asked Bingham to keep the information to himself until I was back in the states. I probably have until tomorrow before he tells my father who Mary Elizabeth is. But I’m going to tell him first. I want him to hear it from me. And I want him to know that there’s no reason for him to address it any further. Legally or otherwise. I want Kennedy to have half of Bellano. I would’ve wanted our daughter to have it all.
I tried to reach my father earlier, but he wouldn’t take my call. So here I am, driving out under the guise of getting lunch to try again, but with no luck. It’s when I pull up outside Kennedy’s townhouse that I realize why he wouldn’t take my call. He had plans of his own. His car is parked directly beside where mine was earlier.
I grab the bags of food from the passenger seat and I make my way to the door, cautioning myself to remain calm. That’s hard to do when it comes to Kennedy, though. The thought of anyone…anyone…giving her grief makes my blood boil.
When I walk in the door, they’re facing each other right inside the entryway. Kennedy is holding a manila envelope and her face is unnaturally pale.
Her eyes dart to me and I see them fill with a mixture of regret and fear and so much sadness that it makes my gut clench and my temper rise. Toward my father.
“What’s going on? What the hell are you doing here?” I ask Henslow Spencer.
“Reese,” he says, surprise evident in his tone and expression. “I was just…I was…we were…” My anger escalates as my father fumbles for some plausible explanation as to why he’s here, as he fumbles for a lie. “I was just catching up with Kennedy.” I see him glare at her as if daring her not to go along with his fabrication.
Kennedy casts her eyes down and squeezes them shut before she speaks. “No, you weren’t. I’m not keeping this from him any longer,” she says quietly.
My heart is pounding as Kennedy walks slowly to stand before me, her head bowed, her chin trembling. I know what she’s going to tell me. I already know what is weighing so heavily on her right now. But knowing it and hearing it from her, listening to her say the words, finding out the truth from her lips…those are totally different things.
“What is it, beautiful?” I prompt her, setting down the bags of food, to lift her chin.
She swallows hard and it kills me a little to imagine what she must be going through right now, what she must be feeling.
“Reese, that time in the woods…all those years ago…I know you used protection, but something must’ve happened.” She looks up into my face, her heart in her eyes, tears shivering on the edge of her bottom lids. “I got pregnant.”
I don’t have to feign the surge of emotion that rushes through me or the way my breath catches in my lungs. But it’s for that reason, for the pain that I feel watching her relive it to tell me, that I admit to her that I already knew. I can’t watch her do this. Not for me. Not when I can help ease her agony. “I know.”
Confusion enters her eyes. “You know? How?”
“A few days ago, I got a call from Malcolm’s lawyer telling me who Mary Elizabeth Spencer was. She was named in the will, so he was trying to find her.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Guilt, not anger floods her expression.
“I knew you’d tell me when you were ready.”
“Oh, God, Reese!” she cries, burying her face in her hands. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and pull her to me, wishing there was something I could do to help her, to take away her torment.
“Shhh, it’s okay, baby. Please don’t cry.”
“I wish I’d told you sooner,” she moans, sniffing back more tears.
“I knew you’d tell me when the time was right.”
“Reese, I’m so sorry,” she says, lifting her head to look into my eyes.
“Don’t be. I just wish I’d been there for you. To see your belly grow with our baby. To hold her before she died,” I confess, my own bitter remorse choking my throat.
“I wanted to tell you, but they wouldn’t let me.”
My pulse thunders to a stop before it starts back up twice as fast. “Who is ‘they’? Kennedy, who wouldn’t let you tell me?”