unconditional (BOOK #2) [TO BE PUBLISHED]

Chapter 75 - Russell POV

Chapter 75 – Russell POV

I waited, packing my things, hoping that Declan would get back to me quickly, I couldn't explain it but I felt like I needed to be where Angel was. Since finding her we hadn't been apart for so long, and four months were more than I could admit I really could and wanted to handle. I couldn't believe I was even in this situation, about to be a father but I had meant what I said to Amara. I may not love Angel romantically, but she filled a part of me that I knew I would never be able to just turn my back on her completely.

I also knew that falling into Amara again was easy, it was like breathing, but I had changed and it wasn't working out. We both had people that we had put into our lives, had made promises too, and I couldn't turn my back on mine any more than she could turn her back on Sana. Yet I'm not sure if my family understood exactly how I felt, I loved Angel, I wanted to give her anything and all things she wanted. I had always known she missed out on a lot and didn't know much but she was such a bright thing and she wanted to learn. There was a childlike curiosity that her abuses were never able to squash completely, and now that she had the ability to learn, she was a sponge.

Now... now that I knew how Angel felt about me, how deep her feelings ran, what she wanted and felt able to give me... the part of me that loved her, albeit not romantically, I couldn't dismiss her feelings. Not because I wanted to pursue a relationship with her, but because I couldn't write off her feelings. I wouldn't do that to her, be another man to write off how she may be feeling inside, not when she tried so hard to show me. She had sex with me, not because it was forced, but because years ago I told her that the only time she should be that way with a man, was if she wanted it, if she was in love. All this time I hadn't understood what had happened... couldn't remember what occurred and thought that I had forced myself on her. Thought I went against all the things I promised her, to keep her protected, happy, and above all safe. In reality that wasn't the case, yes I had acted, followed through with the act, enough so to get her pregnant, but I hadn't remembered any of it.

Guilt swarmed me, and to protect her I thought she needed to be placed away from me, would feel better if she didn't have to come back to a home where she thought, sensed a danger in me when in reality that was never the case. Whatever happened, and I being the responsible party regardless of my intoxicated state, I took full responsibility for. However, the part of me that thought I – thought I dismissed what she may have wanted, thrown myself at her, and abused the trust she placed in me to – to be with her that way was rejoicing slightly that I hadn't – that it wasn't the case after all. I hadn't raped or forced Angel to be intimate with me. She had wanted to, because she loved me, and while I didn't return those feelings for her in that capacity, it was a relief that made me ashamed simultaneously.

If in fact I hadn't forced myself on her, or do any of the horrendous things I once thought – that Amara fed on when she convinced me that moving Angel would make her feel more at ease because of what happened – I still did the one thing I hated all her abusers for. Not giving a second thought to what she wanted, instead just moving her out of our home, when in all truth when she returned and saw what I had done, Angel would only think that I didn't care. Neither romantically, as her caregiver or friend.

Somewhere along the line, Angel had developed adult feelings for me while I still thought her a child in care, or an adult with the mind of a child. I wasn't blind by any measure, I knew she was an adult but common decency looked past that looked past the physical and enter a black and white world that she had been living in, that most children grew out of but she hadn't. No, she wasn't allowed too to grow out of.

"Russell," Declan answered after a few rings, "what have you decided?" he said bluntly and I found it strange that despite not aging physically, some things with him had certainly matured.