Raven’s POV
A week passes in unbearable tension.
I stay, but everything feels suspended—held breath before a scream. I throw myself into ranch work, exhausting my body so my mind will shut up. It doesn't work.
The pregnancy symptoms are getting worse. Morning sickness at random hours. Bone-deep fatigue. Food aversions that change daily. I hide it carefully—blame the heat, skipped meals, adjustment to physical labor.
Neither brother questions it. Theron, who notices everything, seems satisfied with this explanation—the girl wants to leave, of course she's acting strange. My confession gave him a reason to stop looking deeper. He watches me now like a flight risk, not a mystery to solve. His jokes land flat, his eyes tracking me with something too tender to name.
Weston retreats further behind his walls. Speaks only when necessary. His eyes slide away whenever they meet mine, like looking at me burns.
The nights are hardest. I lie awake replaying that moment outside my door—his rough voice saying "I want you to be happy" when his eyes screamed something else entirely.
Tonight, sleep won't come. I give up around midnight, padding through the dark house in bare feet. I find him on the porch instead.
Weston sits in the old rocking chair, whiskey glass in hand, staring at the sky like it holds answers he's been searching for. He's not drunk—I can tell by the steadiness of his posture—but loosened. The rigid set of his shoulders has softened just slightly.
"Can't sleep?" I ask, settling into the chair beside him.
He doesn't startle. Maybe he heard me coming. Maybe he's past the point of caring.
"Never could." He takes a sip. "Not since—" He stops. Swallows. "Doesn't matter."
I wait. The silence between us feels different tonight. Less defensive. More exhausted. Two people too tired to keep their armor polished.
"Elena used to love nights like this."
I go still. He's never spoken her name aloud to me before. Never acknowledged the ghost that haunts every corner of this house.
His grip tightens on the glass. "She always wanted this ranch. Dreamed about it since she was a kid. Dirt under her fingernails, horses in the field, a porch to watch sunsets from."
"But?"
"But I was too busy chasing success. Working with men like your father. Building something that didn't matter." Bitterness edges his voice. "I thought money was the point. Turns out it was just an excuse."
"An excuse for what?"
"For not being present. For missing dinners and anniversaries and all the small moments that add up to a life." He drains the last of his whiskey. "We finally got here. Finally started trying for a family. And then—"
His voice breaks.
My hand finds his without thinking. He flinches at the contact but doesn't pull away. His skin is warm, calloused, trembling slightly.
"You don't have to tell me."
"Maybe I need to."
He turns to look at me, and his eyes are shattered. Storm-blue gone dark with grief that never healed, never even scabbed over. Just an open wound he's been walking around with for four years.
"She died in childbirth."
The words land like stones in still water. Ripples spreading outward, touching everything.
"The baby too. A boy." His voice goes hollow. "He lived for six hours. I held him the whole time. Counted his fingers. Memorized his face. Watched him take his last breath in my arms."
My throat closes completely. My own secret burns in my chest—suddenly monstrous, suddenly terrifying in a way it wasn't before.
I'm pregnant. And the last time this man faced fatherhood, he lost everything.
"Weston, I'm so sorry."
"I wasn't there when she went into labor. Some deal in the city. Meeting that ran long." His every word is permeated with self-hatred. "By the time I got to the hospital, she was already gone. I never got to say goodbye. Never got to tell her—"
He stops. Can't finish.
"That's why I left your father's world. That's why I came here." He gestures at the dark ranch around us. "This place was her dream. Living it is the only apology I can give her."
The silence that follows is heavy with everything he's just given me. Years of grief, poured out under starlight. The most guarded man I've ever met, cracking himself open because something about tonight—about me—made him need to be known.
I don't have words big enough for this moment. Don't have comfort that could possibly match the weight of what he's carrying. So I do the only thing that feels true.
I reach for him.
My fingers brush his jaw, turning his face toward mine. He looks at me with those shattered eyes, and I see the question there—what are you doing, why aren't you running, how can you look at me like that after everything I just told you?
I answer with my mouth on his.
The kiss tastes like whiskey and desperation and four years of loneliness. It tastes like need and fear and something dangerously close to hope.
He carries me inside without breaking the kiss. Down the dark hallway, muscle memory guiding him, his mouth never leaving mine. When my back hits the mattress—their bed, I realize, and push the thought away—something shifts between us.
This isn't the frantic blur of that drunken night. This is intentional. Devastating. Every touch is a deliberate choice.
His hands find the hem of my shirt, questioning. I answer by pulling it over my head. The cool air hits my skin and then his palms are there, calloused and warm, tracing the curve of my waist like he's memorizing terrain he'll never see again.
"Raven." My name sounds different in his mouth. Reverent. Broken.
I pull him down to me, needing his weight, needing to feel anchored to something real. His shirt disappears somewhere. Then the rest. Skin against skin, nothing between us but breath and want and four years of loneliness meeting weeks of impossible connection.
He takes his time. Learn what makes me gasp, what makes me arch into him, what makes me forget every coherent thought I've ever had. His mouth traces paths down my neck, my collarbone, the space between my breasts. Worshipping. That's the only word for it.
When he finally settles between my thighs, he pauses. Forehead pressed to mine. Storm-blue eyes locked on my face like I'm the only thing in the universe worth seeing.
"Raven," he says again. Just my name. But it sounds like a prayer. Like a promise. Like a man finding water after years in the desert.
He slides into me slowly, giving me time to adjust, watching my face for any sign of discomfort. When he's fully seated, we both go still. The connection is overwhelming—not just physical, but something deeper. Something terrifying.
Then he moves, and I stop thinking entirely.
We find a rhythm together, building toward something inevitable. His thrusts are deep, deliberate, hitting places that make stars explode behind my eyes. I wrap my legs around him, pulling him closer, needing more, needing everything.
"Look at me," he demands, voice wrecked. "I need to see you."
I open my eyes. Meet his gaze. And when the wave finally crests, we break together—his body shuddering against mine, my nails raking down his back, both of us falling off the edge of the world.
After, we lie tangled in sweat-dampened sheets, heartbeats slowing in tandem. His fingers trace lazy patterns on my shoulder. For a few perfect minutes, nothing exists except this room, this bed, this man breathing softly against my hair.
Then I feel it happen.
His body tenses. The walls rebuild brick by brick. The softness hardening back into stone.
"You deserve better than a broken man living in a dead woman's dream."
The words hit me like a slap.
"Weston—"
He dresses with mechanical efficiency. Won't look at me. Won't let me see his face as he buttons his shirt with shaking hands.
"Don't do this." My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. "Don't run away again."
The door closes behind him.
I stare at the ceiling, hand pressed against my stomach, the ghost of his touch still burning my skin. His confession echoes in my head—childbirth, baby, six hours, held him while he died.
And I'm pregnant.
With a baby that might be his.
How am I supposed to tell him now?