“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”
She looked around the house. “They’ll never go for it. They hate me.”
“They should. If they knew, they’d hate me, too.”
Doubt filled her expression. “So, we don’t tell them?”
“No. We don’t tell them.”
Maybe it was to protect the baby. Maybe it was to protect himself. Zee didn’t know. He only knew offering this fucked-up solution was the only thing he could do.
The only thing that felt right in the midst of everything that had gone all wrong.
Veronica reached up and touched his cheek. “If we do this, you belong to me.”
“No drugs, Veronica. You take care of Mark’s child…take care of yourself…and I promise, I’m yours.”
Night pressed all around. Heart pounding in his throat, he jumped out of the taxi and raced through the hospital doors.
The last seven hours had been agonizing. Getting the text. The lie telling his crew he needed to cut his trip short because his mother needed him. The flight across country that felt like it’d taken a lifetime. The worry and questions and anxiety that he had made the wrong decision.
His entire body vibrated as he took the elevator, his gaze frantic as he stepped off it and explained who he was at the nurses’ station and showed his ID.
He was a mess when he came to the door. Sucking in a steeling breath, he dropped his head, closed his eyes, and whispered a silent prayer.
I’m doing this for you, Mark. I’ll regret what I did to you every fucking day of my life. But I will do this to honor you.
Then Zee pushed open the door. Veronica was asleep. Beside her was one of those hospital bassinets.
Zee kept his footsteps light as he edged forward, his pulse a stampede, so fast he swore he could hear it ricocheting around the room. He lost his breath when he looked down to find the child nestled inside.
Dark, wide eyes blinked up through the muted light, a single arm breaking free as the baby flailed against the confines of the blanket he was wrapped in, the tiniest, sweetest sounds grunting from his mouth.
A swell of emotion crashed over Zee.
Grief and hope.
Grief and hope.
He felt the world freeze when he leaned down and carefully picked up the baby boy. For the first time since he’d lost his brother, Zee felt like he could fully breathe.
He held the child against his chest and silently carried him over to the chair in the corner. He sat down and cradled him in the safety of his arms.
Sitting there, Zee had no questions that remained.
He would do anything—give up anything—for even a second to have this part of his brother.
Zee lifted him up, pressed a kiss to his forehead, and breathed him in.
Zee had loved before.
But never had he loved like this.
Not the way he loved Liam Kennedy.
Zee jerked his head up when the door cracked open. Anthony stuck his head inside before he came the rest of the way inside. Worry crested his brow. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Zee swallowed around the emotion. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in all my life.”
Through the darkness of the bedroom, Zee lay on his back staring into the shadows that danced and played across the ceiling. Searching. Trying to focus.
Straining to hear it.
Desperate to feel it.
The missing strains of music that had once twisted through him like magic and poured from his fingertips. Since the day he’d lost his brother, they’d been silenced.
It seemed insane he spent his life in recording studios and on stages, playing other people’s music. The songs they’d written. While that voice had dried up inside him.
It left a hollow, vacant space that moaned. Loudest in the quiet, lonely hours like this.
A hand fumbled for him in the night. He tried not to cringe, tried to shove off the nausea that gathered like a swilling tide and soaked him through.
Veronica shifted and climbed over him.
“I missed you so much,” she murmured, her hair falling all around her. “Three months is too long, Zee. I can’t stand being here by myself like this.”
He stared at her, wondering how he’d allowed his life to spin out of control.
His words were quiet and raw. “Yeah. The last leg of this tour was long.”
Truth of the matter? It hadn’t been Veronica he’d been missing. It was the two-year-old little boy asleep in the next room. The one thing that brought him back there, time and time again.
“Did you miss me?” It sounded like a plea.
Agitation tightened his muscles, and Zee’s tongue darted out to wet his lips as he struggled to form the lie.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered through his hesitation.
Sickness crawled from his stomach and up his throat, the words dry and pained as he forced them from his tongue. “I can’t do this anymore, Veronica.”
She jerked back an inch. “What can’t you do?”
“This…us. Every time I touch you…I—”
He searched for words that wouldn’t spear her. Hurt her. He came up short. Because there was no chance this situation wasn’t damaging them both.
“Every time I touch you, I feel another piece of myself die.”
Like she’d been struck, she fumbled back. “What?”
Zee sat up, turning his back to her as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and slumped over. He scrubbed both hands over the weariness on his face. “You’ve got to feel this, Veronica. What’s not there. What’s not ever gonna be.”
Her hazardous words slammed him from behind. “I love you, Zee. I’m in love with you.”
Zee rammed his eyes closed against her confession. Like it could guard him or maybe…maybe make him feel an ounce of it. But the only thing he saw behind his lids was regret. “I can’t love you, Veronica. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
She flew off the bed, moving in front of him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we’ve got to end this madness. I can’t keep sneaking into your bed and pretending like it’s real.”
Her head shook and her bottom lip trembled. “I’ll take him, Zee. I’ll take him away from here and you’ll never see him again.”
Zee shot to his feet. “You can’t fuck with him like that, Veronica. He’s your son. He loves me. He needs me.”
“What if I need you, too?”
“You don’t.”
“I do. You leave me….and…and you’ll never see him again. I told you, you belong to me. You belong to me. You promised you’d take care of me.”
Zee took her by the outside of her upper arms and dragged her up close to his face. “That’s the way it’s gonna be? I don’t do your bidding and you hurt both me and him?”
Veronica lifted her chin. “You promised.” Spite filled her eyes. “And I promise, you will always belong to me.”
Chapter Fifty
Alexis
The tears were hot. Suffocating. They wouldn’t stop while Zee sat there and confessed his truth.
Agony. Grief. Regret.
They poured from every word.