When Lia takes my hand, I give her a helpless look, not even knowing what to do or say at this point. I can tell she’s curious. She gives Aidan a warm smile saying, “Hi, Aidan. Lucian came by for some papers and we stayed long enough for me to have a snack. We were just on our way to meet some friends for dinner.”
Aidan’s voice is strained as he says, “Um…hi, Lia. Good to see you again.” This whole moment in time is so fucking strange to me that I can hardly believe it’s happening. Aidan looks like he’s been hit by a bus, so I have to believe he’s feeling the same way. Lia keeps shooting quick glances my way as if trying to figure out what to do next—and Cassie, dammit to hell—she’s standing before me looking completely and utterly blank.
Lia suddenly extends a hand toward Cassie with a shy smile, and alarmed, I try to pull her back. She places a hand on my chest to stop me before turning back to the other woman. “It looks as if everyone has forgotten their manners around here. I’m Lia, and you are?”
Cassie looks from Lia’s face to her hand and back again. Then she does something that stops my heart. She steps toward Lia and places a hand on either side of her swollen stomach. “My baby,” she says in a childlike voice that chills my blood. Both Aidan and I freeze while Lia looks at me uncertainly.
“Why do you have my baby?”
Horror floods Lia’s face as she steps back quickly. Her actions shake me from my stupor and I jerk forward, taking her arm and pulling her through the partially open door. I pass within inches of Cassie and I think I will shatter if she lays one hand on me. Thankfully, though, Aidan has reached over and pulled her farther inside the apartment and away from us. I hear him speaking softly but shakily to her as I hurry Lia toward the elevator. When the door closes behind us, I collapse back against the wood panel, unable to comprehend what just occurred. The elevator continues to sit in place as neither of us has pushed a button yet. “Lucian. What just happened in there?” Lia asks in a tight voice.
“Fuck if I know, baby.” I shudder, trying to recover enough to function. I’d never expected to see Cassie again and I damn sure hadn’t imagined running into her in some random way. I could only assume that Aidan had followed through with the doctor’s suggestion to bring her for a visit. Why in the hell hadn’t he told me—warned me that he was doing just that? I wouldn’t have been anywhere near his apartment if I’d known and I sure wouldn’t have put Lia right in her path. I’d felt physically sick when she’d touched Lia’s stomach as if it were her own. Fucking hell!
“That was Cassie, wasn’t it?” Lia asks, in a voice that says she already knows the answer.
“Yes.” I sigh.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was out?” Lia’s voice sounds like a mixture of hurt and pissed off.
I pull her into my arms, closing them around her protectively. “I didn’t know, baby. Aidan told me a month or so ago that her doctor suggested having her come home with him for a day to see how she responded, but he never told me that he’d scheduled it. He usually visits her on the weekends, and to my knowledge, that was all he was doing this time.”
Lia shivers against me and I know it has nothing to do with the temperature in the elevator. “Did you see the way she looked at me? Touched me?”
“Yeah, I did,” I say hoarsely. “I shouldn’t have let you near her. Shit, let’s get out of here.” I lean over to punch the button for the ground floor, thinking it wasn’t a great idea to linger just feet from where Cassie was.
“Is she better now?” Lia asks. “I mean, from the few things you’ve said, I assumed she would never be…out again.”
“It’s supposedly the new medication they have her on. I told you that she’d been responding to it. I mean, I hardly believed it when Aidan first mentioned it, and I just shoved the information aside. Especially when I put Aidan solely in charge of her care and removed Max.”
“Was that really a good idea?” Lia asks delicately. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on there to avoid something like what just happened?”
Hell to the fucking yes, I want to shout, but wait until we’re on the road once again before I answer her. “I needed to avoid as much stress as possible with trying to detox on my own. Having to hear updates on Cassie tends to push me close to the edge. I also didn’t feel it was fair to keep that kind of personal responsibility on Max’s shoulders. Aidan is more than happy to look after Cassie and he’s able to do it far more impartially than I’ll ever be. For the first time in eight years, I thought I might be making a decision concerning her that wasn’t just based on my hate. I wanted to give that much consideration to Aidan.” Hitting the steering wheel with the palm of my hands, I snarl out, “It was a mistake, a fucking huge one. That should have never happened tonight.”
