The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 516

Chapter 253-2

+251

He looks like a man who’s been dropped into a room with a stranger, fully aware of how muchlis

expected of him, but completely paralyzed by the fact that he doesn’t feel it.

I take two steps into the room, my boots sounding impossibly loud against the tile.

“Hi Locke.”

He flinches, just a tiny, subtle twitch, before catching himself. He doesn’t reach out. He doesn

smile. He just swallows hard, his throat working heavily as he stares at me.

“Hey, Zara.”

The sound of my name on his tongue slices through me like a razor.

It’s the tone of a man trying hard to be gentle with someone he doesn’t know how to handle.

“Good morning,” he adds, shifting slightly in the bed, his muscled shoulders tensing as the movement pulls at his stitches. “Uh… come on in. Cobra said you’d be coming by.”

“How… how’re you feeling?” I ask, my hands clutching the front of my coat. “Stitch said your scans are looking better.”

Locke rubs the back of his neck, wincing slightly as his arm raises. “Yeah. I mean… my head aches

like hell, to be honest with you. Ribs are shot. But Stitch says the bleeding in my brain stopped, so…

guess that’s something.”

He clears his throat, those gray eyes dropping to his lap, then flicking back up to my face with a

look of sheer discomfort.

“Locke…” I trail off, my throat tightening so hard it aches.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out suddenly, his voice raspy and thick with a dark, suffocating frustration. “Look, Zara… I don’t really know how to do this. Cobra and Mayhem… they sat here for hours last night. Stitch too. They tried to explain everything to me. About… about us. About how things were.”

He drags a hand down his face, his heavy brow furrowed into deep, painful lines.

“They told me about the club,” he continues, looking at me with a desperate, apologetic strain. “They told me about Vane, about how I got taken… and they told me about your medical history.

Stitch laid out the whole damn thing.”

He pauses, his gaze fixed on my face, full of a raw guilt that makes him look completely sick to his

stomach.

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Notes 253-2

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“He told me about the cancer,” Locke says, his voice cracking slightly. “He told me what your body

went through… how the doctors said you’d never be able to have a kid. And he told me that this

baby… that it’s a total miracle.”

He slams his fist once, hard enough to rattle the bed frame, against his thigh.

“And I feel like a piece of s**t, Zara,” he says, his breath coming out in rough, jagged hitches “I’m sitting here listening to them tell me that you survived cancer, that you’re carrying a miracle baby

that’s mine, and I can’t even remember holding you.”

I suck in a deep breath, fighting to not react to his words.

“I can’t remember the day we found out you were pregnant. I can’t remember any of it. I’m sitting here looking at a woman who went through hell and back, and my mind’s just a damn brick wall.”

“It’s true, Locke,” I say, stepping an inch closer, unable to stop myself. “It’s true. We… we were

shocked and then delighted when the test came back positive. You were working on the nursery

together with me. You were installing the handles on the changing table right before you were

taken.”

Locke doesn’t answer right away. He just stares at me, his storm gray eyes searching my face,

searching the room, searching his own empty mind for a single spark that matches the story I’m

telling him.

I watch his eyes. I watch for the c***k.

I watch for the sudden, blinding flash of recognition, the sudden softening of his posture, the

moment where the man who loves me breaks through the fog.

Nothing happens.

His eyes remain wide, troubled, and completely blank. Like winter frost over glass.

“I believe you,” he says quietly, his voice tight with shame. “I do. Cobra wouldn’t lie to me, and Stitch

showed me the charts. I know it’s true, Zara. I just…”

He lets out a long, ragged breath, his broad shoulders sagging into the pillows.

“I’m trying. I’m sitting here trying so hard to pull something up, to remember… and there’s just

nothing there.”

“Locke, look at me,” I say. “Don’t think about what my Dad said. Don’t think about paperwork. Just

look at me. Do you really not know who I am?”

Locke looks up at me, and the expression in those pale gray eyes breaks my heart into a thousand

pieces.

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Chapter 253-2

“I mean, I’m sitting here looking at you, and I feel like I’m talking to a stranger. And knowing what you went through with the cancer, knowing what this baby means, and feeling nothing./. it’s f*****g

But he freezes so hard he stops breathing entirely. His shoulders lock up, his jaw clenches, and his gray eyes widen in sheer, overwhelming awkwardness.

He sits there under my hand like a man trapped in a corner, enduring the physical touch of a

into it.

brain.

He’s enduring me.

I’m standing here, forcing my affection onto a man who’s freshly tortured, heavily concussed, and

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