Page 60 of No Knight (My Kind of Hero #3)

Matt

In front of me, Ryan begins to shake, the tremors running through her body almost seismic.

“Oh, God.” Her hand moves in slow motion, rising to her face. “I’ve never said that out loud before.” She presses her fingers to her lips as though she might be sick.

Immobile, I can’t make sense of what she just said.

Was it a birth thing?

She grew up with her mother—she said she left. Which means ...

No. She’s no killer.

Killer. The word rebounds from the walls of my brain as I recall her heated reaction in October when I playfully called her that—and when those fucknuts from Dreyland called her the same.

Killer queen. Dynamite and—

Ryan staggers to the sink, reaching it just in time. She begins to retch, her distress this time spurring me into action.

Three long strides, and I’m holding her hair, rubbing her back, making soothing noises as she contorts herself. Her belly and height make the job a difficult one, the meager contents of her stomach not helping much either.

“It’s okay,” I say, over and over. As she retches. As she sobs. “Here.” I grab a towel and press it into her hands. She puts it to her face, her shoulders still shaking.

My heart aches for her, but my fucking ego wants to make her feel worse. And my poor fucking head feels like it’s gonna burst. She’s not a killer, but whatever this is has her tied in knots.

She makes no attempt to stop me as I bend and swoop her up. I carry her to the sectional and lower us to it, holding her in my lap like a child. Breath after tortured breath, her tears soak the towel until there’s nothing left for her to give.

“Hey,” I whisper.

Her eyes lift briefly to mine before she gives a long breath, her gaze sliding to the garden.

“My mother didn’t want me.” Next comes a deep swallow. She repurposes the towel, twisting it in between her fingers. “I was just an attempt to keep a man. It didn’t work.” Her gaze darts my way, and I push a deep breath from my lungs.

“That’s not what’s happening here.” Unless we’re talking about some sick reversal. I hook my finger around the hair stuck to her cheek. Pulling it free, I smooth it over her shoulder. “I’m here when you’re ready. You can tell me anything.”

“Anything to send you away? Because it will.”

I don’t answer. I can’t imagine my life without her. And I can’t see her as a killer.

“As a child I lived in a constant state of uncertainty, not that I knew it back then. I had questions. Lots of them, always. Would I go to school that day? Would I find food in the fridge? What kind of mood would I find her in? Would she be drunk and mean or drunk and newly in love? And then there were the men.” A shiver of revulsion runs through her, and the concrete returns to my stomach.

“So many, I don’t remember all their faces as they drifted in and out of our lives. New daddies, uncles, and others who’d barely acknowledge me. And then when they’d leave, and they would leave, she’d start on me again.

“‘Look at you, you scrawny no-good thing. You weren’t even enough to make your goddamn daddy stay.’ She said it so often I thought it was my fault for the longest time. Do you know what that does to a child?”

“I can’t imagine,” I whisper, pressing my hand to her back.

“Well, it was nothing good. God, I hated her,” she adds, her tone low and mean. “And I hated how she demeaned herself for them. How she demeaned me.”

My stomach turns over. I want to ask her what that means. Did she suffer at the hands of men as a child? But I won’t push. All in her own time.

“I look like her, you know?” Her head turns my way, the light in her eyes dead.

“Every now and again, I pass a mirror or a store window and catch a glimpse. Not of myself, but of her. And I’m reminded all over again who I am.

Where I came from. Underneath all this—the clothes, the hair, the bravado.

Even the job. It’s still Ryan, her daughter.

I’m part of her, and she’s part of me. And it terrifies me. ”

“You’re not her. No way. You’re amazing, and I love you,” I choke out, my heart twisting for her.

Her smile is a tiny, fragile thing as she touches my cheek fleetingly.

“I left home as soon as I could. Left her in that no-good town. I put myself through community college, and I transferred my final year to somewhere less ...” She sighs, her shoulders rising and falling with the memory. With the weight of all that she’s carrying. “Less me.”

I put my hand over hers and clasp her fingers tight.

“I got a decent job, in time. Made some money. Got smart. Avoided the usual pitfalls.” Men, I intuit as she glances my way.

The unsuitable ones, I hope she means. “I never went home once. But I called. She was the only person I had in the world. ‘You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?

’ That’s what she’d say if I caught her on a bad day.

And God forbid if I told her anything about my life.

A boyfriend, and it’d be ‘Look at you, falling in the same traps. You with your smarts and your big ideas.’ She’d delight in that, like she wanted me to fail.

To be miserable. But I guess she was miserable her whole life, and that was my fault. ”

“Babies are born innocent.” I tug on her hand. “You hear me? You got dealt a shit hand, but none of it was your fault.”

And you didn’t murder her, I know.

God, her expression is heartbreaking. “Maybe not. But later. That’s on me.”

“You don’t have to tell me, not if you don’t want to.” Maybe it’s better I don’t know.

Fuck that. There isn’t anything she can’t tell me.

“I have to tell you. See, you have to take this baby from me,” she whispers, pressing her hands to her distended abdomen. “I don’t deserve her, and she doesn’t deserve to be like me.” Big fat tears hit the round of her belly, spreading like inkblots on my shirt.

“You’re wrong.” I know it.

“I’d send her money,” she whispers. “And there’s a part of me that hates that I helped her when she did so little for me. But I didn’t give her money to help. I did it because I knew she’d drink herself to death.” Her head turns my way. “And she did. And I have to live with that every day.”