“Here!” I huff, throwing my mounds of papers that I had been holding into Diesel’s lap.

I’m standing outside his garage. He’s on a creeper, having just rolled out from under his truck as I approached. His eyes instantly got intense and narrowed on me. It was then I knew that I wasn’t the same person that I used to be.

I’m not proud of it, definitely not. But, there was a time when I didn’t like who I was. The old Rory would have taken his shit—would have taken everything he dished out. The old Rory was used to being trapped. The thing is that Noah messed up. He showed me something good, something I’d never had before and something I really wanted. He took it away once and it nearly killed me. He talked me into coming back and now here he was ripping it away from me again. The last two days, I let the blows he delivered fester until I thought they would kill me. They didn’t, I’m still standing. Slowly I switched from pain to anger. I needed some way to channel that. So, I’ve been researching.

“What’s this?” Noah asks, looking at the papers.

“Research as to why you’re an idiot,” I huff.

“What?” he asks, his voice going tight.

“I researched all of the reasons why vasectomies fail!”

He doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me and that makes me nervous, but I push through.

“Did you hear what I said? Fail!”

“Be hard not to hear you,” he says. “You’re screaming.”

I do my best not to let his face, his tone, and his words fluster me. He wants to keep being a jerk, despite me handing him proof… Whatever.

“Okay then, to go forward,” I start, getting so nervous that it’s about to overcome my anger and I have the strangest urge to run back home. I don’t—but I really want to. “Did you know that you have live sperm three months—or sometimes longer depending on how often you… you know… after a vasectomy?

“How many times?”

“How many times you’ve ejaculated!” I huff.

“How many times is that?” he asks bored.

“It’s different, near as I can tell but it has to be after three months and sometimes ten! You have to have ejaculated at least like… twenty times,” I tell him, my mind sifting through my research and hope I’m getting it right. I think I’m hitting all the high points, but he’s making me nervous.

“Been two years, Rory and a fuck of a lot more than twenty times. You and I were more than the twenty times. I probably ejaculated in your mouth more than twenty times because you’re a greedy bitch who likes having cock in your mouth. I just didn’t realize it was any cock,” he says delivering a blow that hits so hard I don’t think I’ll ever recover from it.

Ever.

I think this is the point. This is where it is not about salvaging my relationship with Noah. This is the part where it becomes trying to make him understand he’s going to be a father. No woman needs to be with a mean man. I should know because for years of my life I was surrounded by mean men. They tried to destroy me. I don’t want to invite that back into my life, especially when this particular man is a man that I let into my heart.

“Fine. Then, you’re looking at number two-thousand, Noah.”

He says nothing.

“I’m number two-thousand!” I tell him again.

“Finish all you have to say, Rory,” he sighs. “Then, leave.”

Another blow delivered. Noah keeps racking up the points in some kind of twisted game and this was definitely another point. This one wasn’t as powerful as the last, but it still was delivered and struck enough to cause more pain.

It counts.

“One in two-thousand vasectomies fail. Did you know that?”

“That would make me number two-thousand, not you, Rory.”

“Oh… right… whatever. I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying. My vasectomy didn’t fail. There was a long line of women before you and not one of them pregnant.”

“I—”

“I went back to the doctor to confirm any sperm in my ejaculation—as you put it—were dead. There’s no miracle pregnancy here, Rory. Your research is useless. If you are really pregnant—”

“I am,” I whisper, my hand going around my stomach in comfort. Comfort for me, comfort for the child that will one day live in a world where it is hated by his father.

“Then, the only thing you need to know is that there’s a one hundred percent chance that I’m not the father.”

I swallow.

“My research shows that sometimes a man can intermittently produce active sperm after a vasectomy.”

“Did a true medical professional state this?” he asks, calmly.

My mind drifts over the pages and pages of data that I read and I shake my head no. I read about ten cases where the women became pregnant and the professionals said it wasn’t possible. Each of those cases but one, the mother had to take a DNA test to prove it to the father.

“Then, you need to leave.”

“You’re not even willing to be seen? To be tested?” I whisper.

“There’s no point,” he says and I can’t wrap my mind around his answer.

“You’re that positive I’m lying?”

“Yes,” he answers and that’s a different kind of blow, but a blow nonetheless. And, yes…it hurts.

“Nothing we shared means anything to you, does it, Noah?” I ask, but I don’t really expect an answer. I turn away from him, because suddenly the man I loved with the beautiful lion-maned hair is painful to see.

“It did. It could again,” he says, surprising me, but I’m more than done—so, I don’t turn around.

“You could get an abortion,” he responds.

That one word…. That’s not a blow at all. That’s a killing hit. It strikes so powerful that I stumble because my knees buckle. It causes my body to tremble and the blood flowing through my veins to freeze. That one word causes a pain so intense, so white hot that I know, know in a way that I know the sky is blue, that I will never recover from it.

Never.

Killing. Hit.

“Rory,” he says, but I ignore him.

Tears are silently pouring from my eyes. I can’t stop them. The pain and misery inside of me is so thick, so intense that I can’t breathe. I feel like I might die before I even make it to my door.

“Rory!” Noah growls, again.

