Chapter 38 – Kylie
thirty-eight
Kylie
I pull up in Knox’s driveway, getting out before opening the back door of the SUV where my overnight bag is sitting. Grabbing it, I close the door and press lock on the key fob before walking up his steps. I raise my hand to ring the doorbell, then hold my bag in both hands.
I see him walking toward the door and he opens it. “The door was open,” he says and there is no smile on his face.
“It’s rude to just walk into someone’s house, Knox,” I joke with him as I step in and go to kiss him. The kiss is very quick and not at all like the one he gave me not even two hours before.
“The door was open for a reason,” he explains and he sounds pissed.
“I started dinner.” He turns and walks back toward the kitchen, and I stand in the entryway for a full minute, rethinking coming here.
When I walk to the steps and put my bag down, I take a deep breath then join him in the kitchen.
It’s the easy way out to just leave, and I’m not taking the easy way out this time.
I step into the kitchen and walk to him, his back is to me as I put my hands on his hips, gripping his T-shirt in my hands as I put my forehead on his back and inhale his smell. “Are you okay?” I ask him and I feel him hang his head.
“No,” he finally admits and tosses down the knife he had in his hand while he was cutting veggies. He then puts his hand on the counter in front of him. I move my hands from his waist to wrap around him, laying my head in the middle of his back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, not sure what to do if he says no. I can’t force him to talk to me, but I know if he doesn’t talk to me, I might not be able to stay and pretend I’m not bothered by it.
“Not really,” he replies and then I wait a second as he exhales deeply.
“I’m pissed that I’m letting Josephine get to me.
” I swallow now, but I don’t know how, when my mouth suddenly goes dry.
I want to let him go and take a step back away from him, but instead I close my eyes and wait for him to tell me.
“She called me today when she got the kids from school.” My pulse now speeds up tenfold as I wait for the other shoe to drop.
“Asked me if I was seeing someone because Nora told her about your birthday party.”
“Shit,” I swear softly, opening my eyes and looking at the wall.
“Yeah, she threatened to call her lawyer.” My eyes close again and I can’t help that my hands fall away from him, and I have the sudden need to step away.
I take a full step back and then exhale softly before walking around the island and positioning myself between him and the door, in case I have to bolt. “It bothers you?” I ask him and hold my breath.
“Yeah, it fucking bothers me,” he huffs out and then rubs his hands over his face, covering his eyes.
“Why does it bother you?” I ask him and then I can’t help but ask him the one question that I should have asked him when we started this whole thing. The back of my neck heats up as if it’s on fire. “Do you still have feelings for her?”
His hands fall from his face and his eyes fly open to stare at me. “What?”
“Do you still have feelings for her?” I ask again and this time my mouth goes dry, so dry it’s hurting me to swallow. My heart beats in my ears like a drum.
“Of course not,” he quickly says and pushes away from the counter and makes his way to me. “How could you think that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug as he stands in front of me, holding my face in his hands.
“It just pissed me off that she had the nerve to call me and ask me personal questions that are none of her business and she’s not entitled to know the answer to.
” He clears it up. “I’m pissed she’s probably going to call her lawyer and it’ll prolong the divorce.
I’m pissed I had to spend thirty-five minutes on the phone with my own lawyer.
” I look up at him. “I’m pissed that instead of buying you flowers like I wanted to, I forgot all about it and then came home. ”
“You were buying me flowers?” That’s the only thing I think to say.
“Yeah, I wanted to surprise you.”
“I still have the flowers you sent me for my birthday,” I remind him.
“But you don’t have flowers here,” he rebuts, bending and kissing my lips. “I wanted you to have flowers here.”
“I don’t need to have flowers here,” I whisper up at him. “I just need to have you here.”
“I know you don’t.” He kisses my lips again. “But that’s why I wanted to get them, and now I’m even more pissed that I didn’t remember.”
“Knox.” I try not to laugh as he groans. “Maybe we should talk about the bigger issue right now.”
“Us having sex before dinner?” I roll my eyes, and I feel like a weight has been lifted off me when I see the lightness come back into his eyes.
“No.” I move away from him. “About the kids telling her about us.”