I feel Lia’s hand on my thigh as she tries to calm me. I’m surprised she isn’t freaking out as well. I can’t get the image of Cassie’s hands on our child as she called it her own. It was such a darkly twisted moment that I have to fight the urge to pull over and heave until there is nothing left inside of me. “I’ll call Debra and cancel dinner. We can go home and attempt to regroup.”
I take a deep breath, knowing that my anxiety level directly affects her. I can only imagine how she feels because I want to freak the fuck out myself. I need to be strong and downplay what’s happened if possible. I have no desire at all to socialize tonight, but I’ll do it—for her. I place my hand on top of hers and give it a squeeze of reassurance. “It’s fine, baby. You’ve been looking forward to seeing your friends again and I refuse to let my baggage ruin that.”
“Are you sure?” She sounds skeptical.
“Absolutely. There’s no use in going home to dwell on something we can’t change…at least tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough to get some answers.” Even though I managed to keep my voice level for Lia’s benefit, I’d really like nothing more at the moment than to call Aidan and ask him what in the hell is going on. How dare he fucking bring her back here—to his apartment—for her first home visit without telling me. I also want to call Max and demand that he finds some way to make sure this never happens again. She’s not well—fucking far from it. If Aidan can’t see that, then he has no business managing her care. She’s a danger to all that I hold dear. An icy feeling of déjà vu washes over me and I know with certainty that in order to have a future with Lia, I’ll have to battle a past that threatens to take it all away—again.
Chapter Eleven
Lucian
“How dare you bring her here without telling me,” I bark out before Aidan has made it more than a couple of feet into my office. “Where in the hell is she now?”
He looks guilty but resolute as he says, “She’s back in the facility. She was only here overnight.” Expelling a breath, he sinks into a chair in front of my desk. “I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t something I had planned. When I went to visit her on Friday, her doctor asked if I’d given any more thought to signing her out for a short time. They’re interested in her case since this is experimental medication and she’s doing so well on it. They want to see if she can rejoin society and feel that exposing her in small measures would be helpful to her recovery.”
“We’re not talking about someone with social anxiety here, Aidan. She slit my fucking throat and killed my child! So they give her some new wonder drug and then decide to thrust her back out into the world? The whole thing is dangerous and unethical. How did they know she wouldn’t kill you in your sleep?”
“I locked her bedroom door,” he admits quietly. “It wasn’t that I feared her doing something to me, but I wasn’t confident she wouldn’t wander off somewhere during the night. She’s not used to any type of freedom.”
“You saw how she reacted to Lia. It scared the hell out of me,” I admit. Truth be told, I was distracted all through dinner with Debra and Martin, and then I was awake most of the night with images of Cassie hurting Lia.
Aidan’s face has gone as white as no doubt mine is. “I didn’t k
now what to do. I’m sorry, Luc, everything happened so fast that before I even had time to think, much less remember you were stopping by my apartment for that contract, we were walking in the door. I would have never let that happen if I’d had any idea you were there.”
Shoving back from my desk, I ask impatiently, “Do you have any cigarettes?” That’s about the last thing I want, but smoking a joint while drinking a bottle of whiskey is probably out. I’m just hoping a smoke will help in some way to release the freaking tension choking me.
He looks startled by my abrupt subject change but pulls a pack from his suit pocket. “Um, yeah, right here.”
“Let’s go up to the roof,” I snap as I stride toward him.
He gives me a wary look before standing. “I’m not sure I want to go anywhere that far from the ground with you right now.”
His comment surprises a brief smile from me as I imagine how my demand must have seemed to him. “I either smoke one of those nasty fuckers or I kill someone. You’ll just have to take your chances that the first option will work so that the second won’t be necessary.”
