Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)

Delilah

I didn’t see Dante for two days after that. I worked and so did he. Or so I thought. He made himself scarce.

It was for the best. Us bickering over my date wasn’t what should have been happening. We should have been acting cordial until Izzy was out and they were gone.

I told myself that over and over during those two days. When I passed him in the hall on the third morning in my scrubs, my heart almost stuttered to a stop. My body instantly lit up, and I found myself holding back too much emotion, like I needed to see him, like I’d missed him.

I needed to get more sleep. The long night shifts were making me crazy, especially on not much food and after having to avoid Allan all night.

“Hey, Lamb,” he leaned against the hallway wall instead of sliding his key card into his room slot like he’d been about to do. “Blue looks good on you.”

I rolled my eyes. My scrubs were nothing to write home about.

“And you look good in slacks,” I added.

“You going to breakfast?” He nodded toward the purse I’d slung over my shoulder.

“Just a quick one. I had a long night.” I pointed in the direction of the hotel restaurant.

He hummed. “I heard you get in about an hour ago. Your shift usually ends three hours earlier.”

“Emergency with a big pile-up on the highway.” His eyes scanned my scrubs for evidence. “I showered and changed at work.”

He nodded. “I’ll join you for breakfast, if that’s okay.”

I pursed my lips and waved him on. We walked in silence together down the hallway. This was the Dante I remembered, the quiet appeasing man who smiled and nodded at about five other guests who walked by. He murmured hellos and a thank you to a man who opened the restaurant door for us. Then he put his hand on my lower back, like we were comfortable with each other’s touch but just in a friendly manner.

My body wasn’t. I felt the heat immediately, my nipples tightened, and I gasped. His light eyes met mine, but he didn’t call attention to the spark between us.

That was for the best.

The buffet wasn’t very busy, but families buzzed around with kids, and a couple of pilots ate in the corner, probably only here for a day or two before they had to jet out again. I went to grab some fruit, and two little girls dressed in red-striped pajamas pointed at my scrubs. When I caught them looking, I did a little twirl and they glanced up to find me smiling.

We all giggled, and one tilted her head to the side and said, “I want to be a doctor when I grow up.”

“I like your red pajamas.” I nodded to them both, not correcting them and telling them I was a nurse.

“We’re twins!” They grabbed each other’s hands.

Their mother arrived and put her hands on their shoulders, smiling at me. “Sorry.”

“No worries.” I waved her off. “We’re just admiring one another’s clothing, and I have to tell them, I have a twin too.”

Their eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“Is she pretty like you?” asked the one who hadn’t talked yet. She reminded me of myself, standing back while Izzy shined.

“Well, we’re both pretty in our own ways. Just like you both are amazing in your own ways.”

They giggled, and the mom shooed them away. The love in the way they looked at one another must have drained all the happiness out of my stare.

“You want kids,” Dante said from behind me, and I jumped, my plate of food slipping from my hands.

The reflexes on the man would have rivaled a superhero’s because he caught my plate before it hit the ground without dropping a single morsel of food.

“Jesus, you scared me,” I murmured as he pushed the plate back into my hands. “Thank you.”

“No worries.” Then his hand was on the small of my back again, leading me to our table. This time, he hovered closer, so close I could feel his warmth. Like we were together. Like we knew each other intimately. And my heart couldn’t help but race toward the idea.

He pulled the seat out for me, then rounded the table.

I bit my lip and tried not to focus on how accommodating he was. Yet, considering how my body was reacting to a single touch from him, I wondered if I needed to set clear boundaries or keep avoiding him.

He smiled, all cool, calm, and collected, as he sat down across from me and continued his questioning like we were old friends. “Your mom would love you bringing home a bunch of babies with a nice man.”

“Why are we talking about this?” I grumbled and grabbed my fork to eat.

“Because you looked at those little girls like you wanted them about as bad as you wanted your own car in high school.”

I groaned, knowing where this was going. “I deserved a car, okay? My brothers were hellions, and they ruined that car before it ever got to me and Izzy.”

