Bleeding Heart (22 page)

Authors: Alannah Carbonneau

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Erotica, #Romantic Erotica

BOOK: Bleeding Heart

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I opened my mouth to argue, but I closed it. Arguing with Calix was overwhelming and pointless. Right now, I just didn’t have it in me. Every fiber of my being was filled with sorrow. Every step I moved away from Calix and toward the bed - our bed - made my chest feel so tight, I feared I was suffocating.

I was so terribly hurt by him.

Reaching out for the blanket on the bed, I thought about slipping beneath the sheets - but then I decided against it as I pulled the entire duvet off the bed, cocooned my body in the soft, Calix scented material, and curled on the bed to cry myself to sleep.

Chapter 20

I fell into sleep only to startle awake with tears in my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I simply began crying every time I woke, or if I continued to cry while I was sleeping. All I knew, was that even though I’d slept, the pain was still there - still strong. Still debilitating.

I knew Calix was beside me on the bed - awake, because every time I opened my eyes, he shifted on the bed behind me. His hand was on my hip now and I could feel his warmth through the blanket. I wanted to tell him to take his hand away, but I couldn’t seem to manage the strength. In spite of all he’d done to me - the thought of losing his touch was terrifyingly painful. It didn’t seem to mater that Calix was the reason for my pain, that he had manipulated me in the worst of ways, or that he’d destroyed everything we’d built - I couldn’t seem to find the will within to shut him out of my heart the way I knew I should.

That was when I realized that love isn’t conditional.

Love isn’t only patient and kind - but it’s messy and often mean. Love is afraid and love is confident. Love is passionate and blind. Love is everything all at once - it’s power and irrationality - it’s beauty and fear. Love is anything and everything but conditional. True love will find some form of light to ignite the darkness.

And right now, that light was inside of me. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t bright - but it was there. It was a little piece of Calix and a little piece of me. It was us. Our child was our love - our child was the light we needed to ignite the dark.

And then I fell into sleep.

***

Gasping, I swallowed my tears as I woke again for the billionth time tonight. I heard Calix take in a sharp, pained breath, and then I heard his voice. “Nova, I can’t just sit here.”

I held my breath, fighting my sobs.

“Tell me what to do, baby.” He whispered, his body was so close to mine. “Tell me how to make this better.”

I didn’t have instructions for him. I didn’t know how to make this better. What he had done was wrong, but the more I thought about that, the more I realized that wrong was just who Calix was. So much wrong had been done to him in his life that somewhere along the line, wrong had become the only path Calix knew how to take.

Through shaky breaths, I asked. “Why tell me?”

“What?”

“Why tell me what you did?” I asked. “Why not tell me I was the odd percent that birth control didn’t work on? I don’t understand why you told me.”

Calix sighed. “That was my original plan. I never intended to tell you.”

“Then why?”

“Because I love you. Because you have a beautiful, bleeding heart.” He said quietly. “I love you in a way I’ve never loved any other. I don’t know how to show you, Nova. I don’t know how to keep you. But I do know that I want normal with you. I want this child and I want you and I want us to be a family.”

I cried harder and Calix made a strangled noise of agony in the back of his throat as he moved over the bed.

“Let me hold you, love.” He begged. “Please let me hold you.”

“I,” The word
can’t
lodged in my throat and Calix took that as answer enough to scoop me up in his arms. I cried harder, sobbing into his chest where every line was so familiar to me. His scent flooded my senses and again, I cried even harder.

It was in that moment that all hell broke loose. The door of our bedroom swung open and a dark figure appeared. Suddenly, I could hear banging and grunting in the background. And then I heard a gunshot and my body froze as Calix tensed beneath me. For a moment, time froze and then Calix snapped into motion. He lifted me from his body to place me on the bed before opening the side of his nightstand where a gun appeared in his hand.

My blood turned to ice.

The man who’d appeared in our bedroom lifted his hand to whip his mask from his face and again, I felt my heart thunder in my chest as I stared into the face of my father.

“Get over here, Nova.” He commanded - but I couldn’t move.

Calix lifted his gun and my father settled his on Calix.

“She’s not going anywhere with you, Mark.”

“She is my daughter.” My father spoke slowly in his commanding tone. “If I have to kill you, Calix, I will. But Nova is coming home with me.”

At my father’s words, I felt my body jolt into motion and before I knew it, I’d whipped from the blankets to run across the room between the two men - one my father and one my lover. Both armed.

I commanded. “Enough. Both of you!”

My father demanded. “What are you doing, Nova?”

I spun to face my father. “I won’t let you hurt him, dad. You’ve caused Calix enough pain, I won’t allow you to hurt him anymore.”

“This man kidnapped you from your bed, Nova.” My father spoke diplomatically. There was little emotion in his tone apart from irritation. He was irritated with my senselessness, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. “Why are you protecting him?”

