Chapter 15
Fifteen
FOUR MONTHS LATER
AVERY
Jupiter, Maine was as good a place as any to hide. In fact, it could be described as one of the best places to run to.
It was idyllic, picturesque, settled on the rugged coastline, with idyllic, sea-weathered cottages. With well-maintained, colorful businesses on the cobbled main street. No chain restaurants or big-box stores to be seen. Everything was mom-and-pop, from the grocery store to the bakery that offered the best croissants I’d had inside and outside of France. Along with everything else in the pretty display cabinet.
The pastry chef was one of the most talented I’d encountered in my life. Which was saying something. When I’d first bit into her food, I’d told myself that I’d have to recruit her for the restaurant.
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.
I flinched at the acrimony in his voice.
He’d never, never spoken to me like that before. His tone with me was always soft, teasing, playful, sensual. Never had he spoken so harshly.
I felt it. Everywhere.
Or I imagined I would, after the shock wore off.
“You got out early,” I commented, my voice sounding vaguely detached. Kane had been gone for five months. Five months, three days and about twelve hours if you wanted to get technical.
Therefore, he should’ve still had about five months, twenty-six days and twelve hours left of his sentence.
It was a fairly benign if not logical observation, but it was obviously not the right thing to say.
“Oh, I’m sorry I got out early. Is that the reason why you weren’t there waiting for me?” he asked. No, growled. “If I’d been inside for a year, without a word from you, without knowing if you were alive or fuckin’ dead, let alone pregnant , you’d be there waiting for me, right? Like you promised?”
He was yelling now. Roaring, to be honest.
The force of his anger was a tsunami, washing over me. Yet somehow, I remained standing. I could feel my hands shaking, though. I wasn’t afraid. Not quite. I was unable to fathom that Kane was here. That Kane was able to yell at me like that.
The sun, as if to match his mood, suddenly disappeared, storm clouds darkening the afternoon and booming thunder making me jump.
“I can’t fucking believe this!” he yelled, rivaling the thunder for volume.
Rain started falling softly behind him.
“You don’t get to yell at me,” I replied quietly. I wanted to yell back. But I didn’t have the energy.
“You disappeared after I was put in prison , not a fucking word!” he screamed, both hands on his hips as he paced up and down my front porch. The rain began coming down harder. “And I thought that was bad enough, considering what I thought we had, but for the first time in my life, I actually could not conceive of the worst-case scenario. Because never in my wildest fuckin’ dreams would I have imagined the woman I loved would’ve not only abandoned me but neglected to tell me about our goddamn baby !”
He’d stopped pacing, leaning toward me to roar. In my face.
He was out of control. I could feel his frantic energy, taste the electricity of his fury crackling around me.
Kane was livid. Perhaps even dangerous. His fists were balled at his sides, veins of his forearms spiderwebbing down his arms. His nostrils were flared, eyes wide, pupils dilated, and his whole form was shaking with fury.
But I wasn’t scared. He wouldn’t hurt me. Not physically, at least.
He looked me up and down with absolute disgust. “Unless it’s not mine.”
If he’d hit me, it would’ve hurt less.
“It’s yours,” I said in a small voice.
“And that makes it so much fuckin’ worse,” he hissed, huffing out a long exhale through his nostrils.
I chewed on the inside of my mouth until I tasted blood.
“You’re entitled to your feelings,” I told him, keeping my voice even.
“Entitled to my fucking feelings ?” His eyes bulged. “Yeah, I’m entitled to them. But that’s not the response I want from you. That response isn’t you. What I want is an explanation for this shit even though there isn’t a sufficient explanation for trying to hide my child from me, for robbing me of watching you grow…” My heart panged, just a tad at the way his voice cracked abruptly.
His furious veneer wavered, gifting me with a glimpse of the man beneath the anger. The man who was sleepy in the morning, who was soulful in the moonlight, who had a soft side that hadn’t hardened no matter how many times he’d thrown himself off cliffs, raced motorcycles or jumped out of planes.
Right then, he was … hurt.
My insides were shredding, and hot shame poured over me.
“Were you going to hide the baby from me after it was born?” he asked, quieter now. “Were you going to keep my kid from me?”
My heartbeat thrashed in my throat, and I had the vague feeling I might vomit up my insides.
