Chapter 187 It's always her
~Hermes~
My breath hitches as my fingers tremble over the letter. This has to be a joke. A mistake. A cruel prank.
June wouldn’t leave me.
We made a vow. We promised—
I swallow hard and look up at my father. Lucien Grande has never been good at lying. His face has always betrayed him. And yet right now… he is perfectly calm.
“Father,” I say quietly. “Why did she leave?”
He sits in the chair beside my bed, folding his hands. “She stayed for—”
“Wait.” I lift my finger, stopping him. My chest tightens. “How long was I unconscious?”
“Hermes, that isn’t important right now. We need to focus on—”
“Don’t.” My voice snaps before I can stop it. I force it lower. “Just answer me.”
He exhales slowly. “Weeks. You were out for weeks. She tried to stay. She really did.”
My throat burns. “Then why?”
His eyes flicker, just for a second.
“The baby,” he says. “She lost it.”
The room tilts.
“What?”
“The stress was too much. The shooting. Your condition. The family chaos. She had a miscarriage.”
Lost it.
The words don’t make sense. They echo inside my skull, hollow and unreal. My ears ring. My vision blurs.
The baby… gone?
My chest caves in.
I did this. I brought her into my war. My illness. My family. My enemies. I made her carry my child in the middle of hell and I couldn’t protect it.
I killed our baby.
I turn away from him and lie back down, staring at the ceiling, unable to breathe properly. There is nothing to say. Nothing to scream. Nothing to beg.
Lucien’s hand touches my arm. “I’m sorry, son.”
I don’t answer.
Sunlight leaks through the window, bright and cruel. A single tear slips from the corner of my eye and disappears into the pillow as I stare at nothing.
June is gone. Our baby is gone.
And … it’s all my fault.
FEW WEEKS LATER
I wake up drenched in heat.
My eyes squeeze shut as I writhe against the sheets, sweat slicking my skin, soaking the pillow beneath my head. My heart is already racing, already breaking, because I know this dream.
I’m standing in front of her.
June.
She’s holding a baby in her arms.
My legs feel like they’re made of stone as I take a step toward her, my mouth trembling, my chest caving in.
“I’m so sorry, June. I—I truly—”
Her eyes lift to mine.
They’re cold.
“You did this,” she says. “You caused this. You made me lose our child.”
Blood begins to drip from her eyes.
My own hands are suddenly wet, red, shaking.
“No—no—no—”
I jerk upright with a strangled gasp, the dream tearing away from me like skin.
I’m in bed.
Daylight floods the room, bright and unforgiving. My lungs burn as I drag in air, my chest heaving. I stare at the clock beside the bed and let out a hollow breath. Afternoon.
Which means I didn’t even escape it for long.
Soon, my father’s assigned housekeeper will knock, gently but insistently, to remind me I haven’t touched the breakfast she made hours ago. If she knew what I was carrying inside me—what I’d done—she wouldn’t bother.
I don’t deserve to eat.
I don’t deserve anything.
After I was discharged, I refused to go back to Las Vegas. I couldn’t. I moved into the old Grande estate on the outskirts of Toronto, the one nobody uses anymore, and cut myself off from the world. No staff. No friends. No Ted. No business. Just walls and silence and ghosts.
It’s ironic.
I survived.
But I’m not living.
I’m just taking up space on this planet that my child never got to see.
This is my punishment.
I drag myself out of bed and into the bathroom. The mirror catches me for a second—hollow eyes, pale skin, a man who looks like he died six weeks ago and forgot to finish the job.
I turn on the shower.
Hot water spills over my bare body, sliding down my chest, my back, my ribs. I close my eyes, letting it burn, letting it drown out the echo of her voice.
You made me lose our child.
The nightmares come every night now. I haven’t told my father. If I did, Lucien would put me in therapy, would make me talk, would try to fix me.
And I don’t want to be fixed.
Because if I start to feel better, even a little… it means I’m forgiving myself.
And I don’t get to do that.
The water keeps pouring over me, warm against my skin, but I feel frozen all the way through.
The guilt is crushing. It sits on my chest, in my throat, in my bones. But for a few minutes, something else pushes through it—something darker, older, more familiar.
My old escape.
The part of me I thought I had buried when I fell in love with her.
The hunger creeps back in slowly, insidiously, like a drug I never really quit. It’s not about pleasure. It never is. It’s about not feeling this—this ache, this emptiness, this hole she left inside me.
June.
Of course it’s still her.
It’s always her.
I grip the tile wall to steady myself as the shower runs, my breath shallow, my body reacting even while my heart breaks. The cruel irony is almost laughable: I’m trying so hard not to think of her, not to see her face, not to remember the way she used to look at me…
And yet she’s the only thing my mind will give me.
Her laugh.
Her eyes.
The way she said my name.
I tell myself she wouldn’t want me.
I tell myself I ruined everything.
I tell myself she’s better off without me.
And still… my body betrays me, aching for the only person who ever made me feel whole.
I press my forehead against the cool tile and close my eyes.
“June,” I whisper, barely audible over the water.
It feels like a sin.
But it’s the only thing that makes me feel alive.
My throbbing cock leaks as soon as I stroke it. I swallow a moan. I’m not supposed to be enjoying this—
But it’s June.
I see June’s hand on it.
I stroke again, a little rougher now, driven by urgency.
My teeth sink into my lip as I increase the speed.
Squelch.
Squelch.
I keep going and going and going, every stroke carrying its own emotion — grief, want, guilt, need.
I feel her tongue in my mind, warm and slow, pulling me deeper, swallowing me whole.
Oh… fuck.
This shouldn’t feel—
God, this feels so good.
All the guilt, the sadness, the anger start to melt under the wash of pleasure.
“Do you feel good?”
I imagine her asking.
“No,” my voice comes out ragged and breathless — but I don’t stop. I’m too close now.
“Then don’t stop.”
Her lips — no, my hands — move faster, deeper, frantic and primitive.
“Oh—” I gasp as release spills over my hand and onto the bathroom tiles. My eyes squeeze shut, my heart pounding violently against my ribs.
I turn off the faucet too quickly, like I can shut off the moment with it.
“Mr. Hermes? Mr. Hermes—”
Agnes’s voice cuts through the fog, distant at first, then closer. She sounds like she’s been calling for a while.
“Are you in there? I’m coming in.”
Damn it.
I grab a towel from the rack, wrapping it around my waist as quickly as I can before stepping out. The last thing I need is for her to come searching for me in here.