Chapter 14
Fourteen
It was only a handful of days later that my world imploded. Again.
Kane had been transferred to the prison where he’d be serving his time. The judge had said, given his ‘light’ sentence, violent, prior offenses and ‘nature of the crime,’ he deserved to be in a maximum-security prison. With violent offenders. Murderers.
Victoria had fought that tooth and nail. She’d ended up being held in contempt when she wouldn’t let the judge shut her up. She’d then promised me she’d use all of her resources to ensure that Kane did not remain there.
I'd nodded, believing she intended to use any and all connections and talent she had, but I’d accepted that the system had spoken. Even though it was horrible, I reminded myself that many men and women were given much, much harsher sentences for lesser crimes on account of their socioeconomic status, skin color or religion. Kane was, as hard as it was to swallow, getting off easy in some respects.
He was being moved to a maximum-security prison two hours outside of the city. She assured me that it would take a while for transport to get him situated, then I would be able to visit.
“Not that he’ll be there long enough for you to make more than one visit,” she promised.
Two hours away and locked in a cell. That’s where Kane would be. For a year. I couldn’t hold any food down at the thought of it.
The media was crazier than ever after the sentencing. Though the reception to me and my story was mixed, the outrage over the obvious bias of the sentencing was almost universal. People were outraged that one of their favorite celebrities was getting put away while a loud few were praising the judge for punishing violent criminals regardless of their status. Then there were those, who rightly so, were trying to get stories of loved ones heard who were locked away for longer than Kane for nonviolent crimes. It hadn’t just become a pop culture news story; it also became the springboard for all sorts of conversations about the justice system and how it operated.
And on top of that, when I tried to get a hold of Victoria after obtaining life-altering information, I’d been informed she was temporarily incommunicado, and even her personal number went right to voicemail.
The rational thing would’ve been to wait. I trusted her. She wasn’t going to leave me hanging. If I waited, she’d return my call and all would be well. As well as things could be. But I wasn’t feeling very rational. Hadn’t been for a while. And all logic fled my body when I found out what I had that morning. So I did a stupid thing.
I went to Brax’s office. He was the only other person who had a connection with Kane since I hadn’t seen nor heard from Knox. The man who’d spent his childhood protecting Kane was nowhere to be seen when he was needed most.
Not that Knox could’ve done anything. He wasn’t a lawyer. Actually, I got the sense he worked completely above the law, which could be the reason for his absence yet not a compelling one for me.
My only choice was to go to Brax, as much as I hated it.
I’d waited in his lobby for over an hour because, “I didn’t have an appointment.” I knew Brax wasn’t busy enough to warrant behavior like that, knew it was a power play, but what options did I have? My nails were bitten raw by the time he finally emerged from his office.
“Avery,” he greeted me, straightening his tie. “Sorry for the wait. If I had known you were coming, I would’ve cleared my schedule.”
A lie. We both knew it. But I ignored it, letting him usher me into his office.
“I need to see Kane,” I told Brax, not bothering with pleasantries.
His stare was icy, that coldness I’d sensed from him, that menace that he’d masked poorly in front of Kane was now on the surface. I resisted the urge to back down. This man would not intimidate me. This was way too important.
“That’s not possible.”
“What do you mean that’s not possible?” I demanded. “The prison has visiting hours. I called them, but they said I need to be on some kind of list?”
Brax rounded the desk then settled himself down in the seat, reaching forward to look at some papers. “Yes, considering Kane’s celebrity status, we’ve had to make some arrangements, for his safety.” He didn’t look up at me. Didn’t offer me a seat. Not that I wanted to sit down.
My hands were clenched at my sides. “I’d hope you’d make arrangements for his safety," I bit out. Kane was a big figure in my mind. Powerful. Not just physically. But there was something safe about him, a sense that he could never be hurt. Except that wasn’t true. He was in prison.
A shiver raced down my spine.
“But I’m assuming safety precautions are primarily focused on protecting him from other prisoners, not his…” I motioned to myself.
Girlfriend sounded so immature. Kane routinely called me ‘his woman,’ though I felt silly, referring to myself in that manner.
I squared my shoulders. “I need to see him,” I stated instead of getting caught up on labels.
