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)
A thought that I’d had on instinct, a thought belonging to the person I used to be … before. The chef of a Michelin star restaurant. Someone with power, respect, a purpose.
Except I wasn’t her.
I no longer had a restaurant.
Hadn’t had any of the markers of my identity for the past decade.
Didn’t have Kane.
It was the last thing that bothered me the most.
Not being in the kitchen, not feeling the hum of it, the heat… Yeah, it left a hole inside of me. But not like the gaping chasm I felt without Kane.
And at the same time, I felt an emptiness. I was growing. Growing with a child we’d forged. One that would forever serve as the reminder of what I’d had. What I’d thought was something special, everything.
And what I’d lost.
Except you had to actually have something in order to lose it. And Kane had informed me, through Brax, through those scrawled, heartbreaking letters, that I had never had it in the first place. Hadn’t ever truly had him.
That had sent me into a dark hole for months. Even while being in the picturesque city of Jupiter. It helped that the cold and dreary days of winter matched my mood, and I was able to wallow. Though the oncoming of spring and the life and cheer it brought made me surly. I was supposed to be full of good thoughts, hope, being pregnant, but I couldn’t find either.
The knock at the front door served to punctuate my bad mood. It was about to storm outside, the boom of thunder sounding in the distance, lightning flashing. No one was supposed to be out in storms, certainly not knocking on my door. I’d had a sign put up to leave packages at the door, avoiding social interaction.
I was distracted when I opened the front door, as I often was those days. It turned out that getting unexpectedly pregnant, uprooting your entire life to a place where you didn’t know anyone, quitting your job—the thing that had comprised pretty much my whole personality—and trying to do it alone was distracting.
Go figure.
I had been lost in my spreadsheet of bedside bassinets. Beside each, I had listed the pros and cons, organized by price point—I was trying to weigh the best one based on various features of safety and comfortability.
I’d been at it for weeks. You’d think I would’ve been able to pull the trigger. I mean, it was a place for the baby to sleep. It was only very recently babies even had fancy bassinets to sleep in.
Babies had been surviving for thousands of years without $1,500 bassinets that rocked them and played white noise.
Yet there I was, agonizing over the sheer amount on the market.
I’d narrowed it down to five.
I’d been scanning the sheet, chewing on the end of my pen while laboring over a simple decision.
Me. Who could create a twelve-course tasting menu for New York’s elite with the utmost confidence in myself and my choices. Me. Who had been in charge of a whole restaurant. Who could handle small fires, staff arguing with each other, sexism, long hours, constant pressure, physical exertion and second-degree burns.
But that was food. I knew food. I knew I was good at food. There were acclaimed reviews and Michelin stars to back that knowledge up.
There was absolutely no evidence I was good at picking out bassinets. Or being a mother.
Yet here I was.
Eight months pregnant, in a pretty cottage in Maine on the precipice of being one with no real choice otherwise.
“What. The. Fuck.”
That was what I was greeted with upon opening the door.
And a six-foot figure dressed entirely in black, blocking out the storm-resistant sun, taking all my breath away.
Granted, it was easy to take my breath away those days since I had a six-pound—according to the most recent ultrasound—child squishing my internal organs and using my ribs as a kickstand.
But none of that was the reason for my gasp, for the stutter of my heartbeat, the weakening of my knees, the swarm of bees in my stomach.
Kane.
It was Kane standing in my doorway, staring at me, uttering three words drenched in fury as he pushed up his black Wayfarers to stare at me.
To stare at my stomach.
My hands went there automatically. I hadn’t understood why pregnant women did that—constantly touched or rubbed their stomachs. I’d found it asinine. But when the previous flat area rounded, when I felt the flutter of small limbs that had now transitioned to soccer kicks from what felt like a large animal, I got it. There was a little human in there, one who already demanded a lot of my attention and had taken to pressing on my bladder when it got in their way.
A little human that I’d made.
With Kane.
Who was here.
Obviously out of prison.
And obviously pissed.
“What the fuck?” he repeated louder this time.