“You didn’t want it,” I replied, putting my hands over my stomach protectively.
A gesture that Kane instantly caught and made him stiffen, likely because he thought I was protecting the baby from him .
“I didn’t want it?” he repeated quietly. “I didn’t fucking know it existed!” He was back to roaring again, gesturing violently toward my stomach.
I recoiled, though I hated myself for it.
“Don’t you dare fucking back away from me like I’m going to hurt you,” he snarled, getting in my face. “You know I’m not going to hurt you. I’d never harm a hair on your fuckin’ head.”
I bit my lip harder, the metallic taste of blood grounding me.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I muttered, mostly to myself. “I tried to tell you. I mean, I did tell you, but you didn’t want to see me.”
“Who in the fuck told you that?” Kane asked, fingers at his temples.
I wrung my hands. Everything I’d built my life around these past few months was slowly falling apart. Not that the proverbial building itself was structurally sound in the first place.
“Brax,” I said in little more than a whisper, the thunder drowning out his name.
“What? I can’t hear you?” his voice was harsh, still much too loud, much too cold.
“Brax,” I said louder, my throat thick. “He, um, I told him, and he told me that you wanted me to … get rid of it.”
Kane’s mouth fell open, the tips of his ears going fire-red. I’d thought he was angry before. No, I hadn’t seen anything yet. My stomach curdled with true fear. Kane was pissed off at me before, he’d been furious. But I was never in danger. I’d never seen a truly violent or deadly side to him, not even that day in the kitchen.
Until right that second.
“Well, Brax is going to fucking die,” he seethed, almost to himself.
I shivered at his tone, what he said. He was not speaking in metaphors.
“Back to this.” He motioned to my bump. All hardness rapidly left his gaze, a … tenderness in place that almost brought me to my knees.
I was already having a hard time being upright, but that tenderness? That was ten thousand times harder to handle than his wrath.
“You know what we had, Avery,” he shook his head. There was no tenderness in his voice. It was cold. Goose bumps erupted on my arms.
What we had .
Past tense.
Needless to say, I’d already mourned what we had. Or thought I had. My version of mourning was cursing his name throughout the day and hating myself for longing for him during the night.
But seeing him in that moment, understanding that there had been some kind of miscommunication and that he hadn’t said what Brax told me made me mourn him all over again.
Because he had been mine. When I’d seen the two lines. When I’d been scared but also excited—deep, deep down. About having something with Kane. Something permanent. In that second, I’d imagined a snapshot of a life I could have.
With Kane.
Then reality came in and kicked our asses.
That life was gone, no matter what came after this. Because of me.
“You know what we had,” he repeated, his eyes filled with emotion as he looked over my shoulder. “Yet you let Brax convince you it was nothing in one fuckin’ conversation .”
There was accusation there. Some of which I might’ve deserved. I definitely shouldn’t have made such a big, permanent decision based on secondhand information from an unreliable source.
And maybe part of the reason why I’d believed Brax so readily was because I didn’t believe that Kane and I would last. And because I knew that I wouldn’t survive him rejecting me to my face.
“He knew about Vermont,” I told him, putting my hands on my hips. Maybe I had some blame in all of this, but I wasn’t just about to submit. Pregnant or not, I had a backbone, and I was suddenly ready for a fight. Suddenly, I was ready for war.
Something skated over the outrage on Kane’s face, rippled past it. Confusion? Shock? Who knew? I didn’t have it in me to inspect Kane’s expressions. Not when they were so full of contempt.
“You told him about Vermont, and he said it was a story you told all your … women,” I continued, failing to keep the jealous bite from my voice.
It was better than the pathetic heartbreak that had been seeping from my every cell.
“And the note telling me to get rid of it was in your handwriting.”
Kane stood there, staring, waiting. I didn’t say anything else.
“That’s it?” he eventually asked quietly. “That’s all it took for you to give up on me, on us? To run away and take my child from me?” There was a slight snarl to his lip. He felt betrayed. “You didn’t try to see me? Didn’t talk to Victoria? I informed her directly that all decisions were yours to make.”
I released my chewed-up lip to reply. “Victoria was out of reach when I found out.”
