"It took me a while to get it.  Adelaide threw herself in my way.  But when I finally did, I found Renee on my doorstep, beaten bloody.  I brought her inside.  I wanted to call the police, an ambulance.  I wanted to help her, I swear, but she was in active labor, and I just reacted, helped her deliver the baby."  He pointed at me and sneered.  "And Renee died before I could ever make that phone call."     

He sighed and started looking around for his drink again. 

"Finish the story," Dante ordered him. 

"You can guess the rest.  I wanted to call the police.  I wanted to have Jethro fucking drawn and quartered, but there was Adelaide.  She told me that if I called the police she'd say I beat her, and that she'd watched me beat Renee to death, too.  You know how she fucking is.  She had her proof all lined up.  It was a setup, all of it.  All so I wouldn't divorce her.  I was a wreck.  A sad, terrified wreck.  I agreed to everything she asked, even got rid of the body, took it where she told me.  Did everything, everything she said.  A fucking life sentence with that cunt.  Then she took the baby and left.  I didn't even know what she was going to do with it . . . with you.  But I can't say I was even slightly surprised when I found out you ended up in a dumpster."

I thought, no, I knew, that I couldn't have held my own weight at that point.  I was literally floored. 

Dante was all that kept me upright.

It was sad, but a part of me, a big part, was relieved to hear the tragic story.  At least she hadn't abandoned me on purpose.  Maybe someone had wanted me.  Maybe my mother would have kept me if she'd had a choice. 

Leo was still Leo, but I asked him anyway.  I needed to know.  "Did she want me?  Was she going to keep me?" 

He was looking around for his drink again, but he answered quickly and absently enough for me to think it was the truth.  "Oh yeah.  She was real excited about you.  She was a bit impulsive, but I think she'd have been a good mother.  Wasn't meant to be, though.  Obviously." 

We left soon after that.  I was feeling numb but somehow okay as Bastian walked us out. 

I faced him when Dante went to turn in his valet ticket.

"We can never thank you enough for doing this, Bastian," I said sincerely. 

He touched my face.  "Be happy with him.  That's my thank you."  He smiled and it was sad.  "It could've been us.  If you hadn't met him first, it may well have been."

I couldn't have agreed or disagreed with him, because I simply didn't know.  My heart hadn't belonged to me since I was ten and a beautiful blond-haired boy had shown me that I wasn't alone in the world.  I couldn't imagine another life than that, but I nodded solemnly at Bastian, because it seemed to be what he wanted, and he deserved that.   

"Did you always know?" I asked Dante on the drive home.  "That Bastian had feelings for me."

"Yes," he uttered succinctly.  "Imagine if you had a friend, or a sister, that had feelings for me, and you knew it every time you saw them.  It has not made things peaceful between us."   

"Yeah, I get it.  Believe me.  I get it.  It's just so sad.  Especially now.  God.  Tiffany?" 

"We'll fix it.  One thing at a time, though.  He and I will figure out something.  Tiffany is conniving and ruthless.  She feels no guilt, and she'd do anything to get what she wants.  Like my mother.  But she's not that smart.  Or complicated.  She's simple.  She thinks she's good at this game, but she never sees the whole board.  Sooner or later, Bastian and I will find her weakness and exploit it."

"God, you two are scary enough on your own.  Put you together . . . "

He grinned and it was bloodthirsty.  "Yes.  We work well together.  As Adelaide is about to find out."

He sent me a sidelong glance, his hand going to my knee.  "Don't you feel like a weight's been lifted off you?  We can live our lives again.  Scarlett, we're free."

I couldn't quite meet his eyes. 

It's time, I thought.  I have to come clean now. 

Because I didn't have one excuse to keep it from him any longer. 

CHAPTER FORTY

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life.  It goes on." 

~Robert Frost

PAST

SCARLETT

I'd never felt so utterly hopeless in my life. 

I'm not even sure how I ended up on a park bench, watching a playground full of strange children, bawling my eyes out like the world was ending.

The truth was, my world had been ending for months now, crumbling to pieces around me, and I'd just now received the last blow, the final bit of information that I absolutely, emphatically, could not handle.

It was one month to the day I'd last spoken to Dante.  Since I'd destroyed us both over the phone, since I'd used Nate to make Dante bleed, to make him suffer and then callously broken up with him as soon as I was done.

Four months since I took antibiotics while on birth control and then completely forgotten that the one canceled out the other.    

I could barely support myself.  How the hell was I going to be responsible for someone else?

Not just someone else.  A child.    

A child without a father.  A child whose father had stated, plain as day that he did not want its mother so much as calling him anymore.