Hellish (Steve Rogers Fan Fiction)

E i g h t e e n

"You.... You have a...." Steve couldn't even form a complete sentence as he stared at the woman sitting on his bed.

Sloane placed the pictures in her lap and looked down at them.

"I don't have a picture of Connor." She smiled softly, her voice just a whisper. "I was too.... too afraid to take one. I don't want anyone to use him against me."

After hearing the pain in her voice as she spoke of this Connor man, Steve knew he couldn't just attack her and demand to know why she hadn't told him of the child she had.

"I met him just after I dropped out of high school." Sloane started. "I was seventeen. Mom took me and Sonny to Sicily for a little vacation while dad and Noah went to Spain.... That was before.... before everything went wrong."

"Sloane, you can't keep coming here if you're with that man." Steve's broken whisper made her lift her head. "I'm not.... I won't come between you and the father of your son."

She met his gaze, her tear-filled blue eyes locking with his as she shook her head.

"I'm-I'm not with Connor. We agreed that we wouldn't be together when Michael was born. I-I told him it wasn't.... it wasn't possible."

"Why didn't you tell me you had a kid, Sloane?" Steve sat down on the edge of his bed, shoulders slumped in utter defeat as he looked down at his hands. He felt so lost and nearly disoriented by this new knowledge.

"It wasn't that I didn't want to tell you, Steve. It was that I couldn't—,"

"Don't give me that, Sloane! You have the choice to tell me things and you choose not to every single time!"

"I did it for their safety. I didn't keep them from you because I was being difficult or because I felt like you didn't deserve to know. It was for their safety.... for them." Sloane spoke softly. She couldn't conjure the ability to shout back at him. Her eyes fell back down to the picture of her and Connor at the outside diner. "Connor's a great man. He.... He reminds me a lot of you."

"After I had Michael, I told Connor I couldn't keep him. Connor wanted us to be a family. He proposed to me and he even offered to buy a house here in the U.S. where we could live but still vacation at his family house in Sicily every summer. He wanted us to be a normal family."

"He knew who you were?" Steve asked.

"No. To him I was just Genevieve."

Steve nodded softly. The boat in one of the pictures was named Genevieve.

"I still am her." Sloane handed the pictures back to Steve. "He doesn't know to this day and Michael turned thirteen three days ago."

"Does Michael know you're his mom?"

"Connor and I agreed it would be best if I didn't introduce myself as mom since I only see them once a year."

Steve's brows drew together so tight they nearly hurt as he focused on the picture of Sloane, Connor, and the boat.

"He needs a mother, Sloane."

Her eyes flickered over to gaze at the side of his head as he continued to speak.

"You can't deprive him of that his whole life."

"He's better off without me, Steve. I have no motherly instincts. I'd be a terrible mom. And you know how my job interferes with everything."

Silence fell between the two for a while.

So many thoughts flew threw Steve's mind. How many more secrets was she keeping from him? Was she married to another man he had yet to find out about? Was Alexa even her real name?