“How long, Avery?” he screeched. “How long was she out of reach for? Did you wait one day, two? Did she call you back?”
I opened my mouth then closed it, unable to answer the rapidly asked questions, shot at me like bullets from a gun.
“I know she called you back because she fuckin’ told me, after Brax delivered the news that you were gone,” he seethed. “That you’d left me. I got in touch with Victoria, told her to find you because I might’ve been blind to what a complete piece of shit Brax is, but I knew not to trust the motherfucker with something so precious.”
Something so precious. Me. Us.
He wasn’t looking at me like I was precious.
“Did she call you back, Avery?” he asked, indignation carving off every word so they were pointed.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. The rain pounded louder now, the smell of the storm assaulting my senses, mingling with Kane’s ire that was more powerful than the storm itself.
“You don’t know?” he repeated, sounding so cold. Cruel. “How is it you couldn’t know if your one connection with me, the father of your fuckin’ baby , called you back?”
“I changed my number,” I answered, my voice shrinking more with every moment.
“You changed your number.” Again, repeating my answer in that tone.
I was looking down at the pots on either side of my front door. Distressed gray with dying blooms sitting in them because Kiera had arranged them, planted them, then demanded I keep them alive. As if doing anything beyond keeping myself and a baby thriving was doable.
“Look at me.” The command was harsh, razor sharp.
If words could make you bleed, I would’ve been dripping on the floor.
Despite the pain, despite fearing I wouldn’t be able to handle his gaze, I obeyed his command. And the disdain on his face shredded me further.
“Why would you break every thread you had connecting you to me on the word of one asshole?” he asked carefully.
A bead of sweat trickled down the side of my face. “Because someone leaked it, my number. I was getting calls, texts, death threats.” It wasn’t a lie. And it was awfully convenient that my number leaked right after my visit to Brax, before Victoria was able to get back to me.
I was suddenly realizing what was so glaringly obvious, it was worse than a ‘twist’ in a poorly-written detective novel.
Kane twitched at the ‘death threats’ part.
“It was all Brax.” Shame spilled over me at my stupidity. “He orchestrated it all. To get me away. For whatever reason.”
Not for whatever reason. I’d come between him and Kane. I’d seen him for what he was. So he’d wanted to punish me. Ruin me.
“Yeah,” Kane said in a dead voice. “And you made it fuckin’ easy for him. You didn’t fight for us.”
What was left unsaid was that I didn’t fight for him . I could’ve wept in response to the pain he was veiling with anger and contempt.
“You gonna let me in, or you gonna continue to make me stand out here like a fuckin’ unwanted houseguest?” he asked. No, demanded.
We had been hashing out something immensely painful and personal on my front porch. Luckily, I didn’t have neighbors, my cottage located at the edge of town, down a long drive with the dense woods bordering my property, giving me the illusion that I was the only person left in the world.
Which is what I had wanted, to hide there. To rot there, maybe. Wallow in my pain and self-pity and absolute fear of what was to come.
I didn’t say anything, just moved my body in answer. He took that as permission and shouldered his way past. I stepped back in time, wondering if he would’ve pushed me if I hadn’t. Surely, he wouldn’t. Kane wouldn’t get physical with a woman, let alone a pregnant woman. Certainly not with me. Or so I’d thought. The old Avery wanted to call him out on that, tell him that despite his anger, he didn’t get to treat me poorly. I wanted to tell him to leave just so I could breathe.
Yet trying to argue with Kane at that juncture would’ve been unwise. Considering the state he was in, there was no winning with him, even on my best day. That was far from my best day. And it was pouring rain, he’d come on his bike. He would get soaked.
Realizing my own mistake in quickly believing those lies and then being hit with how pissed Kane was at me, seeing him after all that time was … a lot. No, it wasn’t Kane’s outrage, it was his pain that was hiding so poorly underneath his anger. I’d hurt him. Deeply.
I stood at the door for a little longer than might’ve been normal after he stormed through, holding on to the doorknob to stay upright and blinking at the motorcycle in the driveway.
I only caught myself when the sound of the back sliding door and the dog’s rabid barking jostled me into the present.