“Calix is my husband.” I said sternly. “I love him.”

“You’re sick, Nova.” My father replied tightly. “You have a condition called Stockholm syndrome. Come with me and I will get you the help you need.”

“I don’t need help!” I said shrilly when the two men refused to lower their weapons. “I need you to stop fighting!”

“Your mother is losing her mind with worry, Nova.” Those words made me whip to face my father and I watched his eyes light with determination at the knowledge that he’d affected me. “Your sisters are terrified. Amy isn’t sleeping and Jaylah blames herself for not hearing the scuffle.”

“What?” I gasped. “Why would she blame herself?”

“Her bedroom is next to yours, Nova.” I felt tears fill my eyes again and my father continued. “Step out of the way so I can end this here and now.”

Those words snapped me back into the here and now like the painful bite of an elastic band on my wrist. “I don’t want this ended here and now.”

“You want to stay here with him?” My father asked incredulously, his gun still drawn.

“I love him.”

“You have Stockholm, Nova. I know you don’t feel it now, but you will go back to the life you knew when you are finally away from him.”

“I don’t want to go back to that life, dad.”

“Nova.”

Just then, I heard a clink on the floor. And I looked to Calix in time to see him kick his gun toward my father. “I love your daughter, Mark. I won’t force her to remain with me and I won’t hurt you, because I promised her I wouldn’t.”

My mind came rushing back to Calix vowing that if I gave him a child, he wouldn’t hold onto his revenge toward my father. And I felt my heart break. My captor, husband, and lover was now unarmed in my father’s presence. Still, he hadn’t lowered his gun from Calix. I watched as my father lifted a radio looking device from the chest of his suit.

He spoke. “Ready.”

With only one word spoken, another four men burst through the open door of the bedroom. Their booted feet pounded against the wood floor, sending vibrations through my body. I felt my muscles tense as I turned to stand myself in front of Calix, but an arm around my waist restrained me and I watched, in slow motion, as Calix was forced to his knees. His eyes never left me as my father carted me from the room and I cried.

“Calix!” I screamed his name and my agony pierced the air. “Calix! Oh God, please don’t hurt him!” I begged the men as I watched a fist connect with the side of his face and then another. He did nothing. The strong, beautiful man I loved - the father of my child - did nothing to defend himself against my father’s men. My eyes found his crystal blues before I was forced from the room and I screamed. “I love you, Calix! I don’t want to live without you!” I sobbed another scream. “Please fight!”

I thrashed and cried in my father’s arms as he carried me through the halls of the place I had come to know as home. When he turned into the entrance and I saw a body of a man on the floor with blood staining the marble, I lost it. My fight turned frantic and my screams were a blended mix of agony and terror. I kicked my feet, bit down on my father’s arm, scratched and flailed, all the while screaming.

Nothing I did seemed to affect my father - and for the first time - I thought that maybe Calix was never the monster. The monster was my father. Calix was only a repercussion of his actions. I was a repercussion.

I saw a large black SUV in the drive and I knew it was my fathers. The panic flared anew and I sobbed my plea. “Please don’t kill him. Please don’t kill him. Please,” I whispered. “I’m pregnant.”

My father stilled and I knew, I’d said the one thing that could alter everything. Only, I didn’t know if my father would be so enraged by the news, he’d demand Calix’s life be ended now - or if he would allow him to live for the very reason that I would die without him.

So I spoke again, frantically - quickly. “I love him. We planned it, dad. We wanted this baby. I love him. I want a family with him. Don’t hurt him.”

“Enough, Nova.” He started walking again toward the daunting SUV.

I panicked all over again. “Let me go!” I’d never screamed words so loud in my life. They echoed through the mountains over the lake and I swear, they rattled the very moon. “I love him!”

Just then, the SUV door opened and a sharp looking woman stepped out. She held a syringe in one hand and my father tightened his hold on me as I began struggling harder, more viciously. And then the woman was there, the syringe pushed deep into my arm and I felt my body going slack as I begged through sobs.

“I love him. Calix, I love you. I love you.”

My world turned dark.

Authors Note

This is to you - the reader. I’d like to thank you for taking a chance on my writing, my stories, my novels - and since you’ve made it to the end of book two, I’m going to assume (hopefully) that you enjoyed the time you lost yourself to this world! I love receiving messages from readers, so if you ever want to contact me for questions or chat - feel FREE! I’ve met some amazing people who I now call good friends through a message over a book! (You know who you are - Ashley). So, thank you for your support! It means the world to us writers!

Other Books By Alannah Carbonneau

Adult Romance

Enraptured

Enthralled

All Good Things

All Good Things Exposed

All Good Things Absolved

Broken Beginnings

Captured Miracle

Counting Stars (A Donnelley Brother Novel - Book One)

Young Adult Romance

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