At that, Nick spoke.

“Kids?”

This time, Liv stayed quiet.

He dipped his chin to see the shadowed top of her head.

“Livvie?”

“I can’t,” she told his throat.

She couldn’t?

Reflexively, he stopped playing with her hair and wrapped both arms tighter around her.

“You can’t?”

She tipped her head back. “Not safe.”

She could.

Because of those jackals in her life, she just wouldn’t.

“I’ll make you safe, Liv.”

She shook her head.

“Not safe,” she repeated.

He gathered her even closer, pulling her up so they were eye to eye. “We get there, we get to that place, we want kids, I’ll make it safe.”

“They can’t have anything to use to get to me,” she told him and finished, “or you.”

“They won’t factor in the equation.”

“Nick—”

“Livvie, honest to God, don’t want to sound like a conceited asshole, but I know I’m not hard to look at and you’re fuckin’ beautiful. It might have taken me a while to demonstrate I had a brain in my head, but I eventually did. I’m not dumb and you’re far from stupid. We get to that place, we gotta have kids. It’s our duty to this earth to give it that beauty.”

In the light eking around the curtains, he saw her lips part, she pressed closer for a moment, only to move slightly away.

He pulled her close again.

“I don’t want a child of mine to become me,” she said.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he stated, steel in each word.

“You know what I mean, Nick,” she replied, each word soft and edged in pain.

“I know what you mean and that’s just not gonna happen.”

“And maybe my mom thought that before she had Georgia and me, gave up and took off,” she noted.

“And maybe your mom is a stupid, weak, useless bitch,” he returned. “What’s not a maybe is you’re not.”

“Nick.”

His name was all she said.

So he kept at her.

“We get there…and just so you know, baby, that’s where I’m heading us and I like where we’re going…I can’t say I’ll take you to the mountains so you can disappear. I got a business. I gotta see to that business. And that business is in the city. What I can say is, I’ll get you a place up there we can visit. And when we’re at home, wherever we’re makin’ that home, I’ll make you safe. And if we get to that place, we’re making a family. When we do that, I’ll make them safe. You’ll live free and easy. They’ll live free and easy. That’s what I can say. And we keep on, we get to where we’re headed, you gotta do what you promised along the way and believe.”