I rushed to shut the door then ran down the hall to the back door before my dog could try to maul Kane. That was the last thing I needed. Not that Kane couldn’t handle himself with an overgrown, untrained seventy-pound dog. The fight would likely be even. Or tilted in Kane’s favor. He just had that aura about him that said he could handle any threat. Most especially now, furious and obviously just out of prison.
But still, the dog had teeth. Sharp ones. That could tear into Kane’s skin, give him more scars. My stomach lurched yet again at the thought, because I’d come to the realization that he had plenty of new scars because of me, ones that weren’t visible to the naked eye but ones that were bone deep, soul deep.
Instead of finding a dog and man brawl in my kitchen, I found the dog on her back, presenting her stomach for Kane to scratch.
“She’s not barking,” I stated the obvious. “Or jumping on you. Or attacking you.”
“She’s not.” He didn’t look up at me, still speaking in that cold, growly tenor.
It made sense. He wasn’t exactly going to stop being angry at me from the time he walked from the front door to the kitchen.
“She barks at everyone,” I said, watching man and dog together, the sight making both my heart and pussy clench … for different reasons. The pussy was obvious; I hadn’t had sex in about … seven months. Kane looked better than ever in a simple black tee, ripped black jeans and boots. His bicep muscles stretched the fabric of his tee, looking like they’d grown a bunch in the time we’d been apart. His hair was longer too, and he had a dark scruff of stubble covering his jaw. With the tattoos, muscles and in all black, all he needed was a leather vest, and he’d look like an outlaw biker.
Despite Kane looking better than any man on earth had any right to look, it wasn’t just that. It was him. Here. It was his smell. It was his huge presence in my compact, little cottage. It was his large, strong hands scratching the dog I’d adopted.
He was here. In the home I had been trying to create for the past five months. The home that hadn’t been anything more than a house until he stormed through the door.
My eyes welled up, and I struggled to contain my tears.
Pregnancy hormones. That’s what it was.
I cleared my throat loudly. “She’s a rescue,” I explained, focusing on the dog. “And she is … strong-minded. She doesn’t stop barking or running around like an idiot unless I’m feeding her or I’ve tired her out with a long walk on the beach,” I babbled. “And part of that tiring her out is me wrestling with her when another person or dog walks by.”
I placed my hands on top of my belly, unsure of what to do with myself, how to stand, how to act in front of Kane. The man who I’d been more intimate with than anyone in my entire life had become a stranger to me.
When Kane looked up at me, his expression was blank. I had to stop myself from cringing at the sheer lack of warmth in it. This was the man who’d made me feel on fire and alive every time he laid eyes on me. The man who had made me feel like the only woman on planet Earth when he looked at me.
His gaze gravitated down to my stomach for a split second before he focused on the dog again. He gave her belly a rough pat before pressing onto his thighs and straightening up to a standing position.
Blanche jumped up as he did so, her tail wagging madly. I prepared for barking, jumping, plain old wild behavior.
“Go, sit,” Kane commanded, pointing to the rarely used, fancy dog bed across the open plan area in the living room.
I’d tried that command about a million times, at varying decibels. Yelling didn’t work. Nor did speaking softly and calmly. Nothing worked. Nothing that the sweet but befuddled dog trainer did worked either.
He informed me that he’d worked with hundreds of dogs and had yet to have one best him. She was his Everest.
Blanche didn’t skip a beat. She trotted over to her bed dutifully then settled there without so much as a frustrated bark, curling up and chewing on the toy bunny that she’d been uninterested in before then.
I stared in amazement. “Aaron is going to be pissed,” I said without thinking.
The energy in the room seemed to change. I looked at Kane whose eyes were narrowed and hands fisted at his sides. His attention glued me to the floor.
“Who the fuck is Aaron?” he asked quietly.
I kept my hands on my belly and stood my ground, despite my rapid rise in heart rate. “Aaron is a dog trainer.” I nodded to the bed. “Her dog trainer. I’ve been working with her for a couple of months. Aaron is happily married and just sent his daughter Caroline off to college,” I added, though I shouldn’t have had to.
Kane was quite obviously mad at me. Things between us were severed, yet he also thought he could be possessive and wrathful at the mere mention of another man’s name?
Kane didn’t reply. Just stared at me for ten full seconds. I counted in my head as I tried to remember to breathe.
Then he nodded, looking around, taking stock of the house.
