Page 24

I ron wanted to punch something, which wasn’t the usual reaction one should have when staring at an ultrasound printout that his soul bond had propped up against his dashboard while he drove her home. Never, in all his years, had he thought that something so grainy and nondescript could hold such a significant place behind his breastbone. When the doctor first pulled the image up on the monitor and he saw this white blob starting to look less like an amorphous mass and more like a tiny human bobbing to the groove of its mother’s heartbeat, it twisted a perspective he’d never had the luxury of examining too closely.

What if I stayed?

And even more concerning . . .

What would that future look like if I did?

Iron gripped the steering wheel more tightly as he turned onto the road that led to Anna’s house. Beside him, she was cheerfully playing with his sound system, making damn sure he knew how much of a crime it was that he still listened to terrestrial radio, whatever the hell that meant. She could have chastised him for anything, the color of his leather seats, the angle at which he kept his heating vents, his complete lack of fast food containers littering his back seat—which, yeah, he could totally see her complaining about. He would have happily listened to all of it if it kept her smiling and stroking that picture while she sat next to him, dreaming in safety of the wonders that would soon come her way.

Fuck if he didn’t want to experience every single one of those wonders with her, even if they were never really possibilities for long. At best, he could promise a few months, and at worst, well, he and his brothers had lived lifetimes with mortals never knowing about their existence. It wouldn’t be that hard to get gone for good, especially when a golden ribbon had been decked across the finish line at the end of the exit ramp they’d all been falling over themselves to reach for years.

Too bad for him he’d seen that exit ramp before, and there had already been a time long ago when he’d been tempted to turn off it prematurely. Abandon his brothers, his mission, all of it, and just opt out of a duty he’d lost faith in ever being able to fulfill.

That ended about as well as a nuclear bomb detonation, one he still hadn’t recovered from.

Then why the fuck was his mind drifting toward those promises again?

Iron pulled his truck up to Anna’s house and killed the engine. She’d already plucked the ultrasound picture off his dash and had begun hopping down out of his truck, which must have felt like falling from a pole vault jump given how small she was in comparison to his vehicle’s lift. Jesus Christ, couldn’t she wait for him to at least come around to her side and help her down? Did the woman want a twisted ankle?

“You know, I normally would have just tacked it up in my office next to my window, but that just doesn’t feel welcoming enough. Work is work, and for the most part, I don’t like to go into my office when I’m not on the clock, so maybe I could hang it in the kitchen? I would like to see the thing regularly. Though I worry steam and aerosolized food grease would wreak havoc on the picture. That is, if I ever decide to actually use the cast-iron pans above my stove for anything other than decoration at this point.”

Anna bounced up her front steps with all the exuberance and, to Iron’s great frustration, lack of care similar to a puppy who didn’t know its bones weren’t connected yet because its growth plates were still too soft. Oh, he’d cleared a good path for her after the snowstorm, but that didn’t mean things didn’t ice over in the mornings, especially at those higher altitudes. He’d even put a bucket of salt out for her next to her front door—a bucket whose lid still sat askew at the exact fucking angle he’d left it five days ago.

He shoved his fists into his pockets, muttered some choice curses, and followed her into the house. He had to kick a sizable chunk of ice out of the way before he walked through the front door, hating how his gaze kept landing on a million and one things he could improve for her if his options weren’t tied up in his duty to his family. There was a small water spot on the living room ceiling that had grown slightly since he’d been there last, the pilot light ports on her stoves needed a good cleaning, and don’t get him started on that fucking shed out back.

Iron shook his head and tried to unclench his fingers before the indentations they left in his palms became permanent. This wasn’t his place, even if the mages had thrown the two of them together for some reason. His place was, and always had been, by his brothers’ sides, defending the actions and intelligence of celestial mages who’d, lately, occupied his mind far more than he suspected he ever did for them. If he had, he wouldn’t have had to lose pieces of his soul when?—

“You seem awfully far away for someone who’s only ten feet from me.”

He looked up to see Anna standing in front of the hallway, her jubilant features from a moment ago now sagging with a frown that looked all kinds of wrong on her face, not the least of which because he was likely the asshole who’d put it there. She’d already changed into her standard uniform of comfy lounge pants, thick cozy socks, and an oversized T-shirt that practically swallowed her whole. On any other day, he would have thought how she dressed around him was a testament to how comfortable he made her feel. Now, all he saw was someone that much more in need of a protective outer shell.

“You have any clients this afternoon?”

“No. I took off today because of my doctor’s appointment. Figured I wouldn’t be in the mood to remind people about good nutritional choices when I’ve just been measured and weighed like a 4-H heifer and am thinking of diving spoon-first into some ice cream.”

“Ice cream? It’s, like, two degrees outside.”

A single razor-sharp brow lifted toward her hairline with a resolute speed that gave him just enough time to rethink the next words out of his mouth. “And?”