Brax still didn’t look up at me. “As I said, Kane’s visitor list is short, and unfortunately, you’re not on it.”
That didn’t make sense. Wasn’t I given power of attorney? How had things changed so much so quickly? There was no point in asking the whys of it. I had one goal: to see Kane.
“Well, put me on it,” I insisted firmly.
Finally, he looked up. His expression was still cold, but there was faux pity in his eyes now. “I can’t do that. Kane has specifically entrusted me to keep you off the list.”
My breathing stuttered. “What are you talking about? Victoria said in our first meeting that I was in charge of Kane’s legal decisions, which I assume includes his visitor list.”
“Victoria is not in charge anymore.” He sighed dramatically, splaying his hands out on the papers in front of him. I hated the gesture and hated him. “I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, I really don’t. Of all of Kane’s women, I liked you the most. The rest were obviously good-looking, but you’re not like them. You’ve got more … substance.” He slowly surveyed me, his eyes trailing up and down my body. “I was hoping that Kane would change his ways. But he’s an old dog up to the same tricks. And I hate that this is part of my job description, but the motherfucker pays me well, and…” he shrugged in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture.
There was a high-pitched ringing in my ears. “Are you trying to insinuate that Kane was with other women as well as me?” Suddenly, my head was throbbing.
Another sigh. “I’m not going to say anything more.” He looked down at his papers again. “I see you’re already distressed enough, and I thought you were smart enough to know the score. You know Kane’s reputation. But I guess he pulled the whole ‘my woman’ thing again and gave you the wrong idea.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, unfortunately. I do wish you the best.”
He was dismissing me. Like he was better than me. The sniveling prick.
“As much as I’m sure your word is good, forgive me if I wouldn’t prefer to hear the words from Kane’s mouth.” I straightened my spine. “Even if what you say is true—”
“It is,” he interrupted.
I gritted my teeth against the rage brewing in my stomach. “I’m sure it is,” I said tightly, not believing a word he said. “But I have other matters to discuss with him.”
Brax arched a disbelieving brow at me. He was trying to make me feel small. Small, desperate and unimportant. I’d had many inferior men try that shit with me.
“You can discuss the matters with me, then I’ll pass them on.”
In his fucking dreams.
“These matters are private,” I replied, wanting to shriek yet keeping my tone calm yet unyielding. “And as I said, I’d prefer to speak directly with Kane.”
Brax rose, walking around the desk with a cocky gait before leaning against the side of it to regard me. “Let me guess,” he folded his arms in front of him. “He told you he loved you. That this was ‘it’ for him.” I struggled not to wince when he used air quotes.
Kane had said both of those things, but they were things couples in love often said. Brax was screwing with me. I knew it.
Maybe because he didn’t like me—weak men didn’t usually like women they couldn’t bully—or just because he could.
“Again I’d—”
“I know.” He clicked his fingers, again interrupting me. “He said that he wanted to sell his penthouse, get rid of all the playboy shit, artifacts of an old life and buy a little cabin in the woods of Vermont with you. Except he never took you to his apartment because it was being ‘renovated,’ so you actually don’t even know where he lives.”
“Do you think of the future?” Kane asked, his finger lazily trailing over my areola.
My entire body shivered, and need built in the base of my spine, even though we had just finished having magnificent sex.
I struggled to focus on the question. “I think of the future insofar as how the weather in certain growing regions of the country will affect crops and, therefore, quality of fresh, local produce and, therefore, my menu.”
Kane’s hand settled on my chest, over my heartbeat which was jackhammering, despite the calm tenor to my voice.
His chuckle was low, deep and sultry. “A woman after my own heart. My view of the future is pretty much wondering how much powder they’re gonna get in New Zealand during the winter and if I’ll piss off my sponsors if I blow off summer games here.”
“Not exactly the same.” I glanced up at him.
He tucked hair behind my ears. “Same spirit. We think of the future only in regard to how it affects our day to day. But you don’t think about … white picket fences, kids, dogs?”
I let out a half-hysterical laugh.
Kane wasn’t smiling.
“I look like the June Cleaver type to you?” I asked him.
“You look like you.” He dragged his knuckles down my cheek. “And you’re a woman who ensures that she gets whatever she desires in life.”
“That most definitely isn’t a picket fence or dogs.”