I wasn’t skilled at decorating. At making places feel warm and welcoming. I was surprised my womb was welcoming enough for a baby to take root, but here we were. I was trying. With Kiera’s help.
It was pretty much all Kiera. She came to visit when she had time—which wasn’t often, but she’d occasionally jump on a plane to come for just a day—and in that time, she’d walk around the house with measuring tape, sucking her teeth and tapping on her phone.
The kitchen and living area were a result of her tapping.
Two, large deep-seated sofas were facing each other, the fabric a deep-green velvet. They were cluttered with contrasting-patterned, plush pillows, comfortable throws lying over the top of them. I’d tested out the comfort of the sofas many times, when I was too tired to make it to bed or if I had a day when my first trimester morning sickness decided to reappear.
The coffee table was round, in an effort to prepare for the baby proofing I’d inevitably have to do. There were varying sizes of beeswax candles—nontoxic because Kiera had also gone crazy to make sure everything in the house didn’t contain chemicals that could harm the baby. Worn paperbacks were piled beside the cabinets. Not Kiera’s doing, but me, desperate for distraction.
Baby books. All of them. Written by scientists, by doulas, midwives, spiritual experts—every side of the coin. I needed all the help I could get.
The fireplace was roaring because even though spring had sprung, I felt the cold more these days, despite my extra padding in the midsection area.
Paintings decorated the walls, all depicting womanly figures. Another thing that Kiera had insisted on, bringing ‘divine feminine energy’ into the house. I didn’t quite understand what that meant, but I let her do it.
Apparently, it meant warm tones, a lot of candles, books, flowers, fertility statues and crystals. Which I instantly balked at. If my sister were here, she would’ve approved.
But my sister wasn’t here.
She didn’t even know I was here. Or that I was pregnant.
Nor did my mother.
Outside of Kiera, my doctor and Brax, no one knew.
And now Kane knew. He was glaring at me with unwavering intensity.
“You renting?” he asked, his tone cold.
No more yelling.
Somehow, that was worse.
“Excuse me?” I asked, confused by the question.
“The house.” He waved one of his hands to gesture to the space around us. “You renting?”
“Um, no,” I wrung my hands. “I, um, kind of impulse bought.”
He stared at me. No change in his expression. “You impulse bought a house. ”
His tone reminded me of Kiera’s reaction when I’d told her about the house.
“It’s my Thurdy gift,” I informed her. “Did I use it right?”
There was a beat of silence at the other end of the phone. “Okay, I love that you’re using my term, but the concept has gotten a little lost on you. Because a Thurdy gift is something like a purse that costs as much as a used car, or maybe some hat that is only appropriate for the Royal Wedding even if you don’t have any British friends. It is not a small, quaint and very Nancy Meyers vibes house in a seaside town!”
She was yelling now.
Kane was still staring at me as I digested his words.
I chewed on my lip. His scrutiny was unyielding. I could barely breathe under it. “Well, I didn’t want to be in the restaurant after … everything,” I explained. “I tried at first, but I couldn’t. Because of what happened, and because the smell and any and all food made me hurl then pass out.” I was trying to make a joke at the end.
It didn’t work.
Kane’s gaze was even stormier. “You passed out in the kitchen?”
I swallowed past the boulder in my esophagus. “Not really. I mean, I caught myself.”
A beat of silence passed as he just stared at me, me looking out the window when his scrutiny made my skin begin to itch. “You caught yourself,” he eventually murmured, almost to himself.
My cheeks were flaming for some reason. I couldn’t stand the silence, so I started talking again. I’d always been comfortable in silences, even awkward ones. My ability to withstand them was a power move, so I’d never balked. Until then. “It became clear the restaurant wasn’t going to work, New York wasn’t going to work. Without my kitchen, the city was ….” Suffocating. A prison. A reminder of every memory I’d made with him.
“Unsuitable,” I said finally, touching my stomach lightly. “And the apartment wasn’t baby friendly.” I didn’t add that after Kane’s sentencing, it became impossible and unsafe to be at my apartment. Due to the mobs, my number being leaked, my heartbreak. I’d pretty much gathered my meager amount of belongings, did frantic googling about small towns then just left. “So…” I didn’t know what else to say, afraid to incite him even further.