I didn’t know it, had no realization that he had followed me. My hand is on the doorknob, it’s turning it right as Noah wraps his hand around my free wrist and pulls to make me look at him. I yank my arm free, but I do turn to the side to look at the man who just destroyed me. His face is blurred through the river of pain leaking from my eyes, but I see him. I close my eyes at the wave of pain that threatens to overtake me.

I thought he was beautiful. I thought he was mine. I never learn. I’m not made for beauty in this world. I’m not made for love.

“Wha…t,” I whisper, the word coming out as broken as I feel inside.

“You can’t explain…” he starts, and then stops. “There’s no way you can make me believe you. You’ve been lying to me from the beginning,” he says, almost as if he’s trying to justify his cruelness… but there’s no way to justify it—even if I have been lying to him from the beginning.

Which I haven’t.

“Whatever,” I respond in the same dead, broken whisper as before. I open my door and Noah is still standing there beside me, not leaving. It doesn’t matter anymore, nothing about Noah matters anymore.

“What’s your real name, Rory? Because I know for sure it’s not Rory McDaniels. Don’t even bother denying it, my sources are ironclad.

“You had me investigated?” I ask, that’s not a blow—or maybe I’m so dead inside now from that last one that I can’t feel anymore. That’s a definite possibility.

“Answer me,” he says.

I start to go inside. I owe Noah nothing. I never did, and after this, I owe him even less. Still, I have nothing to hide and I’m tired… so tired.

“You remind me of my father, Noah.”

He doesn’t reply, though, I think I see surprise in his eyes. I can’t be sure, because the tears are still silently leaking down my face and he’s blurry.

I still think I see surprise there, so I give him more.

“He demanded, he bulldozed people down until he got it and he didn’t blink at the pain he inflicted to get it.”

Maybe my words cause their own blows, because Noah takes a step away from me.

“Once, my brother was a good guy… the best. We were tight, we loved each other. We looked out for one another, and then he turned ten. That’s when my father thought he could be useful and take his part in the family. From that moment, he became not my brother… he became a soldier.”

“Just answer the question, Rory,” Noah growls, coldly. And, I don’t know why I was opening myself to him even more. He doesn’t deserve that. He deserves nothing. Still, I do as he asks—maybe I’m still weak after all.

“My stepfather was a good man, Noah. The best. He couldn’t help my brother, he was already lost to us, but he loved me. David McDaniels was a great man, the best man I ever met. He… he was nothing like you,” I tell him, and I say that while wiping some of the tears from my eyes and I see Noah’s reaction and I think maybe that definitely scored a point.

“Rory—”

“My father though, being like you, and deciding people were possessions and even though he didn’t want them, he didn’t want anyone else to have them either. He had my stepfather and mother killed,” I tell him, reliving a memory that was so painful I thought it might kill me once, but even that pain, that memory can’t hold a candle to the one Noah delivered in suggesting I kill my child so I could still crawl into his bed.

That’s how much he hurt. That’s how much he destroyed. He is most definitely like my father. I just don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.

“Fuck, Gorgeous,” he says and a wave of misery falls over me at the use of that nickname. I stumble again under its weight. I visibly flinch from the blow, but somehow, I remain standing.

“I was brought back into the family. I didn’t have a purpose. I wasn’t like my brother. I couldn’t be trained to be a soldier. I was useless,” I shrug. “Just a girl, but I was my father’s, so he made sure no one else could have me. I don’t think I saw him more than four times in ten years, Noah and we lived in the same house. Each of those times the only look I saw on his face was disgust.”

“Rory—”

“When I turned eighteen, I couldn’t legally change my name, my father wouldn’t allow that. But, I had money. I had money my grandmother gave me. My father being who he is, I had connections—some I even trusted. So, I got one of them to set me up with this guy. He made me a whole new identity. Rory King died that day. Rory McDaniels was born and that’s who I am now. I never lied to you, Noah. I could never change my name legally because my father would rather kill me than to give me even that one small bit of joy. When he died, my brother was already just like him and he too wouldn’t give me that gift. So, I changed my name the only way I could.”

“Rory—”

“You know what I’m wondering, Noah?”

“What’s that, Gorgeous?” he asks, his voice almost tender and sweet. It’s too late for that, though. I’m done. I can’t deal with Noah and his changing personalities. They gave me whiplash before and now I know that they can be fatal. I can’t take anymore.

“How, since I’ve had all this evil in my life… all of these men who think women are nothing more than possessions and punching bags… How I never saw you coming,” I whisper hating that the tears are falling again, hating that they are running down my face unchecked and truly hating that I’m sharing the same air with a man I loved and a man who destroyed me.

“I never hit you, Gorgeous, not once,” he defends.

He can defend, but there’s no defense for him… not one.

“Some blows don’t have to be physical to destroy you, Noah. I told you that once, don’t you remember? Words are venom, a poison that destroys you from the inside out.”

“Gorgeous…”

“Maybe you’ll remember this time…”

I walk inside, close my door, and lock it. I lean against it, my ear pressed to it and it seems like forever before I finally hear Noah walking away. Only then do I slide to the floor and let my silent tears become huge wracking sobs as the pain inside becomes too much to hold it in any longer.