“And . . . if you tell me the flavor you want, I’d be happy to excavate it from your freezer for you before I head out. That icebox you’ve got is one Tetris brick away from collapsing. You sure there aren’t any body parts in there I should be worried about finding?” He meant it as a joke, a small quip set to diffuse and deflect any of that prying gaze Anna was so good at throwing his way.

But, like goddamn always, his efforts fell short when it came to her.

“Why would you head out?” The question speared him through his core hard enough to send his fire scuttling to safety inside him.

“Figured you’d want some space after your appointment.”

Anna put her hands on her hips. “And if any of those words held even a modicum of truth, I’d have told you that a woman does not invite a man who is not the biological father of her baby to her frickin’ OB appointment without planning to spend the rest of the afternoon with that man .” Then she folded her arms over her chest. “What’s going on?”

“Why don’t you want to know the gender?” It was the question that had been bouncing around his mind all through the ride home and one he hadn’t been able to figure out an answer for.

“What?”

He struggled to keep the regret out of his voice, but in doing so, he somehow managed to let sparks of his indignation punch through. “Why don’t you want to know? There’s got to be a reason, because this is America. It’s default information overload all the goddamn time. So, what makes you so different here? You’re not the type to love surprises, so why don’t you want to know the gender of the life you’re carrying? Seems like it might make things easier with the planning and all.”

Anna hugged herself tighter, and he waited, waited for the blast of censure she was sure to fire at him for running off his dumb-ass mouth to a pregnant woman about her pregnancy, as if he had any skin in the game on that front. And if he’d honestly thought it’d help her get a clean, deserving shot at him, he’d open his coat and flannel wide enough so she couldn’t miss.

But then her eyes tipped toward the floor, and he didn’t overlook the sheen that coated them before she stole all that sad sparkle away from him.

“What if I’m not enough?” She whispered her confession to the floorboards.

Iron could have been in the track of an entire solar system’s worth of space garbage and, after hearing her heartbreaking words, still wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to move out the damn way. “Anna, you can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious.” She swiped at a tear while all he could do was stand there, horrified that he’d made her cry in the first place but far too dumbstruck to work out which problem to tackle first—all of which he feared he had a hand in starting. “Since the day Travis left me, I told myself I was better off, because I wouldn’t let that asshole within sniffing distance of my new family, and him leaving was the best of both worlds. I promised myself that I would be such a magnificent goddamn mother that there would be no room for my child to ever wonder about who helped create them. I’d be the best. The best entrepreneur, have the most successful online nutrition counseling service in the state, always be there for my baby whenever they needed me. I would smother that child with enough love to squeeze out Travis from the picture entirely, until he was never even a thought in our lives to begin with.”

The conviction in her voice felt forced but well used, like a coat of armor that never fit quite right but had been called into countless battles regardless. Her strength was astounding and totally fucking heartbreaking.

“But when my doctor first asked me whether I wanted to know the gender, there was something inside me that kept scratching at whether I might be wrong. How will I react if I see Travis in my child? Will I see his judgmental attitude shaming me behind my son’s eyes or his coloring monopolizing every prominent feature of my daughter to the point that people don’t even recognize her as mine? I thought that, if it was a surprise, at least I’d have to find a way to deal with the hand I’d be dealt and that maybe some of my anxieties would be stripped away. But what if all my intentions and self-talk fly out the window as soon as I find out what kind of baby I’m giving birth to? What if I’m not really strong enough to do this on my own and all my motivational mumblings wind up feeling as hollow as they sound?”

His heart finally finished splintering. Just full-on shattered into a thousand shards that scampered further away from him on the peals of her pain. There was no hope of collecting them again, for he feared that whatever he’d manage to save would be so battered and bruised that there wouldn’t be any love left in them to care for the child that desperately needed the love it previously housed.

In the absence of anything useful to wield against a foe he had no experience fighting, he offered up the only thing he could think of.

Iron closed the space between them, gliding across her living room in two giant strides. His hands flew to the sides of her face, offering his strength even as he thumbed away her tears. Just the sight of her heartache was enough to send his heart, whatever was left of it, into a painful spasm. She didn’t deserve this, and he was the piece of shit who had pressured her into unraveling a hurt he’d not known she’d carried, all to satisfy his curiosity.

“Listen to me, Anna,” he said, softly shaking his insistence into his embrace. “You are so much more than enough.”

He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t hold back anymore. There were a thousand scenarios that saw him turning on his bootheels and leaving her to a life he logically knew her to be better off in. But only one of them had her in his arms, pulling her closer, while he stroked the smooth skin down the sides of her neck, doing his bumbling best to massage away the tension he’d brought into her home.

Only one scenario saw him slanting his lips across hers, absorbing the anguish of her tears into himself.

Only one scenario had her responding, her arms curling around his neck, returning his possessive embrace with a claim of her own, or him lifting her high against his chest and carrying her to her bedroom.

If she didn’t think she was enough, he was going to spend whatever time he had left in the mortal realm showing her how very wrong she was.