Two days later
I’D HESITATED TWICE IN the past two days, once at sending a bolt of energy at Liam with Rayne at risk and now. I knew Delara was in the apartment. I heard her breathe. Smelled her scent. The sweet alluring scent of her skin that I’d memorized since the first day I’d met her.
I walked upstairs to the apartment.
She knew I was here. Just as I could sense her, so could she sense me. We were connected whether either of us wanted to be or not.
“I’m leaving, okay,” she said before I reached the last three stairs that led into the living room. “Jedrik came by with a bottle of vodka last night. I’m a little slow on the mark.” She walked into the bathroom as I stopped in the doorway. I watched as she threw toiletries into a bag.
Leaning up against the doorframe, I crossed my arms. I’d overreacted asking Delara to leave Toronto and go live with another Talde. I’d been furious that she’d lied to me about Liam and hearing his satisfaction on the phone when he told me he’d been fucking her for months.
And that was before I’d known she’d been pregnant with my child.
Delara managed to disappear time and again and I’d never been able to locate her. One of those times, she’d been carrying my child. Our child. A child who had been put through hell.
But I’d reacted impulsively. I had every right to be pissed, but to tell one of my Scars to leave the Talde… a Scar who wasn’t just any Scar. She was Delara. The woman I couldn’t go a minute without thinking of.
“Are you waiting to escort me to the plane? Or does it give you satisfaction watching me pack?” Delara asked.
“I don’t want you to leave the Talde, Delara.” I kept my tone steady and calm. It helped I took three pills when I arrived at the gallery. “But I can’t forgive you.”
Delara grabbed a wrinkled piece of yellowed paper from her nightstand, shoved it in her jeans pocket, and walked across the room to her knapsack. “Well, I’m leaving anyway.”
“Running again.” It was a statement. Delara ran from everything, and I was to blame for most of it. Yet giving her what she wanted was too risky. I’d never put her life in jeopardy again by being with her, even if it was destroying us.
“I deserved that. But, actually, no. This time I’m not. I am running toward someone.”
I didn’t say anything, afraid to ask who she was referring to. Despite my refusal to give her the relationship she wanted, it ripped me to shreds to see her with other men. Yet, that was selfish when I was with other women. Now we both used others to get what we wanted.
And now we shared a daughter.
“Rayne needs you here.”
She threw her bag over her shoulder. “Of course, you’d think so poorly of me.” She walked across the room then stopped inches from me. “I’m going somewhere for a couple weeks and then meeting our daughter and Kilter. They’re taking some time away from the Scars.”
They hadn’t told me yet, but it was a good idea. Rayne needed time to heal, although her being with Kilter was going to take a hell of a lot of convincing.
She continued, “And afterward I think it’s better if I go to Xamien’s Talde. At least for a while.”
I latched onto her forearm before she had the chance to brush by me and escape out the door. “I don’t want you in another Talde. But I have every right to be furious with you, Delara.”
“Yeah. You do. But you need to know that if I had to do it over again, I still wouldn’t have told you.” She shook her head. “Again and again, I would’ve made the same choice.”
Fuck. I stiffened. “Why?”
She tried to pull her arm out of my grasp. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Damn it why, Maitagarri?”
Her chin dropped. “You’re right, you know. We’re better apart.”
Fuck, no, we weren’t, but I’d never let anyone harm her and I was a threat. Still, I didn’t want her to go. “Don’t leave yet.”
She pried her arm from my grip, pitched forward as if to take a step, then stopped. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment before meeting my intense stare. Something in her softened.
“You’re good at what you do. Leading the Scars. Fighting to protect the laws. It’s what you live for. That’s who you are, Tac. Maybe I thought one day you might… no, not maybe, I did think one day you’d be able to share that life with me.”
Cold crept into me like a slow, deep freeze. Inch by inch. Every word out of her mouth was a death sentence, and it was because this wasn’t an argument or a heated passionate fight. This was Delara being calm and rational.
“I never thought I’d have the chance to see my child. Never. God, she is so special, Tac.” She lowered her voice. “I wanted more than anything for you to have that special. Have a piece of us. Hold our child. Know her. Watch her grow into a beautiful strong woman. That’s all I wanted from the moment I knew I was pregnant.”
I stiffened. “You should’ve told me.”