We got the hand-me-down station wagon that barely ran, and Izzy always took it everywhere. I was stuck catching rides with whoever I could.

Dante waved me off. “At least it gave us time to catch up when I was home on leave.” He caught my stare, and I shifted uncomfortably. I’d treasured those car rides but wasn’t sure he had too.

I took a bite of the pineapple I’d grabbed and sought neutral ground. “They were nice.”

“They were more than nice, Lilah. I was cooped up with men for three to four months at a time overseas, and then when I was home, I got you in my car for twenty minutes here and there, smelling like strawberries and coconuts and sweet as hell.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “I didn’t smell.”

“You do. Best smell ever. Well, except for when I’ve got your legs spread—”

“Nope.” I cut him off and waved the fork in front of him. “Are you kidding right now?”

He chuckled and leaned back. “For someone who wants to have fun around the island, you’re being pretty uptight.”

“Can we just not?” I asked.

He shrugged and then frowned before he cleared his throat. “Joking aside, I’m sorry about the other night.”

I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Me too. I just want to do what I came here to do and that’s it. So I’m sorry if it jeopardizes the safety of your mission or if I’m skewing your view of me or—”

“It’s fine, Lilah. I get it. You want to have fun.”

“It’s not just about fun,” I tried to explain as I pushed a piece of pineapple around on my plate. “I was so engrossed with getting straight A’s in high school. Then in college, when things … when I couldn’t, I didn’t know who I was. If I didn’t have perfect grades, I had nothing.”

He hummed and seemed to search my face, like he was cataloging my expression or something. Then he said, “Go on.”

“Well, there’s not much else to tell. I didn’t fit in without my brothers and sister around. I struggled to get good grades and …” I cleared my throat. “I was really depressed.” I met his gaze, waiting for the recoil or the pity or the shock. He stared back at me, accepting all my words without any judgment.

Then he said, “Would you like me to teach you self-defense?”

“What?” I sputtered. It was so off topic from what we were talking about that I was sure I’d heard him wrong.

“Self-defense.” He pointed his fork at me before he looked down at his food to stab a piece of it. “You’re small. You’ve probably walked around here at night alone. Every woman, unfortunately, will always have to deal with concerns for their well-being. I figure it’s good to equip you with some escape techniques in case you’re ever in a bad situation.”

“Did you hear anything I just said about college?”

“I did.” He shrugged like my confession was nothing. “Working out and building confidence in your body can help with depression too.”

“Aren’t you more concerned that I suffer from bouts of depression? I was practically depressed throughout all of college.” At first, I’d been waiting for him to react negatively, and now I was pissed he hadn’t reacted at all.

“Lilah, you were bound to suffer something with all the pressure you put on yourself. Now, we’ll figure out ways to deal with it. Self-defense and exercise should be a good start.”

“I was bound to …?” I trailed off. “Are you saying I did this to myself? I’ll have you know that ten percent of women who’ve lost a—” My mouth snapped shut as his eyes shot up and narrowed.

“Lost a what, Lilah?”

Shit.

The white tile on the seventh floor of this building was so white it made me wonder if it had ever needed a cleaning. So pure. So pristine. So damn sterile.

It mocked me as I sat there for my twelve-week appointment.

Such good grades. Such a solid life ahead of her. Such a damn disappointment she got pregnant.

I could hear my little town running wild with the accusations. I could picture my mother’s face, my father’s anger, and my brothers’ desire to seek revenge.

It was going to be hell. There wasn’t an easy way out.

I told myself I deserved my choice, that it was mine to make either way, and that I wasn’t going to let expectations of society creep in. I scrambled for that control even when my world was spiraling out of it.

I didn’t make any decision the first time I went to the doctor’s office. I heard the heartbeat. Fast, strong, and maybe a little rapid because it was scared just like me.

The fear was crippling, like I was standing in the middle of an island all on my own with no roadmap to anything I knew. How could I take care of a baby when I didn’t even know if I could care for myself? What foods would it eat, how would I hold it? Would it sleep in my arms or only in a crib?

