Page 112 of Discretion at Its Finest

“Reid, I can’t leave them. I can’t—”

“And I’m not asking you to.”His voice dropped into something painful. It hurt me to hear the words.“I’m telling you: you can’t follow me.”

My heart felt like it was shattering. “You’re leaving,” I whispered. “You’re being moved somewhere no one can reach. You’re disappearing. I—I can’t lose you too.”

“Vieve…”The word trembled on his tongue, the first sign he was breaking too. “You keep saying you’ll come with me,”he murmured.“But where I’m going? You can’t follow. Not as a mother. Not as a woman with something left in her life.”

“I don’t care,” I cried. “I don’t care where it is, I don’t care how far—”

“I do. I care,”he said, even quieter.“I won’t let you follow me to the end of the earth, Genevieve. Not when you’d leave your world behind.”My vision blurred again.“I want you to live and have the life you were supposed to have before all of this. I don’t want you trading your children, your identity, your entire world just to stand beside me in the dark.”

I shook my head violently, whispering, “But this time… this time I want to choose you.”

“And I can’t let you,”he said softly. “You choosing me means losing everything else. And I won’t be the man who asks that of you.”

“Reid…”

“Vieve,”he murmured,“if you follow me now, you don’t get to come back.”My chest pulled tight.“You understand that, don’t you? If you leave, you lose Eugene. You lose the baby. You lose every tie that keeps you protected in that world. You lose the last pieces of the life you built.”

My breath shuddered out of me. “I don’t care.”

“You do,”he countered.“We both know you do.”

“But I love you,” I whispered, because I didn’t know what else was left. “I love you and I can’t lose you again.”

There was a pause on the end of the line as I waited to hear him speak, to say something that would make this better and agree to let me follow him into the dark. I waited desperately to hear him say that he loved me too.

But he didn’t tell me that.

“I know,”he said finally.“But I am not letting you destroy your life for mine.”

And the line went dead. The silence that followed was so loud it was almost deafening. I stared at the phone long after the call ended, my breath trembling, my fingers numb around the devicelike my body hadn’t caught up to the fact that he wasn’t there anymore.

Slowly… I lowered the phone into my lap. My head dropped back against the door, a broken sound scraping out of me before I could stop it.

I didn’t even hear the soft rustle of blankets.

Just a tiny, sleepy voice: “…Mommy?”

My head snapped up.

Eugene was standing at the edge of his bed, curls flattened on one side, eyes half-closed, cheeks warm and flushed from sleep. He swayed a little, rubbing his eye with his fist, and before I could speak, he padded across the rug and climbed straight into my lap just like he’d been doing all his life.

He curled against me, small arms wrapping around my frame, his cheek pressing into my neck.

“You okay, Mom?” he mumbled, words slurred with exhaustion, breath warm against my skin.

My throat closed as I pressed a hand to his back, almost afraid I’d break him with how tightly I wanted to hold him.

“I’m okay, Lovebug,” I whispered, kissing the top of his head. “Don’t worry about Mom.”

My tears slipped silently, falling into his hair as I held him, rocking gently without even realizing it.

I looked at his peaceful face.

My son.

My whole world.