The Drazen World: Irrelevant (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Allyn Lesley Page A

that wasn’t worth the fight. Your sister was after my money and was willing to do anything to get her hands on it.” Jon pauses briefly like he’s not sure if he should shut up and say more. Then he gets bold when I remain stunned by his confession. “Please, say something. Anything. Curse at me. Call me a miserable peace of shit.” He slaps his wide chest, covered by a short-sleeved gray T-shirt. “Because I deserve it. I do. I call myself all kinds of names. I wasn’t here to protect you, to watch out for you. I love you so much. And this is how I show you. It hurts when you’re not around.” He doesn’t hide his anguish; his regretful tears splash on the hardwood floor under our feet. “My revenge almost destroyed you. Please, Katie. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me it’s not too late for us.”
    “I forgive you but I still have questions, Jon.” This man isn’t my father who won’t answer me and I’m no longer the woman afraid of her own shadow. “Why still go through with the wedding if you knew Monica wanted to kill you? Was there no other way around that? Was that a legitimate wedding at all?”
    He eases his back onto the couch but settles me between his muscular legs. His hands, the ones that caressed my feet in the hospital when we miscarried, wrap around me, drawing me nearer to him. “There were other ways but I had to see if she’d still marry me. Please know that my mind was so twisted with my revenge that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I knew the police were gathering their evidence against her, and legally she would be handled eventually. But I needed to see how far she would go with her play-acting. If I had to do it over again, I would choose the sister whose sunrise eyes I’ve dreamt about for seventeen years.”
    “I can’t be your mistress again.”
    “I’d never ask that,” he’s quick to tell me. “The marriage was annulled this morning.” Seconds become minutes while his heart thunders under my back. “Marry me, Katie. Marry me because this boy with no name is only who he is when you’re by my side.”

Epilogue

    “One last push. Come on, you can do it.”
    I look ahead into the determined eyes of my doctor and grunt through a contraction despite what I learned in the Lamaze classes Jon dragged me to.
    “Come on, baby. It’s time for us to meet our little boy.”
    I force my head off the pillow, gather the last bit of strength I really don’t feel I have, and bear down, grunting some more, grimacing a lot, as another contraction hardens my stomach. I crush Jon’s fingers, squeezing them, while I cry out in pain as another contraction rips through my body. Then there’s relief. Relief that it’s over.
    I flop backward, tired and weak. Something’s on top of my stomach, and I realize it’s my son, but there’s only silence from him. No movements. No cries.
    “Jon.” Tears spill from my eyes as I realize that I’ve birthed another dead baby. “Jon.” I lift up my head just as my baby is whisked off my stomach by a nurse. I can only hear the sounds of fast walking. I still don’t hear the usual newborn cries. “Jon. What’s going on?”
    His fingers tighten around mine in a near bone-crushing grip. Neither of us says anything, but I feel his concern. I hear his unstated worries.
    Not another loss. I can’t take it. I won’t survive this one. Just then, I hear the sweet sound of a newborn’s cries echoing throughout the birthing room.
    “He’s all right, Katie. Our son is okay.” He takes our bundled baby who is pressed into his waiting hands.
    “What about his toes and fingers?”
    “See for yourself.”
    As soon as the tiny body settles against my heart, he stops squirming. Then I remember the made-up story I used to tell myself about my own birth. I do what my mother didn’t get the chance to do. I count his ten toes and kiss his ten fingers. I marvel at the copper tuft of hair so like his father’s and the eyes that, at first glance, appear hazel