“Kids?” he murmured softly.
My heart skipped. This conversation was getting serious. Fast.
“No,” I told him honestly. “I don’t think I’d be a good mother. I shut off too many emotions too young. I’m too selfish. Too regimented with my routine. I wouldn’t do well with the havoc children bring.”
It’s something I’d thought of sparingly over the years. Since it was getting to be the time for me to freeze my eggs if I wanted them in the future.
I didn’t voice my fear that I’d fuck up a child, fail at motherhood. The fears that had stopped me from considering if I really wanted it.
“You do pretty fucking well with the chaos I bring.” Kane’s gaze and tone told me he was serious. “And you are far from selfish, as my cock would attest to.”
I smiled. “Kind of different, don’t you think?”
His eyes swam with something I couldn’t decipher.
“Do you? Want kids?” I found myself asking a question I didn’t want the answer to. Afraid his answer might show how different our futures would be, further putting a time limit on this relationship.
He didn’t respond straightaway, I could see him thinking. He wasn’t going to pacify me; he was going to give me an honest reply.
“Maybe,” he said as my heart dropped. “Maybe if I wasn’t so fucked-up. If I didn’t have mommy issues that I recognize are not completely dealt with. Maybe if I didn’t enjoy picking up and leaving on a whim. Maybe if I’d had a better father.” He chuckled without humor. “So no. No kids.”
“But I like the idea of Vermont.” He stared at me.
I stared back, perplexed. “Vermont?”
He nodded. “A cabin, one I built with my bare hands.” He winked. “Or one I pretended to build with my bare hands while paying a very talented carpenter. Land where I could build a custom dirt bike track. A vegetable garden for you, in addition to a huge fucking kitchen, of course.”
“For me?”
He nodded. “You think I’m pretending to build a house for little old me, Chef?” He stroked my jaw. “It’s all for you. You’ll open a restaurant. People will come from all over the country. The world. We’ll fuck out in the woods.”
I let his words wash over me. I couldn’t decipher whether it was just a pie in the sky fantasy or if he was really serious. He looked serious. He was planning a future for us. In a cabin. In Vermont. In any other circumstance, a man planning a future for me would set my hackles rising.
But with Kane, it didn’t.
A cabin, a vegetable garden, woods. Yeah, that sounded … nice.
A restaurant that was mine, really mine, where I didn’t have to cater to anyone for publicity, for articles in magazines.
Kane nuzzled my neck. “I’m not sold on Vermont. Or the cabin. Anywhere is fine, with you.”
“I like a cabin in Vermont,” I said in a small voice.
It was the closest thing to commitment I’d ever done in my life.
It terrified me.
Because it felt right.
“Vermont it is,” he pressed a kiss to my lips.
A brick landed in my stomach. That was not an easy guess. Brax wasn’t saying that to fuck with me—well, the arrogant tilt to his lips told me he was—but what he was saying was true. Because Kane had told him about the promises he’d made of a future that quickly turned out to be bullshit.
Brax didn’t even try to hide his shit-eating grin as he saw the blood drain from my face. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re the second woman this week who had to hear that her plans for Vermont were going to have to be put off. Indefinitely.”
I tasted ash, certain I was going to throw up. Not only were his promises of the future empty, they weren’t even original. There was another woman—one I inexplicably hated even though none of this was her fault—who had thought Kane was hers. If I’d had my wits about me, I might’ve questioned where this woman was, why she hadn’t spoken to the media after Kane’s and my relationship was splashed everywhere. I did not have my wits about me, though. And a guarded part of me had been waiting for this, expecting the other shoe to drop.
Brax crossed the space between us, only able to get close to me because I was frozen in place.
His hands went to my shoulders in what appeared to be a reassuring squeeze, but the pressure was too much, to the point of pain. Well, it might’ve hurt if not for the agonizing split in my chest that left me feeling completely numb.
I wanted to run then. Run from the pain, the excruciating pain, from Brax’s smarmy expression, from the blackness clouding my vision.
But I held fast.
I held on to him.
Kane.
To the moments.
All of the moments with him that I had as evidence that I wasn’t just some other woman. That we were something real. And I held on to something else.
“Whether or not that’s the case,” I said, my voice surprisingly strong despite the tornado of emotions swimming through me. “He also has a right to know something else.”