“That’s really comforting,” he mumbles as he follows me out my office door. When we make it up to the roof, Aidan doesn’t waste any time as he hands me a cigarette. “For God’s sake, start puffing,” he encourages as I lean over his lighter.
After a couple of deep inhales and exhales, I grimace in distaste. “If Lia smells this on me, I’m blaming it on you.”
“I thought you were getting by without resorting to smoking,” he says as he releases a cloud of smoke from his mouth.
“Well, I have been until that clusterfuck over the weekend. It’s not going to be a regular occurrence though since I can’t do it around Lia and I don’t intend to spend my life standing in the front of my apartment building smoking. Not to mention, it’s just damn disgusting.”
“Shit works though, doesn’t it?” He smiles faintly as we finish in silence.
When I’ve stubbed mine out, I pick up our earlier conversation. “That can’t happen again, Aidan. I know we’re at cross purposes here, but surely you can see where I’m coming from.”
“Of course, I can,” he says earnestly. “I’d feel the same in your shoes so I do get it, Luc. I would never try to push her on you.”
“What happened after we left Friday night?” I ask out of some type of morbid curiosity.
“She never mentioned anything about you or Lia afterward. She answered basic questions when I asked, but that was about it. It’s almost like dealing with a small child,” he admits wearily. I can see he’s disappointed and I wonder what he was expecting from her visit. Maybe that she would instantly return to the person she was before. If he has any memory at all, then he should hope to hell that she stays as she is now.
“I know there’s not an easy answer that will make both of us happy, but we have to come up with something,” I say as I stare out at the surrounding area. The city I love is once again beginning to feel like a prison thanks to Cassie.
He clears his throat. “Luc, I’m going to take a leave of absence for a while.” I can do nothing but gawk at him for a long moment, stunned into silence.
“Aidan, that’s not necessary, brother. We can figure something out.” A sense of panic fills me at the thought of not having my best friend by my side. We’ve seen each other through every high and low in our lives for years. I don’t want to lose him over this.
He lights another cigarette, but I wave the pack away when he offers it to me. My stomach is in knots now, and I can’t imagine a load of nicotine will help. “We’re all she’s ever had, Luc. Her father bailed out long ago so that just leaves me.” He looks at the sky and laughs humorlessly. “I don’t even know if it’s about being in love with her anymore. Time and tragedy have chipped away at that. Even without those feelings though, I love her and I’ll always remember her as that scrappy little girl who was determined to be one of the guys. That’s who I’m trying to save. I don’t even know the other Cassie.”
His revelation leaves me completely flabbergasted. That’s the first time I’ve heard him concede that his feelings might not be what they were for Cassie. A part of me is relieved because I had started to wonder if he wasn’t somewhat deluded about a possible life with her. “I’m sorry,” I say and mean it. I love Aidan and it tears at something inside me to see him so defeated. “We’re family here. You don’t need to distance yourself to help her.” Even as I say the words, they sound hypocritical even to my ears. Hadn’t I just told him earlier that he needed to keep Cassie away from me?
“I’m going to rent something close to the clinic and give her recovery my full attention for a few months. That way, I’ll be able to let her spend time with me away from there without having to worry about us running into someone she knows. And it’s not just for you; it’s for her as well. I hadn’t given much thought to what it could trigger for her to come home. I don’t think that’s the best idea for her right now. Especially with no one really knowing what could happen when and if her full memory returns.”
“Ah fuck,” I mutter. I can tell by the tone of his voice that he’s already made his decision and I won’t be able to sway him. Still, I give it one last try. “You don’t have to completely relocate to help her. You’ve already been spending a lot of weekends there. Why not just keep it that way. She can still come stay with you wherever you’re staying.”
Finishing his second cigarette, he says, “I’m tired, Luc. I’ve spent years running back and forth to put out fires where needed. I need to take some time off and decide where I go next. I want to be able to say that I gave her a fighting chance to recover. Even if nothing changes, I think I’d be able to move on knowing I really tried.”
