Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(151)

I never even asked him if he’d be okay with not having children. I totally overreacted. No, I didn’t. I wasn’t what he would end up wanting.

And he knew the bastards that killed my aunt and uncle and didn’t tell me. But what good would it have done it if he had? He held my mother when she cried, for God’s sake.

Most guys didn’t want to even think about knocking a girl up either. Adam had been inside me quite a few times without a condom. He’d never finish inside me that way but we were still relying on my IUD to keep us from procreating.

I flipped to the other side of the couch. Sleeping was out of the question; my mind was heavily laden with thought after thought. I had drifted into a numbing zone when my cell pinged, showing I’d received a text from Adam.

There were no words surrounding the photo he’d sent, as the image of the two of us together said it all. I don’t know when he’d taken the picture, but we were in his bed. I was apparently asleep in his arms, though my mouth was curled with a serene and quite content smile. Adam’s eyes were heavy, as though he’d just awoke and taken the picture. We were blissfully happy.

Were.

My cell rang in my hand, showing Adam’s name where our picture just was. It was almost midnight, so he had to be out in the city somewhere. The relief that he hadn’t given up on us hit me hard. “Hi.”

“You gonna talk to me now?” He was on guard and short with me, and rightly so.

“Yes.”

“Ritchie, you point that camera at me one more f*cking time, I’ll shove it so far up your ass you’ll choke on it,” he warned. “I can’t even move anymore,” he mumbled to me. “She’s got every camera crew on me.”

I listened to him stress out. He was pacing in some parking lot, no doubt.

“You still there?” he finally asked.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“You going to give me a chance to explain?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t cause the accident, Erin. I swear to God I didn’t.”

A tear formed, followed by another, prefacing the thickening in my throat.

“Baby, you have to believe me. I’m so sorry. I tried… I tried to stop them but they just… I swear I tried.”

I wiped my eyes. “I believe you.”

“I’d never hurt you. I didn’t know how to tell you. You’d been through enough. You. Your family.” Adam drew in a breath. “And now that you know, I don’t know how to fix it.”

“You knew them.”

He sighed. “I’d arrested them both once before. I didn’t know they were the ones in the vehicle until afterward. Our field supervisor called off the pursuit after they almost hit a pedestrian. We had no choice, sweetheart.”

He was following orders.

“Tell me how to fix this, Erin. Please”

“I… I want you to be happy, Adam. That’s all.”

“You make me happy, baby. You.”

I recognized the desperate truth in his voice, but eventually he’d come to resent me. I knew I couldn’t give him the future he deserved but the greedy, selfish part of me didn’t care to concede.

“So who filled your head? Was it Nikki?”

I swirled a few passes of toilet paper around my fingers. “The bride, actually.”

“You f*cking serious?”

“She told me you were engaged, too.”

Heavy breathing mixed with silence. “I never gave her a ring, Erin. Never. We never got to that point.”

Some of the pressure left my chest. “Ellie said you had a date set but you were cheating on Nikki with someone else.”

“Jesus Christ. No. It was actually the other way around.” Adam was getting creative again with his curse words. Weird, but I could actually hear him rubbing his face. “Please tell me you didn’t believe her.”

“You’re not a cheater, Adam. I know that.”

His wordless answers were filled with relief.

“You know she and Nikki are friends, right? I wonder how she would feel if she found out everything Nikki’s told her were lies.”

“Adam…”

“I never asked her to marry me, Erin. We talked about it, won’t deny that, but… Christ. I don’t want to be talking about this over the phone with you.”

“I know. Maybe we can—”

A loud bang went off outside, followed by another. And another. Glass shattered. The pillow next to me moved on its own. I hunched and then screamed when the lamp next to the couch exploded, sending the room into darkness.

Adam yelled in my ear.

I hit the floor, cutting my knee on something sharp.

Another bang. The mirror above my sofa cracked and then smashed to the floor.

“Stay on the phone with me!” Adam ordered. He was shouting so many things but I lost him when my phone skidded across the floor.

I scurried down the hall, tripping over my own feet as another shot went off. Pain blistered into my forehead when I smacked into the wall at the mouth of the hallway. Forward momentum knocked me down. My arm gave out under my weight but I had to keep moving.

Absolute terror folded me effortlessly.

There was no place for me to go. Nowhere to hide.

I ended up in the downstairs bathroom, huddling between the toilet and sink cabinet.