Brax’s oily gaze remained on me for a few moments before realization dawned in his eyes. They went down to my stomach, full of nothing but a cluster of cells at that point. Yet my hands went there protectively, as if to shield the being inside of me from Brax’s stare.
His eyes darted back up to me. Full of faux pity. “What a pickle,” he tutted. “This makes things … more complicated.” He slapped his hands together, and I jumped at the sound.
Harsh.
He grinned at my jump, satisfied at the evidence that I was on edge.
I glared at him.
“So you see it’s important that I talk to him,” I stated matter-of-factly. Calmly.
He nodded. “I see. Unfortunately, even this…” I had to force myself not to smack him when he waved his hand at my stomach. “Is not enough to override his explicit wishes, I’m afraid. But I will tell him.” He paused, pinching his chin. “You have sufficient documentation, I assume. I apologize that I can’t take you at your word, but this isn’t the first time this has happened.”
I tasted bile. Not just from throwing up in the restrooms thirty minutes ago.
Willing myself to keep my expression even, my posture taut, I reached into my purse.
It took everything inside me to hand the small black and white photo over to Brax. My hands had clutched it even harder once his manicured fingers had fastened around it.
Silly.
It wasn’t even of anything. Barely a speck.
But it had a heartbeat.
That speck.
Our child.
A beating heart. Already.
That little piece of paper was suddenly the most precious thing I owned. Tangible proof of something that felt utterly surreal, terrifying and sacred all at the same time.
I hadn’t even been sure I wanted it until that moment.
Brax pulled harder to get the ultrasound photo into his meaty paws.
He didn’t handle it with care, causing it to crinkle.
I suppressed a growl.
Brax’s eyes lowered to the picture without emotion. “I’ll ensure he gets this, and I’ll be in touch.”
He tossed the photo on the desk like it was nothing more than a receipt.
His blatant disregard for my situation was like poison darts, hitting their mark. I wanted to do more. Demand more. But I was totally powerless at that moment.
I wasn’t Kane’s wife. I had no claim to him. Had no other way of getting in contact with him.
Knox was my only other connection with him, the only person I truly trusted to get this information to him.
But he was ‘in the wind,’ Kane had said when I’d told him I couldn’t reach him.
And I had the impression ‘in the wind’ meant he wasn’t going to be found unless he wanted to be.
But he must’ve known about Kane. Though I knew the two had a complicated relationship, Knox wouldn’t willingly abandon Kane like this.
He’d turn up. Even if I couldn’t trust Brax, I could wait for that.
That's all I could do.
I was completely powerless.
The realization made me wobbly on my feet, but fuck if this asshole was going to see me as weak. So I kept my chin high and my gaze on his when I told him, “I’ll be expecting to hear from you. Soon.”
The grin remained. That knowing grin. That taunting grin. “Of course,” he replied placidly. “You have a good day. Take care of yourself. Be careful. I know that this city can be dangerous at the best of times, especially with someone in your … condition.”
A threat. I didn’t know why or really how, but it felt like a threat.
I didn’t balk.
“I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can,” he said sarcastically.
I turned my back, my step not faltering until I got home.
Brax was true to his word, something I hadn’t expected.
I did hear from him promptly.
The next day.
I’d expected him to fuck with me. Make me wait, even if he did get in touch with Kane as soon as he could.
He was a small man who wanted power. And this was the most he’d ever had. I’d seen him watch Kane, seen him covet what Kane had. I’d trusted Kane’s judgment, thought that there was a reason Brax was around, although I never trusted him.
I had to hold on to that trust in Kane, although it was hanging by a thread.
I didn’t let any of my unease show on my face as I went back to Brax’s offices. Didn’t let him see evidence of the sleepless night I’d had, the worry and fear churning in my stomach.
His words had bounced around my brain all night. Had made me question everything. As if I hadn’t already been questioning everything.
I wouldn’t say I had many plans for my life outside of running my own kitchen, owning my own restaurant one day. Well, that was the plan. The main and only plan.
There hadn’t been dreams of a man, a wedding, and most definitely not of a white picket fence. No plan to create a new family. I had a complicated enough relationship with my family as it was. No way was I going to try to make one of my own. I wasn’t capable of that.
