The sharpness scared me more than anything, and I could no longer tell what was me, what was Bumper, and what was the sorrow.
It wasn’t worth the risk to run. I didn’t want to threaten what was already in such danger.
I waited, tears on my cheeks, as the minutes passed. I didn’t know what else to do, how else to make the pain stop. My voice wavered as I sang a little song to the baby.
It didn’t seem to help.
I repeated the second verse of the gentle nursery rhyme my mom used to sing to me when I was young. The door opened.
I expected Nicholas.
Max loomed instead.
Everything about him turned dark and rough. He stood as an unrecognizable blur of my own tears and his forlorn grief.
He waited before me, but I didn’t stop my song, not even to curse him, to scream for him to leave me alone.
My voice weakened over the melody as I forgot the words and repeated lines I already sang. Twice I hummed, looping over the song. My hands cradled my tummy.
“What are you doing?” Max asked.
The first real words he spoke to me, and he barked them. As though Max had no idea how to hold a real conversation. How to be a gentle man. How to treat the one he hurt the most.
Just like he had warned so many times in the past.
Max refused to look at me. I didn’t dishonor my brothers by averting my gaze, no matter how much I needed a moment away from the darkness.
I hated to answer him.
I hated more the rage swelling in me. It wasn’t good for me or Bumper.
“Bumper usually bumps more than this,” I said. “Stress is bad for the baby, and...she hasn’t kicked for a long time. Singing is supposed to be soothing since she can hear my voice.”
“Did you call Nick?”
As if he deserved to be with me. I had no one else to call. No one else who would understand why I crumbled in such grief.
“He’s coming with the doctor. He was stuck in traffic.”
“Okay.”
I said nothing, resuming the song, murmuring over the words I forgot and replacing them with silly rhymes and promises of love and warmth and everything I had lost since the nightmare began.
Since I met the Bennetts.
Since I lost my family.
Since…ever.
Max swore. He wove his hand through his hair, but without making a fist and slamming someone’s skull, he had no idea how to react to those who needed a kind word. Violence was a natural to Max as cruelty to Darius and mourning to me.
I said nothing. Only sang.
Just waited for that little kick that would tell me everything would be okay.
“Sarah…” Max dropped to his knees. His eyes dulled, dark and expressionless. I didn’t recognize him anymore. I didn’t want to. “I didn’t know it was their plane.”
I shook my head and sang. Hearing excuses would only hurt us more. Nothing he said would bring back Josiah or Mike, and that made him worthless to me.
“My father said he had a job for me. I didn’t ask. I never asked. I just did it.” His breathing labored. “Do you understand why?”
I sang louder. I’d never understand anything about the Bennetts. I wouldn’t want to try anymore.
“I wanted my Dad’s respect, and I never got it. It didn’t matter that he was a monster. Or that he asked me to hurt people who opposed him. He was my father. That meant something to me. I wanted to make him proud, and he never gave me that chance. You know how that feels.”
It wasn’t the same as me and Dad. Max couldn’t equate it. Not when Dad shoved me away from the company and hid my asthma, and Darius Bennett forced his crippled middle son to hurt and murder.
“Sarah, I had no fucking idea that was your brothers’ plane.”
“And yet you still did it?”
Max looked away. Question answered.
“You’re a monster.” I whispered before singing once more.
“I didn’t…fuck, Sarah. I couldn’t tell you. Not after I saw how much you endured to protect your father’s name. I was scared of how you’d react.”
Foolishly. Recklessly. I misdirected my anger then. I sacrificed my life, my body, for a father who never cared for me, never trusted me.
But Josiah and Mike did trust me.
And they knew what was likely to happen to them. That’s why I was named in their trust. They picked me to inherit the Bennett shares if they died.
And what did I do with that gift?
I betrayed my own family. I caused more destruction to our name than if Darius had taken a match to our cornfields. I gave them everything.
I gave them Bumper.
I just needed her to kick.
Just one little bump in exchange for another silly verse of the song, and my heart would stop breaking.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” Max whispered. “I regret every fucking pain I’ve caused you. The beatings. The rape. The grief. I knew the instant I met you the mistake I made. I fucking begged Nicholas to never tell you the truth. But we couldn’t hide it. And now everything is so…”
He reached for me. His hand trembled over the baby.
He hadn’t voluntarily touched me for months. Tears streamed over his cheeks, silent and wet. His hand stretched over the entirety of my tummy, and the tattoos on his forearms flexed and tightened as he broke down, hiding his eyes and letting the sobs wrack his shoulders.
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
I sang because I didn’t know what else to do. My own tears brushed my cheeks.
Was this how it would always be? Would this blistering agony always punish us?
I loved these men, and I hated these men, and yet I froze as I watched a man as strong, as intimidating as Max weep over the bump of an unborn child.
I envied my baby’s innocence, and I’d do anything to keep her that way. Safe and untouched by this heartache. I had the money, the power, and the name to give this child anything she could ever dream.
But I couldn’t give her family.
Not if there was none to give.
My song faded as my tears choked over the melody, and we hurt together in grieving silence.
I just needed a kick.
Why wouldn’t she kick?
Max curled onto the sofa. He didn’t ask, only moved, settling in my lap. And as much as I longed to push him away, to hit him, to scream at him, his deep baritone picked up the same nursery rhyme I could no longer remember.
Max sang to the baby.
And his heartfelt, perfect melody strengthened with every passing moment. I wept, holding him close to my tummy.
His words warmed over my skin, and I let my fingers dance through his hair, over his shoulders, closer to me than he’d been in weeks.
Too little, too late.
He came to apologize when he should have said goodbye.
His song filled the nursery. I never knew he sang so well. I doubted he did either. Every note, every soulful beat emerged from a dark, lost place within him. I longed to search more of that hidden secret. It might have explained more, might have protected us from the lies and pain, might have promised redemption in a man I once trusted and understood.
He sang so beautifully, so perfectly.
The thud kicked right near Max’s hand.
The kick shocked us both. More tears.
Relief.
Max sang and sang until his words hollowed into nonsense. Only a few minutes passed, but the hum, the deepness of his melody, delighted Bumper. She kicked and wiggled, fluttered and squirmed, and bumped.
“Sarah.” Max’s song ended in a pained and ragged gasp. “Sarah, I gotta know.”
What was there to tell? To say? I refused.
“Sarah, please. Tell me you understand.”
Who could understand this? Who could endure this much misery and sorrow and even think to look in the eyes of the man who caused it all?
“Tell me you hear me. That you know I’m sorry.”
I heard him. It didn’t make a difference. It couldn’t.
Max clenched his jaw, his eyes shut. “Tell me you’ll forgive me.”
“No.”
He shuddered. “Tell me there’s a chance.”
Bumper kicked again. I rubbed over where she rested, where I needed her to stay safe and protected.