Lovely Trigger (Tristan & Danika #3)(92)

He shook his head, but I was past the point of all reason.  He was standing so close now that I slapped him again, and again, and again, then clutched at his shirt with both hands.  I gripped it so furiously that it ripped, and I raked my nails into his chest, scoring deeply into his flesh.

Lashing out like a wounded animal.

I glared up at him, barely seeing past the tears, but seeing enough.

Enough to make me shake.  Enough to break me.

It was as though every blow I landed only softened him, tenderized him, and with each abuse I inflicted, more love would pour out of his eyes.

“Shh, Danika, shh.  Listen to me.  Calm down and listen.  I did not get her pregnant.  The only woman I have ever gotten pregnant is you.  The only woman I would ever get pregnant is you.”

I sobbed harder at that, though he couldn’t have known why.

“Look at me.  Look me in the eye and see the truth.  I have not touched that woman in well over a year.  I have not been with anyone but you since I saw you with Andrew on that red carpet.  I was celibate for a full year before the ranch.”

Slowly, gradually, the sobbing stopped and his words sank in.  I began to study him, looking for the truth, or God forbid, the lie.

If he was lying to me now, if he could make his eyes do what they were doing right now with artifice, then I was done for.  There was no limit to what he could get away with, if he could fake a thing like that.

Because I was incapable of cutting him off when he looked at me like that.

My entire body froze.

“Excuse me?” I finally asked him, not processing all of it right away.  He’d given me too much information all at once.

“I did not want to do this now, but I will if you need it.  But first, I need to know that you understand that that woman is not pregnant with my child.  Do you understand that?”

My head started nodding before my brain gave the order.

He still had way too many weapons in his arsenal against me.  And he still used them mercilessly.

“Good.  I was celibate for a year before the ranch.”

The impact was just as severe the second time he said it.

“After I saw you with that punk on the red carpet.”

I took in one deep trembling breath.  “Andrew.”

He flinched.  “Yes.  That punk.  I saw you with him, and I knew you were together.  I saw it up close, not from any distance at all, with no filter, and I realized that I couldn’t live like that anymore.  It was wrong.”

“Stop.”  My voice was a whisper.

“You never should have been with him.”

“Stop.”  My voice got louder.

“And I never should have touched another woman, no matter that you wouldn’t speak to me, wouldn’t look at me.  I was celibate for two years after the night of the accident and for one year before the ranch.  Everything else was wrong.  It should have never happened like that.  My only excuse was that I’d lost all hope.”  His voice went from unsteady to breaking on each word.  “If I’d had even an ounce of hope left that you would let me so much as kiss your f**king feet again, I would have waited for you.”  He made a visible effort to calm himself.

He took a very deep breath.  “And then I saw you with that piece of shit—“

“Stop it!  He’s not a piece of shit.  He’s actually a very nice man.”

“Well, I f**king hate him, so please don’t talk him up to me.”  His voice was shaking, and getting louder by the word.  “When I saw you that night, the way he was with you, touching you with privilege, I knew that I couldn’t go on like that anymore, couldn’t go on pretending that I was okay with the way things turned out.

I tried it your way, Danika.  No one can say, that six f**king years later, I didn’t try to respect your wishes, but I am done.  This was wrong.  You were wrong.  And I’m here to tell you that, if it takes me the rest of my f**king life, I am going to make this right again.”

I had no words, for once.  And I couldn’t move, couldn’t begin to imagine how to react to his statement.  Something was happening inside of me, some hardened part of me had thawed out and the repercussions of that thawing were not something I was ready yet to contemplate.

“So that is how I know for a fact that it is not my baby,” he continued relentlessly, “and she knows it too.  She’s turned malicious.  She’s not who I thought she was, and that’s unfortunate; it has cost her job, but she does not have the power she thinks she does to hurt what you and I have.  No one has that power, with the exception of you and me.  So, sweetheart, please, I just need you to have a little bit more faith.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before now that you hadn’t been with anyone in so long?”

“You hadn’t even admitted to me that things were over with Andrew.  Did you expect me to admit to a thing like that, when I didn’t even know if you were jumping from his bed to mine?  I do have some pride left, even when it comes to you.”

“I told you about Andrew—”

“Yes, well, that was later, and by then we were avoiding this subject, not finding new reasons to talk about it.”