Page 98 of Rebellious Hearts

As if things couldn’t have been bad enough, now I would be attached to her for the next eighteen years! Now I would have to look at the face that would never be mine, reminded of the woman who’d just played pretend for the next two decades.

Great. Just fucking great.

What the hell did I do to deserve this? If past lives existed, I must have been a real piece of shit to deserve the kind of hell that I’d been through in my life. The hits never stopped coming; I never got a break.

But I wouldn’t just stay away from her completely and put a check in the mail every month, a birthday, or a Christmas card for the kid as he grew up.

I wouldn’t just be a phantom father.

Sofia might have fucked me over by making me think this could be real, but that kid growing in her belly hadn’t done anything to deserve pain and anger and hatred, and I wasn’t planning on letting the child for one second think that his or her family didn’t want them.

The baby would be a Blackwood, after all. Unlike us four brothers, the child would start with a leg up in life, and I would be there every step of the way so that they knew they were wanted, knew they were loved.

I would be more than just a check in the mail to that child, and I would be more than family that turned its back on the child.

I would be everything my birth parents never were.

And if that meant I’d have to face Sofia for the next eighteen years, I guess that was how it would have to be. Parents made sacrifices for their kids, right?

It was what my parentsshouldhave done. And I wouldn’t be like them. I wouldn’t do the wrong thing and let that baby believe that he or she wasn’t enough, wasn’t wanted, wasn’t just a burden.

All life had value, and another little Blackwood in the family would bring happiness and joy and know that there was only love.

My thoughts turned to Sofia.

What was she going through, finding out that she was pregnant?

Frustration, probably. I couldn’t imagine that falling pregnant was a part of whatever plans she had.

Just thinking about her leaving pissed me off all over again.

This whole thing with Ben is just pretend, it’s not real and when it’s over, I’m leaving.

Her words echoed in my mind again and again.

Luke told me to go talk to her, to ask her what was going on and find out the bigger picture but that sentence she’d said had pretty much told me everything I needed to know.

How could I misunderstand that?

The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got. Anger burned in my veins.

I preferred the anger. It burned away the pain, the heartache, everything else I might be feeling. I’d learned from a young age that being angry was easier than feeling any of the other feelings, and anger was my old friend.

All that remained now was to put on my face for Richard so we could seal the deal and Alex would be happy, and then this project was in the bag.

The rest we could figure out. I would talk to Richard at some point if he asked where Sofia was—either tell him she was traveling or tell her she left me.

Or something.

Maybe I would even tell him she was dead, get some sympathy from him since he could relate… God, that would be cruel. Just because I was so fucking angry with her right now didn’t mean that I had to do things that were so hurtful.

I was pissed off, but I wasn’t a dick.

At least, not a very big one. I had my moments, but Richard was a nice guy. He’d been through hell and back, and he’d lost someone so close to him.

I could almost relate to him in that way, anyway.

I felt like I’d lost someone close to me, too.