“You bought a house. In Maine,” Kane stated flatly.
I shrugged in response. “I did. I, um, like it here.”
It wasn’t a lie. Not really. If I had the ability to like any place, it would’ve been here. If I weren’t numb and broken, I would’ve appreciated it. As it was, for the past five months, I had been numb and broken and couldn’t really like anything. Therefore, Jupiter, Maine, was tolerable. The best I could do.
Kane clicked his tongue and looked out the window at the crashing waves. More silence followed. More coldness radiating from him.
I steeled myself to remain in the silence. No more babbling to fill it. It seemed to only make things worse.
“Can I get you a drink?” I eventually offered lamely, unable to stand the silence for a moment longer. “Coffee?”
Kane’s head whipped from the windows. “You have a room for the baby?” he asked instead of answering my question.
I nodded, uncomfortable with the way he spoke of the baby. There was no warmth in his tone even though he seemed to have softened some. Same with his gaze when it floated to my stomach.
Even though it turned icy the second it returned to my eyes.
“Show me,” was all he ordered.
I didn’t have it in me to argue with him, to assert any kind of dominance in my own home. I didn’t know what to do but turn my back and hope he followed me.
The thump of his footsteps told me he did.
I didn’t pass out ascending the stairs, so I was obviously breathing. But for the life of me, I couldn’t seem to feel the oxygen in my lungs. They were tight, burning, my stomach swimming with nausea. Worse than first trimester morning sickness. And that was saying something.
Kane didn’t speak. But he was behind me. Right behind me. I could smell him, feel the heat radiating off his body as it almost brushed against mine.
I was aching for his touch. For the feel of his hands on my skin, his lips. His arms around me. But he hadn’t touched me. Not since he arrived. He hadn’t seemed like he wanted to touch me. Kane, the man who’d made it his business to have our skin touching before he even knew my name. That thought was a knife to my heart.
I thought I’d made my peace with Kane never wanting to touch me again. Never wanting anything to do with me. But that was when he was absent; it was so much harder in his presence.
“Here it is.” I leaned in to turn on the light before stepping aside so he could walk through the door.
He brushed past me. The doorway was narrow, and I wasn’t exactly small these days. Plus, he was even bigger than he had been before, all of him pure muscle. But somehow, he made it so even our clothes didn’t touch. He didn’t look at me either.
It speared my insides, but I stayed upright. Somehow.
Kane walked to the middle of the room, still silent, looking around.
Yet again, I couldn’t stand the silence.
“I, uh, um, had high hopes about my ability to construct the crib,” I explained, standing awkwardly in the doorway. “But as you can see…” I pointed to the cardboard that I’d given up on. Why I didn’t buy the fancy stuff that came put together that people hauled in for you, I didn’t know.
Kiera had tried to insist on decorating this room too, but this was the only room I’d pushed back on. I’d even let her do the kitchen. I’d had to. I could barely step foot in there except to take care of my basic nutrition needs. The ILVE Nostalgie stove, the Shun Hikari knives and the large island all taunted me. Showed me what I’d had. What I’d lost. Who I was. Who I wasn’t.
But the nursery… it seemed like I had to do that. It was my job to take care of the nursery. I was the mother after all.
Mother.
Still, even with the baby now squishing all of my internal organs up toward my ribs, kicking me all night long and changing my body irrecoverably, I didn’t think the label fit.
Father.
That’s what Kane was. What I’d thought he’d refused to be. But he was standing in our baby’s unfinished nursery, a stern expression on his face. Yet even with that expression, the label fit him, bespoke.
Kane remained silent, just focusing on the wood and the boxes for longer than was comfortable.
“Who carried these upstairs?” he finally asked.
I tilted my head at his question, confused. “What?”
He turned to look at me then. Yet again, I had to stifle a gasp at the lack of expression on his face. “Who carried these upstairs?” He gestured to the crib parts and the boxes.
“I did,” I said, stating the obvious. “Well, the delivery guys did the dresser, thankfully. Just pushing that across the room was a workout.”
I’d thought the air in the room was tense before, but it suddenly seemed to throb with ferocity.
Kane’s eyes bore into me. They were no longer blank but bulging with rage.
