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)
“You’re eight months pregnant. You think I’m puttin’ you on the back of my bike, even courting the chance of somethin’ happening to you or the baby?”
I looked down at my stomach, having forgotten momentarily that I was pregnant. I’d gone back to life with Kane before the arrest, before the baby, when there were no worries, no barriers between us.
“Aren’t you supposedly the best rider in the world?” I joked, not intending on arguing the point, just desperate to sever the tension between us.
It didn’t work.
“I am the best in the world,” he growled. “But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to put my baby at risk. Keys.”
The jovial man I knew was gone. An angry, bitter person standing in his place, palm outstretched.
I wordlessly gave them to him, striding to the car so he wouldn’t see my watery eyes. Not once in my past life had anything brought me close to tears. Yet I was on the edge of a full blown meltdown with Kane’s presence mingling with the pregnancy hormones.
Part of me wanted to spar with him, to give him the coldness I was so well-known for. But bigger parts of me were exhausted, hurt, confused and desperate for Kane. And the guilt… It weighed too heavily on me to fight back.
Though I thought I moved quickly, Kane made it to the passenger door first, opening it for me.
I kept my eyes down.
“Chef.”
Though I wanted to deny him any eye contact, feeling helpless, I looked up.
He was standing behind the door, hands resting on the top of it, gaze intent on me, glasses now down so I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.
His body was tense, jaw hard.
I watched his head rear back as he read whatever emotion I was failing to hide on my face. The stern frown on his lips, visible below his glasses, softened.
“Chef.” His voice was inconceivably tender.
I ground down on my molars. All I wanted was this version of him, yet now that I’d been presented with it, I couldn’t handle it.
“We’ve got to go,” I snapped. “If I don’t eat within an hour, it makes me sick.”
Not a lie, but the coward’s way out.
Kane nodded slowly and looked like he was going to say something, but I climbed in the car. The second he got in the driver’s side, I leaned forward to turn the radio all the way up.
I was doing all I could to avoid conversation, to avoid him. Yet some small part of me wanted him to turn the radio off, to face me and talk.
But he didn’t.
Not for the whole drive.
Kane
I hurt her.
It was plain to see. The naked pain on her face.
Fuck, it almost took me to my knees.
That wasn’t Avery. She wore her strength like armor, an unbreakable expression on her face meant to tell the world that she couldn’t be hurt.
Even with me in the beginning, she wore that mask. Except when I was inside her, when she was alone with me. It was a gift she gave me, that vulnerability, that openness.
It was a crime, the worst I’d committed, to betray that.
That’s what was different about her. Not the sun-kissed skin I wanted to explore every inch of. Not the freckles on her face I found so fucking pretty it hurt. Not the stomach, round with my baby that pierced my fucking heart every time my eyes landed there. No, there was no more barrier. All of her defenses had been … shredded.
She was defeated. Lost.
I hadn’t seen it last night because I was wrapped up in my own fury. Fury that I thought she deserved. I knew now that not an ounce of blame laid on her doorstep, yet I’d brought it here.
And I couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t undo the hurt. Though I spent the short drive to ‘town’ racking my brain on how to.
Avery spoke only to give me curt directions to her bakery, turning the music up to almost ear-splitting volume once done.
She needed space. I decided to give it to her, though it went against all my instincts. I wanted to pull the car over, pull her onto my lap and kiss her until she looked like my Avery again. Until she melted for me.
I wanted to be inside her again, tell her how much I loved her. But that wouldn’t work, and not just because she was logistically too large right now to fit between me and the steering wheel.
“I get sick if I don’t eat within an hour of waking.”
Something related to the pregnancy, obviously. Another small example of how she’d changed, how I needed to take care of her. Another marker of just how much I’d missed.
I didn’t know what she craved, what made her sick, what hurt her. She’d mentioned heartburn and some other things, but I didn’t learn that myself.