Free Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) by Angel Payne Page A

back up—with his jaw defined by a full clench. “Because she had to stop drinking.”
    His bitter bite on the last word has the same effect on my psyche. “Oh,” I stammer. “I—I see.” In reality, I am not certain I do—perhaps I have overplayed his vehemence?—though the tension through every muscle of his body is unlike any I have seen before, even when he confronted the thugs in Bryant Park who tried assaulting me. In the park, he was furious, clenched…empowered. Right now, he is helpless, tight…
    Haunted.
    He labors through another dark huff. “Wasn’t long after that, I gave in to an epiphany of my own.” Presses his lips into that murder confession grimace again. “I wasn’t sure I could handle her…or even knew her…without all of it.”
    “Without all of…” I feel my features tighten. “Without the drinking ?”
    He flinches as if I’ve stabbed him—though his eyes, instead of thick with pain, are hollow with loss. He has been to this space before, at least in his soul. But if this is the first time he has ever done it verbally…
    I flinch now too.
    Suddenly, the locked door at the bottom of the stairs makes total sense. He did not want to do this. Hated even thinking about it. But he is doing it now…for me. With me.
    I reach toward him, filled with gratitude.
    He whirls from me, shrinking in shame.
    Though it tears me apart, I respect his move. Let him hold on to it.
    For now.
    “I…hadn’t realized.” He grunts it with barely any volume. “How much booze she’d been getting down every day. Sneaking it in…even on days when I was with her all the time. I just thought she had shifting moods…” His hand digs raggedly through his hair. “ Dammit . I was such an idiot.”
    “No,” I rasp. “No, Cassian. She was probably just that dev—” Devious is definitely not the best word choice right now. “Just that smooth.”
    His hand fists against his nape. “When her ‘morning sickness’ developed into a fever and strange visions, I insisted we go to the doctor. He was the one who told me she was going through alcohol DTs. Nash helped me get her into a confidential rehab program, specific for pregnant women…but she checked herself out after two weeks. She said she was better. Focused. That the only thing that mattered to her was the baby.”
    “What did you do?”
    “The only thing I could.” He releases the fist, though the hard ropes of his shoulders still strain against his shirt. “I believed her. Trusted that she’d really hit her bottom in that facility, and was ready to climb back up for the sake of our family.”
    “Hit her…bottom.” Once more I echo him in a stutter, but it seems the only sane way to properly process this. Like the night I first learned about Lily and her significance in his life, my gut has been hollowed out then kicked in—by a horse named shock.
    He was going to be a father.
    Sweet Creator.
    What if he still is one?
    “Everyone in recovery has a different bottom. And regrettably, nobody knows what theirs is…until they’ve hit it.”
    He turns back around, stiffly and slowly, though his gaze sharpens once seeing me again. I cannot even think about hiding all my feelings. There are too many now, clamoring on top of each other.
    “And you thought Lily had gotten to hers,” I finally rasp. “But she started drinking again?”
    Something passes over his face. Not a shadow. Something darker. “No.”
    Double take. “No?”
    “That was when she started taking the drugs.”
    *
    Cassian
    “By the Creator.”
    I re-steel my nerves as the words practically gasp from her—because I know what’s going to come next. After the astonishment, there’ll be the sap and the sympathy. The fucking pity. The look I have hated on anyone’s face who knows this story. The expression I haven’t even thought of on hers—because just thinking of it there is enough to set off a nuclear bomb in my blood.
    I can’t let it happen.
    I