“My pregnant woman carried this shit up stairs alone.” He shook his head, muttering seemingly to himself.
My heart rate increased tenfold. “I mean, y-yeah,” I stuttered. “But it’s not like it’s that heavy. I’ve spent my life carrying sacks of potatoes around restaurants and boxes of oysters through Manhattan.”
His gaze was piercing. “You weren’t carrying my child then.”
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose. There it was. Even more menace. But also something else. Something I kind of liked despite the situation.
Possession.
My woman . My child.
But there was still distance between us. A coldness that rivaled the arctic in temperature.
My hand went back to my stomach. “She’s fine, I just had a checkup,” I reassured him.
Or at least I was attempting to reassure him.
He went stock-still. “Sh-she?” he clasped the back of his neck. “It’s a girl?” His eyes were on my stomach again. Yet his gaze was softer, reverent. Full of despair.
I sucked in a breath of air that felt like broken glass. “Yeah, I’m, um, not into surprises, or intense gender reveals. I like having a plan.”
Not that knowing the gender helped my plan any. All it did was veer me away from onesies with trucks and dinosaurs on them. Not that I was overly bothered with dressing an infant in anything frilly and pink. I’d gone with muted tones that had good quality fabric and reputable reviews. No frilly dresses or clothing without zippers. I suspected I was in for a challenge merely putting on a diaper.
“A girl,” he said again in little more than a whisper.
The despair in his voice made my heart ache.
His shoulders slumped as he rubbed a hand over his jaw. I’d never seen Kane like this. Never seen him so cold, unfeeling. And I’d never seen him look so … defeated.
It was killing me. Because I was the cause of it. I wanted to go to him, wanted to comfort him, but there was a barrier between us. Invisible, but miles high and just as wide. Impenetrable.
More silence hung around us.
I didn’t have anything left in me to try to fill it. I just stood there, leaning against the doorway, staring at the spot above Kane’s head because I couldn’t bear to look at him.
“I’m staying,” he declared, breaking the tense hush.
I sagged in relief at him breaking the uncomfortable silence.
I nodded even though I was kind of surprised. Though I shouldn’t have been. It was getting late, the storm was raging outside, and he was on a motorcycle. There were some hotels around, though that was likely too public for him. Where did I expect him to go after finding me here, pregnant?
Run. Maybe I expected him to run. Leave. Even if everything I knew about him told me Kane would never do that to me. Except I’d constructed a new version of Kane in my mind, the one Brax had born that day at his office, one that I’d let him poison my other version of Kane with.
“The sofa, it pulls out,” I said, trying to find my bearings. This house was too small for a guest room. The upstairs had a large master with a bathroom, the nursery, another bathroom and a small linen closet. Downstairs was the living area, kitchen, bathroom and sun room. I’d liked that it wasn’t big. I wasn’t expecting visitors beyond Kiera, who made sure to get a top-of-the-line pullout even though she also scouted the best hotel in town. “I’ll get some sheets.”
“I’m not stayin’ on the fuckin’ sofa.”
I paused at his tone, staring back at him. “You’re not?”
“Avery, I got out of prison eleven hours ago. I haven’t slept on a mattress thicker than a thin pillow for months. I haven’t slept with my woman for months. I’m pissed as fuck with you right now, but there’s no way I’m spendin’ another goddamn night in a bed without you.”
My knees were quaking, my mouth went dry, and my heart beat rapidly. Not from fear or despair. No, now it held hope. He called me his woman again. He might’ve still been looking at me with that horrible emptiness, but he was calling me his woman. He wanted to sleep in bed with me. I would no longer toss around a cold bed without the presence of the man I’d yearned for.
Even though that was what I’d hoped for, dreamed of, I hastened to erect a barrier of my own. One to protect myself. “Don’t I get any kind of say in this?” There should’ve been some kind of bite to my voice. I’d intended to add bite. But the words came out small and hesitant instead.
I didn’t know that woman. The quiet, timid woman whose heart was hammering like a hummingbird.
“No,” Kane said simply. “No, you fuckin’ don’t.” He looked at the crib pieces on the floor. “There good takeout places around?” he asked, kneeling down on the floor picking up the discarded, brand-new toolbox I’d bought in preparation for putting together all of this furniture.