Then again, I hadn’t thought I was capable of falling in love.
Yet I’d fallen hard and brutally for Kane.
I’d avoided feelings because I knew the power of them. Knew that losing love could ruin you. No way would I give away that power.
Then came Kane.
He made me feel safe. He made me feel like I wasn’t going to lose him. That he wasn’t going to ruin me.
Then there was the arrest. The trial, which was bad enough. The blame I carried around with me was almost devastating. It had caused me to be constantly sick to my stomach, throwing up everything I ate. Or at least I had thought it was the guilt.
In a million years, I wouldn’t have thought that it might be a baby.
Our baby.
We were careful.
Not that careful, obviously.
Kane hadn’t wanted a barrier between us. And nor had I. I wanted that intimacy. I was on birth control, and I trusted science even though I knew that nothing was 100 percent effective. Plus, I was over thirty—a woman’s chances of conceiving at my age were less than 20 percent per month.
I’d considered the risk to be nonexistent.
I hadn’t thought about how powerful Kane was, how equally powerful his sperm must’ve been. Not just to circumvent birth control but then to survive the stress of the past few months.
I had gone through the motions of my life as best as I could. Except I didn’t do anything very well. Cooking was a shitshow. Pregnancy jacked up your tastebuds, it seemed. And then there was the almost round-the-clock vomiting. Luckily, my staff was the best in the world and able to run the kitchen without me. None had blinked an eye at my ‘stomach virus’ making it so I couldn’t run point on dishes.
My team wasn’t easily ruffled.
Still, I had no idea what I was going to do about the kitchen. If my sickness continued—which my reading told me it would, until the second trimester, at least—I couldn’t work. I couldn’t cook the quality food I was known for.
The mere prospect sent me into a cold sweat.
But I’d deal with that when it came. First, I needed to talk to Kane.
Brax had been lying. He’d caught me when I was vulnerable, had sniffed that out. But no way could he ruin everything Kane and I had in one conversation.
I’d been sure of that when he let me into his offices again, the same fake smile, same slimy demeanor.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, gesturing for me to sit.
I ignored that, staying standing. “I’m feeling like I don’t need small talk. I need you to tell me I’m on the approved list to visit Kane.” I had my ice queen persona firmly in place.
Brax’s face softened into what was surely faux pity, but his beady eyes looked calculated.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
“What the fuck do you mean?” I demanded. “You said you would speak to him.”
He nodded. “I did. I spoke, told him about you, showed him this.” He took the crumpled and ripped ultrasound photo out from inside of his jacket.
He’d ruined it on purpose, I was certain. Brax was the kind of person who wanted to ruin pure and wonderful things just because he could.
I let the rage burn my throat, but I kept my expression cool.
“And he gave me this, to give to you.” He took out another piece of paper, this one smooth. Pristine.
Instead of handing it to me, he pushed it across his desk in my direction.
I gritted my teeth at his assholery. I took slow, measured steps to snatch up the piece of paper with steady hands, unfolding it and reading it.
Get rid of it.
I stared at those four words, a viscous sludge rippling through my gut.
My hands began to shake, gripping the paper hard enough to almost tear it in half.
Get rid of it.
Written in Kane’s handwriting. I knew the messy, bold scrawl backward and forward. Had notes from him carefully preserved in a drawer beside my bed at home.
His handwriting. His words.
Get rid of it.
As if it were nothing. As if I were nothing.
My hand went to my stomach, and the paper fluttered to the floor. It didn’t make a sound. I expected it to boom at the impact due to how heavy it had felt mere moments ago.
“I can arrange an appointment at a discreet clinic. I’ve been authorized to give funds to pay for the procedure.” Brax’s words seemed to be coming from a vacuum.
My head snapped up to meet his sniveling face. I was now released from any and all obligation to be polite to him.
“Go to hell,” I said evenly. “You and your small, small mind and your gigantic ego can go to hell.”
Then I turned and left, knowing I had nowhere to go, nothing left, but that I also had to protect the one thing in this world that was mine.
KANE
I clenched and unclenched my fists, willing my body to relax. I knew that she would assess every part of me in that sharp gaze of hers. She wouldn’t miss a thing. Avery made it her job to become an expert at whatever she was interested in. And lucky son of a bitch that I was, she was interested in me.
