Page 39 of Wild Heart
“Marcos, baby?”
I took the stairs two at a time, boots striking the iron steps with a dull pound. There was a knock at my chest, one that had my nails biting into the skin of my palms. The tick in my jaw tugged at my throat, and though my skin warmed with the kind of awareness that told me he was close, the part of me that recognized trouble was vibrating with a warning.
An urgency bled into me then, and the pace I’d kept quickened by a second or two. The door to the bedroom was wide open, and like the rest of the house, it was drowning in the murkiness I grew up in—one that was way too fucking good for my baby.
The weight it carried was enough to bring a weaker man to the ground, and though my baby wasn’t weak, that was where I found him.
In the far corner of the bedroom, he sat, knees pulled tight to his chest. His shoulders were rounded, chin low and fingers rigid where they held tight to one another.
Was he… asleep?
No.
The eyes I loved so fucking much were wide open, staring down at the carpet in a catatonic kind of way. It sent a wave of unease rolling down my spine. My scalp tightened, and I lowered myself to the ground.
Reaching for his face, I held it between two palms, brushing the pads of my thumbs over his cheekbones.
“Hey, butterfly.”
My voice seemed to touch him in a way my hands couldn’t, and I watched as he blinked, dragging his eyes away from the carpet. A noise left him when we made eye contact, and I saw his throat bob right before he whispered, “Papa.”
“What are you doing in the dark, Solnyshko?”
“Looking for you.”
Christ.
Bringing our foreheads together, I exhaled. His hands shook as they lifted, and he placed them across my jaw like he always did, tugging at the short hairs of my beard.
His voice was raw, each punch of his breath sounding more hoarse than the last.
“Have you been screaming?” I asked him, and his nod hurt worse than the bullet that brought us together.
“You weren’t waiting for me when I came,” he said. “You always wait for me.”
“Baby.”
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I know I promised I’d be fine, but then I walked in here, alone, and I swear to God something inside of me withered and died.”
Heownedme.
Fucking tore my half-beating heart straight out of my chest and ran away with it. Now here he was, uttering a sentence so broken, it broke me too.
Hands on his hips, I tugged, coaxing him into my lap. He all but threw himself at me, shoving his nose in my neck. My shirt pulled when he wound his fingers into the fabric and rubbed it beneath the pad of his thumb.
“He touched me.”
I went rigid. “Who touched you?”
“My father.”
I’ll kill him.
Luis Cabrera had dragged a new kind of loathing out of me, one that felt like dull knives in my gut. He was a fucking snake, but all his moves were rooted in fear, and he used my baby boy like prey for his panic.
“He ruined them! He clapped me on the chest, and now they’re ruined.”
I placed a finger under his chin. “What’s ruined, baby?”