My palms became sweaty.
It had been one thing to have to walk past this mess of a nursery that served as evidence of my failure to thrive on my own and create a space for my child. Failed . I hadn’t done that in a long fucking time.
Or maybe that’s all I’d done since Brax tried to tear us apart. Failed Kane. Failed myself.
Now Kane was here. And he could see it. That I couldn’t even put a crib together for our kid.
“Avery.”
Sadness pummeled me at hearing my name. I looked up to find Kane studying me. His brows were furrowed slightly. His expression still wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t iceman-cold either. But he was calling me by my name, not something he’d done since he first started using ‘Chef’ as an endearment. The loss of it felt physical.
“What?” I asked weakly.
“Takeout,” he repeated. I couldn’t be sure, but I swore that his voice was softer. “Any good takeout places around here?”
“Takeout?” I squinted at him, trying to get my mind together. “Um, yeah, there are a few places.”
When I’d moved here, I was fresh out of the first trimester, and my appetite had slowly been coming back. Then it came back with a vengeance. But although I’d been starving for amazing food, I was also really tired. Like really tired. A physical exhaustion I’d never experienced even in my sleep-deprived career. Cooking a simple meal sometimes felt like a herculean effort.
I’d gone on a mission to find good food in this small town.
And I’d been pleasantly surprised at the variety and quality of the restaurants available. It made sense; this place was a tourist destination, and the ocean was right there. The fresh seafood was abundant. There was a mix of casual, seaside eateries and more upscale restaurants. I’d sampled each and every one, more than once, and found myself drawn to the Shaw Shack run by a father and son fisherman team that focused on simple flavors done right.
In my opinion, they were missing the in-between type of restaurant. For when people wanted something a little more upscale than lobster rolls on paper plates but didn’t want to be intimidated by a wine list and a tasting menu.
That was neither here nor there.
Here was Kane. In my house. In my nursery. Asking about takeout. He was here, but he wasn’t. Not the Kane I remembered anyway. Although I supposed I wasn’t the Avery he remembered.
“Pick your favorite,” Kane instructed. “Whatever you think is good I’ll like. Order a lot.”
My brain scrambled to catch up as he glimpsed at the instruction booklet for the crib for a handful of seconds before tossing it aside and getting to work.
“I can cook for you,” I offered, watching the muscles in his forearms move fluidly.
My desire woke up, and my mouth went dry while watching the muscles move, his veins bulging. Those arms had held on to me while I writhed in pleasure. Those hands had explored every inch of me.
When he paused, glancing up once again, my heart stuttered. It was there. Just a sliver, a mere speck of what used to exist before but impossible to miss. The heat. The spark. The warmth.
My body bloomed underneath even the scantiest sign of it.
“I want you to cook for me,” he murmured, his voice rough, hungry. “And you will. But not now. I want you to go get your phone, a book, whatever you need. Then you’re gonna plant your ass there.” He nodded to the glider in the corner, the one piece of furniture that had come assembled. “While I put the crib together.”
My vision blurred.
I tried to calm my breathing.
“Chef.”I blinked through unfamiliar tears. The endearment. One that I’d heard thousands of times over the years from many people, but it never sounded better than it did coming out of Kane’s mouth.
“Phone. Book. Food.” His voice was gentler that time. Much gentler.
I held on to the words, tasks. I was good at tasks. I nodded then made my way to the door.
“Chef.”
I paused, turning.
Kane’s gaze was no longer cold. No longer empty. It was so full I could barely stand under the weight of it. Slowly, very slowly and very purposefully, his eyes went up and down my body. I felt every place it landed. His eyes lingered for a long time over the swell of my stomach. When our eyes met again, I was shaking, and I could’ve sworn Kane’s eyes were shimmering.
There were things on his face, many things. Things that planted more hope inside of me. That made me think we might not be over. That he might still want me.
I held my breath as he opened his mouth, expecting him to say something earth-shattering, to give affection like he had so readily before.
“No ground beef. In the takeout. I’ve been put off that stuff for life.”
I swallowed my disappointment. But I nodded.
“Got it.”
Then I turned and left the room.
It was only once I was downstairs, clutching my phone while ordering takeout that I sank to the floor and gave myself exactly five minutes for self-pity.