Therefore, she’d seen me wired, she’d noted my lack of sleep and the energy of a caged animal I’d worked my ass off to shake. Thankfully, I hadn’t been in any fistfights to establish dominance or some such shit. I’d been ready and willing to fight for a spot needed, but apparently, Knox had made arrangements since no one fucked with me. And I knew that was not because they were all motocross fans. Another way my brother protected me.
I was glad about it for many reasons, most because it would mean Avery wouldn’t have something else to worry about.
I might not have made it my business to become an expert in everything I did, but I had made it my business to become an expert in her. Part of the reason I couldn’t sleep— in addition to the paper-thin mattress, the stifling heat and the narrowness of the cell—was because I was haunted by images of her.
Running out into the alley, her eyes wide, pupils dilated like an animal that had become prey. The red mark on her cheek. The complete absence of the strong and sure woman I’d come to know. To love.
Her face after I was done beating Gerald to a pulp. Not horror. Not disgust in me. Not fear either. I couldn’t quite decipher the expression. There was an emptiness in it that scared me.
Then the way she looked when she came to visit me. Pale. Gaunt. Bags under her eyes she’d tried to cover. Panic coming out of her very pores. Worry. And worst of all, guilt. She blamed herself. The fucking world blamed her. A conclusion that made me furious enough to punch through a goddamn wall.
The world was mad at a brilliant, interesting, talented woman for the crime of being abused. For the crime of knocking an asshole off his pedestal.
When it was me who did the knocking.
And I’d do it all over again.
But fuck, did I miss the taste of her. The smell of her. The warmth of her. I was well aware that she had the reputation of being an ‘ice queen,’ but no woman had burned hotter under my touch than Avery Hart.
Thinking of that, of her, her hair splayed out on the pillow, me inside her, eyes electric, wide, wild. The woman unrestrained …that calmed me.
Three hundred and fifty-five more days.
I looked up when I heard the clang of the doors open, my smile ready.
But Brax walked through the door, the door closing and bolting behind him. I’d already seen him once before. How he’d managed to get in before Avery I didn’t know, and it pissed me off. But he had things for me to sign, papers for me to go over, apparently.
“Where’s Chef?” I demanded, standing. “Is she okay?” My mind whirled with things that could’ve happened, my fucking knees trembling at just the thought.
Brax smoothed his suit, taking his time to walk over and sit down across from me. And fuck if I hated that unhurried gait, that inflated sense of importance. I’d always known who Brax was—arrogant, power hungry, calculated—but it had amused me more than anything.
No one was perfect, and I knew better than anyone that we were a product of our trauma, never knowing what someone had gone through. I tended to give people the benefit of the doubt. Brax had been with me since the start. And as much as he could be a smarmy, sanctimonious prick, he’d never fucked me over.
“She’s not coming,” Brax said.
I was still standing. “I fuckin’ deduced that. Why not?”
“You wanna sit?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “I want you to tell me where Chef is.”
Brax sighed. It was long and dramatic and fuck, it ignited the embers already simmering in my gut.
“No one knows.” He drummed his fingers on the table.
My heart rate went haywire. “What do you mean? Has someone—”
“No, it’s not as dramatic as all that,” Brax chuckled.
I wanted to plow my fist through his face for that chuckle.
“Although I would argue dropping everything, quitting her restaurant and leaving town is still pretty dramatic,” he continued, unaware of how close I was to ruining his veneers.
Everything in me silenced.
“What?” I gasped.
He looked at me with pity in his gaze. “Man, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this. Fuck.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I wanted her to be different for you, bro, I really did. I didn’t think she was one of those clout chasers, in it for whatever they can get out of you. But she got her interview, got paid six figures for it, and now she’s gone.”
“Fuck off.” I slumped into the chair. “She’s not gone. Chef wouldn’t leave. She promised.”
“She came to see me a few days ago, before she left,” he sighed again. “And her mind was made up.”
“Bullshit,” I spat, looking up at Brax. “She’s not fucking gone. She’ll be here.”
Brax shrugged his shoulders. “I wish I had your optimism. And maybe she will be.”
There was no maybe about it.
Chef had not gone. I knew that shit surer than I knew anything.
She had promised me.