“No one could ever say you didn’t try. She’s damn lucky to have you in her life.” I extend a hand to him and then pull him into a hug when he takes it. We both step back after that, attempting to collect ourselves. “Take all the time you need.” I don’t bother to say it aloud, but I’ll continue to pay him just as if he never left. Aidan is a part of Quinn Software just as he is a part of me and I’ll always have his back, no matter what. Even without that, he’s a partner in the company and will never hurt for money. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine him not part of my daily life.
“I’ll finish up things with Kenson by the end of the week, and then I’m going to take off. I’ll still be in town every few weeks to check on my apartment.”
“Let me know if you need anything at all,” I offer sincerely.
“You just take care of Lia.” He smiles. “Sam has already told everyone far and near that there will be a little girl Quinn in the near future.”
With everything that’s happened, I’d forgotten that my best friend didn’t know about our ultrasound results on Friday. Fuck, it’s hard to believe it has only been a few days since then. We walk back downstairs, joking about terrifying future boys who dare to look at my daughter. My heart is heavy though because I feel as if I’m finally living my life while my friend is losing his.
Chapter Twelve
Lia
I’m standing at the door waiting when Lucian gets home. He’d told me earlier about Aidan leaving the company for a while. Even though he tried to make light of it, I knew better. They were brothers for all intents and purposes and were rarely apart for long stretches of time. “Hey,” I say softly as he pushes the door closed behind him. He gives me a questioning look as I take his hand and lead him toward the bedroom. When we get there, he watches me with solemn eyes as I slowly begin to undress him. “I love you,” I say as sprinkle kisses over his newly uncovered chest.
“You too, baby,” he breathes out as he runs his hands up and down my arms. I step back to unbuckle his belt, intent only on his pleasure. “I just want to love you tonight,” he says hoarsely as he scoops me up into his arms and deposits me on the bed. I’m wearing one of my new sundresses, and he growls out his approval as he shoves the material up and studies my b
oy shorts. “I fucking love these,” he says reverently as he cups my sex through the thin material. I don’t even dwell on the fact that my stomach now hangs out well beyond my underwear because I can see and hear how much he wants me.
He slides the shorts down and drapes my legs over his shoulders. I almost swallow my tongue. I know what’s next and my toes curl in anticipation. Lucian was the first man ever to go down on me, and I can’t imagine there is anyone who could hold a candle to him. The things he can do with his fingers, mouth, and tongue are probably illegal in more than a few states. My body bows off the bed at the first swipe of his tongue up my slit. “Luc,” I cry out as my sex clenches. He sets a leisurely pace as if trying to prolong the moment, but when he pushes two fingers into me while sucking on my clit, I go off like a detonating bomb. Since I’ve been pregnant, my orgasm always seems to be right below the surface, a fact that fascinates Lucian. Before I can recover, he pulls back and I feel his cock at my entrance. I whimper, pushing shamelessly forward as I attempt to force him inside me. Instead, he circles my sensitive nub, and I try to jerk away. “Too much,” I moan. “Fuck me, Luc, please.”
That’s all it takes. He loves it when I talk dirty during sex. His big cock powers forward before he stops. “Okay?” he asks before moving again. He’s always worried about hurting the baby or me. I rock into him, giving him the answer he seeks. With a groan, he unleashes. I’m coming again within minutes. He somehow maneuvers until he’s under me on the bed, and I’m sitting astride him. As my stomach has gotten bigger, we’ve moved to positions that keep the weight off me. Oh, how I miss feeling him pressing me into the mattress. But being on top with his hands free to roam is a big slice of heaven as well. His fingers tweak my tender nipples and I feel the tug immediately between my legs. Just as I think I couldn’t possibly come again, he pushes his hips up just as I drop down and I explode. I shriek loud enough to wake the neighbors as Lucian’s wet heat shoots inside of me. I collapse against his chest, and as soon as he’s recovered, he lifts me gently, placing me at his side.