Should I have been calling the baby “it”? Or “he” or “she” now? Where was the line?

I’d been reading parenting books like crazy the past three weeks and knew I would never know enough.

I knew how to get a hundred on a test. I could look up my score and know exactly how I’d done. If I got a ninety, I’d try harder the next time. Never did I give up when it came to any subject. I aced AP Trigonometry, outscored every other student in the school on my ACT testing, and could speak two languages fluently.

With a baby, though, I’d never get a grade. No one would ever tell me if I was doing it all right, and even if they did, it was completely and utterly subjective.

I took a deep breath. If I had the child, I would be barreling into the unknown and wasn’t sure if the barrel was going to roll the right way.

I wanted babies, eventually, I knew that. I wanted little beautiful babies that called me Momma and some guy Dadda. I couldn’t put that on Dante, though.

Even now, I hadn’t told him. I had to be sure.

I smiled at the thought of kids with his green eyes. He’d be a perfect dad, even if I didn’t know crap about being a mom.

“Delilah Hardy?” The nurse waved me in for the twelve week appointment and went through all her questions. Everything was fast in that this was a routine check-up for them, even though it was brand new and life-changing for me.

She squirted gel onto a wand and rubbed it over my belly. “Let’s grab that heartbeat really quick, and then we’ll have Dr. Pally come in to go over any questions you have.”

“Okay,” I breathed.

She rubbed that wand over my belly again and again.

Over and over.

That fast little heartbeat I’d heard the first time was pure silence this time.

The look on her face grew more and more concerned. “Sometimes I’m not great at catching the little guys. Let me grab the doc.”

A doctor came in, then another. Searching now transvaginally for that heartbeat again and again as my own heartbeat grew faster and faster.

“Is something wrong?” I asked. How was I so concerned when I wasn’t even sure I wanted a baby?

“We’re just checking some things.” Dr. Pally patted my shoulder.

They switched tactics as my mind shifted to worst-case scenarios.

“You lost the baby, Ms. Hardy. I’m so sorry.”

It only took three months for my body to prove to me I couldn’t do everything right and that I couldn’t do the most basic biological thing that women were designed to do well.

“I lost the baby?” I stared down at my stomach, confused.

My heart beat loud.

Too loud.

And all by itself now, no little one to accompany it like it had for weeks.

“But how? I didn’t do anything wrong,” I whispered. I’d eaten all the right foods. I’d done all the right things. I hardly even moved, I was so scared to hurt her or him.

See, I was even using pronouns.

“Sometimes this just happens. It’s not your fault. Let’s run some tests and …”

Nothing they said to me mattered after that. She’d said it wasn’t my fault as if there was room for it to be. My mind scoured over everything I’d eaten that week, everything I’d done, how I’d slept. Had I slept on my stomach and hurt the baby? Was that possible?

My baby had stopped growing at ten weeks, and that meant my body had missed expelling it. I had to have a procedure. I had to utilize medical technology to do something my body should have been able to do naturally.

I’d failed at pregnancy, and now I’d failed at miscarrying. I’d failed myself, my baby, and maybe Dante, although he’d never know.

No one would know, I told myself. I couldn’t bear to let them know of my failure.

Depression crept in, bleeding like black ink over the colorful world minute by minute, hour by hour. The bleed might have been slow or it might have been fast, but once it took over, it consumed me. Everything was dark. The weight of my worries and the negative parts of the world buried me so deep down in my soul that it seemed impossible to move.

When I miscarried that baby, I suffocated under the weight of that blackness. I hadn’t been aware of that type of pain until my own trauma.

But it halted my life, changed my path, made me into a completely different person. I didn’t take anyone’s calls. I didn’t go out when my roommate asked me to, and I didn’t reply to messages from Dante or my siblings.

Maybe I should have told them, but my family had been dealing with Izzy in juvie. Maybe I could have shared it with Dante, but he’d been fighting a war overseas. Who was I to not tell him about our baby in the first place, then burden him with my grief?

I didn’t have any energy to do anything but keep breathing.

That in and of itself was almost too much.