“What is there to talk about?” He turns and heads back to the cutting board, grabbing it and moving it to where he can cut while he talks to me.
“Well, we should have maybe anticipated they would tell her about me.” I walk over to the stool and pull it out, sitting down, facing him. “Shouldn’t we?”
“I don’t give a fuck if she knows about you. She was going to know about you eventually anyway. What I give a shit about is that she thought she had a right to know about you.”
“Well,” I fold my hands together, “I am spending time with her children.” I hold up my hand when he glares at me. “You would want to know if some random man was hanging around your kids.”
“Don’t fucking do that.” He points the knife at me, and I have to bite my lower lip to stop from laughing.
“Don’t fucking make me feel bad for wanting to tell her to go fuck herself.
” My mouth hangs open. “Listen, she has no right to know if I’m seeing someone.
” I try to say something, but he shakes his head.
“She doesn’t give a shit if you are bad for my children or not.
She cares that I’m seeing someone, and she didn’t know about it.
She’s pissed I’ve moved on instead of going back to her. ”
“Does she want you back?” I ask, getting mad now.
“I don’t know. I stopped listening to anything she had to say when I caught her cheating on me.”
“Knox.”
“Kylie.”
“I think it’s better for everyone if you co-parent civilly.”
“I’m civil in front of the children and that is all that matters,” he tells me, “but I want nothing to do with her if it doesn’t have to do with the kids.
I don’t want to have coffee with her. I don’t want to sit with her at our children’s activities.
I don’t want to look at her face if it doesn’t have to do with our children.
Actually, if we didn’t have kids, I would pretend she never existed. ”
“Well, you can’t do that.”
“Which makes me pissed off,” he grumbles and now I laugh.
“I’m sorry that she pissed you off,” I say and he glares.
“I’m more sorry for myself that you didn’t give me a proper greeting when I walked into the house.
” He tosses the knife down and looks at the cutting board in front of him and then back up at me.
“I’m hungry. I didn’t eat lunch today and then I rushed out to come here because you said you were going to cook for me. ”
“It won’t take long.”
“Just what I want to hear after us not having sex for a week. It’s not going to take long.”
“We had sex two days ago.” He raises his eyebrows. “I came over after I dropped the kids off at school.”
“It lasted ten minutes and you fucked me against my door.” He smiles big.
“You answered the door in your robe that was half open.” He folds his arms over his chest. “What was I supposed to do?”
“I had just gotten out of the shower,” I say in my defense.
“I didn’t hear you complaining.” He glares at me, and I tilt my head to the side.
“Pretty hard to do anything when you covered my mouth with yours.” I smile at him. “Then I forgot everything.”
He walks around to me, turning me on the stool as he grabs me around my waist and lifts me up.
“I had a good day at work.” He places me on the island, and I open my legs for him to stand in between them.
“Then I went to see my girl at work, and it got even better.” He pushes the hair over my shoulder as he bends and kisses under my jaw.
“Then I left in such a great mood, so I was going to buy my girl some flowers, cook her dinner, flirt with her over dinner. Then I got a phone call, and it pissed me off, so all my plans were almost fucking forgotten, when all I wanted to do was call my ex back and tell her to go fuck herself.”
“You were going to flirt with me?” I grip the side of his shirt in my hand and pull him to me. He nods as he pushes the other side of my hair behind me, leaving my neck open for him.
“Oh yeah,” he assures me in a low growl as he sucks the side of my neck. “Major flirting was to happen.”
“Do you think that you could still do that?” I ask him. I close my eyes and shiver when I feel his breath on my ear and his lips kiss right behind my lobe. “What if we just did a redo of when the day started to turn to shit?”
“What do you mean?” he asks me.
“I mean, why don’t we get in the car and go buy me some flowers.
” I lean forward and softly kiss his jaw.
“Then we can come home, and I can let you go inside, and then I’ll ring the doorbell a couple of minutes later.
” I put my hands on his shoulders. “It’ll be Groundhog Day, but not the whole day. ”
“You know what?” he replies, plucking me off the counter, “that is a great idea.” He shocks me, slipping his hand in mine. “Let’s go.”