Chapter 35 Rowe
Rowe
“What happened with Luke?” Pane asks later that night when we’re in bed.
I’m lying on his chest, tracing the lines of his abs. I tip my head up to look at him. “Oh, we’ve reached that stage in our relationship, have we?”
He glances down, frowns. “What stage?”
“The stage where you reveal your deepest wounds.”
Pane’s frown intensifies. “You already know mine.”
My heart contracts, and I feel bad for bringing it up. I drop my head, and he hooks a finger under my chin, lifting my face until our gazes lock.
“Okay, maybe I do have one or two more.”
“Of course you do. We all do.”
He releases my chin and I snuggle back onto his chest, where I resume admiring him. I comb my fingers over his pecs. They have just the right amount of chest hair—enough for me to know he’s a man, but not so much that I get swallowed whole.
“What happened with Luke is that I got pregnant.”
Beneath me, he stills. “I see.”
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t know the half of it.
“I didn’t know until after he’d left me for Sally Ray.
I must’ve missed taking some of my pills before we broke up.
I mean, the whole time was so stressful, what with my dad being sick and everything.
I was trying to help my mom and dad, and Luke was acting weird.
I knew something was going on, but I didn’t know what.
“Then Luke left just before my dad took a turn for the worse. We’d just found out that his cancer was inoperable.
It had spread too far. At the time I was furious at Luke.
How could he leave me? How could he cheat with Sally?
How could he have done that? I was heartbroken on so many levels—for my dad, my mom, myself. ”
I glance up at Pane’s perfect jawline before continuing, “I was miserable. But I still did my best to be present while my dad went into hospice. I must not’ve done a good job, because my mom took me aside and reminded me that my dad wouldn’t be around much longer.
She said it was best that Luke left instead of staying and leading all of us on.
Deep down, I knew she was right. But it was still a bitter pill to swallow. ”
Pane’s lips brush the top of my head. “I’m sorry.”
I sit up and prop my head on my fist. “I’m not. I’m glad he’s gone. But anyway. Yes, I found out that I was pregnant, and when I told him”—my stomach twists—“he said that I was lying.”
Pane’s eyes become as dark as midnight as his jaw clenches and unclenches. “I wish I’d broken more than his nose.” He starts to get up. “Let me change that.”
I tug him back down and press my lips to his. “The best revenge is not letting him take this farm.”
“It’s not quite good enough.”
“It is for me.” I slump back onto the bed and lie on my side, facing him. “Do you want to hear the rest?”
“Do I have to?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll have your time in the hot seat.”
Pane pinches his eyes shut with his fingers and sighs. “Let’s hear it.”
I brush his hand away from his face, and he slowly blinks his eyes open. When I’m satisfied that his anger has died down enough for him to listen, I keep on.
“Luke wouldn’t take my calls, and as far as I knew, we were having a baby. So I went to Sally Ray’s to confront him, to try to get him to see the truth.” Pane brushes hair from my cheek. It’s a sweet, comforting gesture, but surprisingly I don’t need any comfort.
I exhale and keep on. “Luke came to the door and said that I was pathetic. But he wasn’t done.
The pregnancy was a lie, he told me. I was just trying to win him back.
I pleaded, begged him, swore that it was the truth, but he laughed in my face.
He slammed Sally Ray’s door and flicked out the porch light while I was still standing there. ”
The memory washes over me. Used to be that I would’ve experienced the heartache all over again by just talking about it. But now I don’t feel anything, because every moment in my life has led me to this one, to being with Pane.
“He shut the light off and left me standing there. It was the most humiliating experience of my life.” I lift my eyes and meet Pane’s scorching expression. He looks like he wants to rip Luke’s head off. I squeeze his hand. “But all that bad brought me here, to you, so I’m grateful for it.”
“And the baby?”
“I lost it not long after. Probably from all the stress. I never told my mom. It was too hard.”
“So you retreated into yourself,” he murmurs.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that I did.”
Pane takes my hand and pulls me back on top of him. His heart drums beneath my ear, and his chest slowly rises and falls as he quietly breathes.
He smooths a hand down my hair. “He never deserved you.”
“No, he didn’t.” I kiss his chest. “They deserve each other.”
“They do.”
I lift my head and rest my chin on top of my folded hands. “Your turn. What’s your horror story?”
He traces a finger along my cheekbone, studying me as if he’s about to sculpt me to life. “At the end of college, I dated a girl from Georgia, surprisingly, who told me that she was pregnant.”
“What?” This is worth sitting up for. I pull the sheet with me, keeping my breasts covered as I straddle him, admiring his naked chest all the way to the ridges of his nibble-worthy hip bones. “My goodness.”
Pane’s gaze is as cold as diamonds as he stares into the dark, but it softens when his eyes land on me. “My mother hated her.”
“Not Sylvia.”
He chuckles. “Yes, Sylvia. She said that if I wanted to be a dad and stay with my girlfriend, I’d be cut off from the family.”
“What? That’s brutal.” How could his mother be so ruthless to her own flesh and blood?
“That’s Sylvia Maddox,” he replies, as if hearing my silent question. “She will protect the Maddox brand no matter what, and me knocking up my college girlfriend wasn’t in the cards.”
“Oh. So then what happened?”
Pane sweeps my bangs to one side of my head, keeping his eyes focused there briefly before looking me in the eyes.
“I told my mother that I didn’t want to be a Maddox, that I was giving it all up.
When I told my girlfriend, she confessed that she wasn’t pregnant.
Said that she’d lied. If I didn’t have money, then she didn’t want me. ”
My heart cracks in two. Who could be so evil? Sylvia being ruthless was one thing, but for a person to only date Pane because of his wealth, to lie about a baby—to attempt to trap him into marriage—and then dump him when he gave everything up? What sort of person does that?
And then suddenly, I understand him. I get why he only dated women in his social circle, why he pegged me for a fortune hunter: Because the last woman he loved was a fortune hunter. Money was all that mattered to her—not this beautiful man.
I run my fingers through his silky locks, and he closes his eyes at my touch. As I’m stretching forward, my grip on the sheet loosens. It begins to slip, but I gather it back up, wadding it at my throat.
When Pane opens his eyes, I say, “Just so you know, I would never be with you for your money.”
He smiles sadly. “It’s what I like best about you.”
“I know. Because I’d be dating you for your jet, instead.”
His eyes flare in surprise, and before I have a chance to stop him, he flings the sheet away from me, exposing my breasts.
I gasp at the cold that sweeps over my flesh, making it prickle. My nipples harden from the chill and Pane sits up, taking one of them in his mouth.
I drop my head back and moan with pleasure. Underneath me, his cock hardens.
When he lets my pebbled nipple fall from his mouth, he says in a husky voice, “You’re going to pay for that.”
I laugh. “Please, punish me.”