Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
The air in the room became heavy. There was no blame or guilt weaved into my sister’s tone. She didn’t have a malicious bone in her body and wasn’t trying to make me feel bad.
Yet I felt bad nonetheless.
Feeling the warmth in the room, smelling the scents of Maisie’s perfume, Mom’s cooking, the ocean air, I struggled to find all the reasons why I’d pushed them out of my life.
Except the reasons never had anything to do with either of them. It was me. I’d changed. Because of Kane. Because of this baby.
I had a family now.
Whether I liked it or not.
And I did, like it. Which was the scariest thing of all.
Twenty-One
Even though Kane was sure Mabel was going to surprise us all by coming before her due date, there was no havoc or drama, no water breaking in the middle of a restaurant, no baby born in the car on the way to the hospital.
No, on the night of my induction, there was a dinner at home, one I made even though Mom and Maisie fought me on it.
“It’s the last thing I’ll be able to take my time cooking,” I argued to them.
And Kane, usually—infuriatingly—on their side with most things pertaining to my ‘care,’ sided with me.
“You got this, Chef,” he said, kissing my neck.
He was doing that more lately. Easy affection, affectionate tones. He wasn’t punishing me anymore. Although he hadn’t truly punished me since that first night. Maybe I was punishing myself.
Whatever it was, we were still tiptoeing around each other in a way. Relearning each other. I wasn’t Avery Hart, chef, anymore. And for the time, it seemed Kane was no longer Kane ‘The Devil’ Rhodes either.
Through some miracle of fate, no one here had taken photos of him, posted anything. The media hadn’t found him yet, and I knew they were looking because there were articles online.
I shouldn’t have read them. I hadn’t in the past, knowing they were toxic. Yet now, for whatever reason, in the rare moments I wasn’t with Kane or my mother or Maisie, I was scrolling through the articles.
Kane Rhodes out of prison, conviction overturned… But where is he now?
Mixed reception on Rhodes’s release from prison. Did he deserve to get out?
DuBois, currently under investigation for sexual violence charges, has ‘no comment’ on Rhodes’s release.
Has Avery Hart, the Ice Queen, managed to put Kane’s fire out? Where has he gone?
The respite wasn’t permanent. Some determined reporter would find him. Someone would leak his location. Or he’d go back for an event, a game, the freaking Olympics for all I knew. Kane was a thrill seeker to his core, so he couldn’t stay in Jupiter indefinitely.
That reality hung in my head too. My career, as I knew it, was over. There weren't any twelve-hour days at a restaurant. No more commanding a kitchen … or my life, for that matter.
And I didn’t know how I felt about that. I knew I already loved Mabel more than anything, that I wouldn’t change my situation for the world, but the unknown future ahead of me made my throat uncomfortably tight.
“My only request is that I be sous chef,” Kane murmured, bringing me out of my thoughts and into the present.
The present being a kitchen in Maine, with my mother and sister sipping wine at the breakfast bar, the ocean air blowing in, Kane Rhodes next to me, a baby kicking in my belly and a midnight admission to have the aforementioned baby.
“Sous chef?” I craned my neck to examine him.
He nodded. “You tell me what to do—chop, fry, whatever. I got you. You work your magic.” His eyes glittered as something unspoken passed between us. He knew I needed this. We were both standing there, on the precipice of a completely new life. After tonight, nothing would be the same. So the simpleness of being in a kitchen, cooking with Kane, meant everything.
“I need onions diced.”
“Yes, Chef.” His eyes held mine for a long moment.
Then we cooked.
Our last meal as Kane and Avery.
The next one we had, we’d be Mom and Dad.
An insane idea.
Yet somehow perfect.
I hadn’t wanted the epidural.
Not because I was some kind of martyr. I trusted modern medicine and firmly believed that women shouldn’t have to suffer through labor when they’d already suffered through a pregnancy and would be suffering through the recovery and whatever other demands society had for them.
I believed every woman had the right to experience childbirth in their own way, with as little pain as possible.
But I’d also read up about the more prudent, realistic parts of labor. And I wanted it to be as quick and as efficient as it could be. Statistically, labor could last longer if an epidural was administered.
Also, I might’ve been arrogant about my threshold for pain.
I’d endured my fair share of it. My training ensured that my power of will was ironclad and that I never gave up. I set the expectation for myself that I wasn’t going to get an epidural, and I’d intended to stick with it.