Keep My Heart- Prologue

Keep My Heart- 37

"If you can't look back on life and wish you had done things different, you haven't grown as a person."

My grandma told me that one night at her kitchen table. She was talking me through a bad breakup, sort of like the one Olivia went through. I just thought it was nice, and that I should share it. Anyway. Thanks loads for all of the support you guys have given me! It's incredible...I jumped around 2,000 reads in one week. All because of you. :) Thanks a lot!

Please remember to hit the vote button on the way out! I had 115 reads on 36, but only 8 votes. Please vote and comment! :)

-Morgan

Carefully, without her candle, Olivia approached the stairs. There was a ruckus at the door...her heart thundered and she prayed that it wasn't Rashleigh. Suppose he had been granted bail, and he was coming back to finish what he had started earlier that day in the garden.

There was a flash of lightning as the grand front foor swung open. The figure who stood there was tall, and he stepped in to the house. Crouching low, she watched this figure. He looked tall enough to be Rashleigh. Her heart stopped. Perhaps she should wake Emery. He would protect her. He had protected her.

Behind the rails of the stairs, Olivia watched the figure move through the dark house. He knew where he was going, she could tell by his movements. He moved with comfort, prestige. All of a sudden, she pictured her husband, when he hadn't been her husband. The day she met him in the harbor with Constance. How he had moved then, was the same as now.

"Adam!" she cried, springing up, and flurrying down the stairs. The figure stopped, as if in surprise at her presence. 

"I didn't know you were awake," he said in the silence, but she was already hanging onto him. Her arms were wound about his waist, and she began to cry. 

"You're home," she whispered, and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. 

"I'm home."

"You're real." She listened to his heartbeat for a minute. He was soaking wet, but she didn't care.

"Yes, of course I am--is Rashleigh here?" Adam Hawke's voice had changed, grim and dark. It frightened her, and he pushed her out to arm's length. It was obvious to him that she had missed him, and that she had not forgotten the love they had vowed. 

"No...he's in Boston, in the jailhouse."

"Bother why," he said quickly after she responded. "Give your old man a kiss."

He gathered her back into his arms. Turning her face to his, Olivia delivered a kiss worthy of note. It was soft, gentle, but deep in emotion, and it was the most perfect kiss she had ever had. Her husband slid his arm across her waist, pressing her closer...but he did not notice the round belly she wore. For a moment even, she had forgotten, until there was the tender fluttering. 

She broke away, hoping her husband had felt it. But he hadn't. "I"m starving, sweetheart. Let lose of me." 

"I shall never let loose again. Come into the kitchen, Adam. I'll make whatever you like." 

"I didn't know you could cook," he said.

"Well, of course I can. Tell me, oh...Adam, how did you get home?"

As they went into the kitchen, he told her the story. Of the Commodore and the plot and the Sun Goddess. And Rashleigh.

"Oh, no," she said at once, in shock, and she started crying. Adam was silent, wondering what the reason was for her crying so much tonight. Certainly, she was beautiful and it became her, but she had burst into tears on separate occasions. Adam looked at her with desire. Only the type that is tied with love that only a husband will feel for his wife.

"What is the matter?" He looked down at her, beside him, but she rushed away and lit a candle. The room was filled with light. It was then that he noticed.

"Olivia," he said calmly. "Are you..."

"I'm with child, yes," she murmurred, and cried harder. 

There was a long silence as Adam allowed this to sink in. He thought, counting back to the last night they had been together. But there was certainly enough time for this child to his brother's, whether it be by Olivia's will or otherwise. The thought of Rashleigh touching her...looking at her...kissing her...it drove him mad. She was his. 

"Who is the father?"

Adam regretted asking as soon as he had spoken. She sputtered. 

"What do you mean," she growled, "who is the father?"

"Precisely that," he said quietly.

"You think...you think I- oh, Adam. You don't know me at all! M-make your own food!" She turned to stomp away, hurt at his implication. These last five and a half months...she had carried his child as a sacred gem, deep and protected. Although she protected her baby for herself and for the child itself, she had been doubly careful for her husband. Now he was home and he accused her of adultery.

"Olivia!" he said, and she stopped. 

"I'm going to bed."

"Come here," he whispered, loud enough to where she heard it. It seemed indeed promising, and she turned to face him. She rested her hand over the globe of her belly, stepping over to her husband. She was close to him then, and he reached out, taking her hand. 

"What I meant to say was...he didn't- he did not force himself, did he?"

"He tried. Today."

After the story unfolded and the shock of this was deep and coursing like a river, Adam was certain that the baby which grew in her belly was of his accord. 

"I didn't mean to upset you." He pulled her near, laying his head against the warm roundness of her pregnant stomach. His ear was soft on her protruding nightrail, and there, he heard the soft heartbeat. 

"This is our baby," she whispered. 

"I'm very surprised," he said softly. "I thought and dreamed of having a family with you, my love...I just never imagined that it would be so soon. But I assure you, above all of the vicissitudes of life, we shall rise and raise this child together. As a family."

They went to bed after Adam ate, and slept until lunch time.

That little slut.

Rashleigh was rotting in this jail cell because of Olivia. Her little screams. He could have had her. She had wanted him. He had almost had her.

But his bloody father had stepped in. Forget them!

Forget Emery Hawke. Forget Olivia. Forget Adam--and the girl he had been forced to kill. Life was so unfair. No one would share what they had. Adam had given him money, before, when he needed it. But he wouldn't give Rashleigh enough money to build a Hawke's Vale of his own. So he had to live in a bloody townhouse with a wife he hated, instead of a mansion with a woman who was the love of his life.

In that moment, Rashleigh James Hawke hated them all so very much--that they would certainly all be burned.