Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Man, I really wanted a fucking drink.
One more month.
I’d pound tequila in the goddamn delivery room.
“After an appropriate amount of time, we’ll divorce,” I continued. “I don’t quite know what your future plans are, but I’d be happy to pay you on a monthly basis in order to eventually buy this place from you.” I looked around at the only home I’d ever had. The place I wanted to raise my daughter in.
“Although that’ll probably take me about fifty years,” I scoffed, thinking about what Kip must’ve paid for a seaside cottage in Maine in this market.
My hand went to my stomach, and I still didn’t look at Kip. There was no way I had the courage for that.
“I don’t know your plans for the baby now that you seem to have…” I wanted to say ‘come to your senses,’ but that seemed a little bitter. “Had a change of heart,” I said finally, staring at the wild ocean out the windows. “I would never keep her from you. You could see her whenever you want… if that’s what you want.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I didn’t say anything else. I just stood in the middle of my kitchen staring at the waves and smelling the pies that Kip made me on the first day of our marriage and what could quite possibly be the last day of our marriage.
How fucking ironic.
He didn’t speak right away.
Which, of course, sent me spiraling. I gripped the counter to steady myself lest I fucking faint or something equally pathetic. If he was going to leave me—leave us—I was going to stay standing when he did.
Kip’s footfalls were soft against the floor. I held my breath, waiting for them to retreat. Except they didn’t. He didn’t. His heat hit my back, and then his hand was on my hip, gently turning me around. I stared at his chest, still unwilling or unable to meet his eyes.
My heart was in my throat.
He grasped my chin in order to tilt it upward, to force my gaze to meet his.
I braced myself for the emptiness, the mask he wore in order to dole out cruelty he thought was mercy. But it wasn’t there. His eyes were like that ocean I had just been gazing at. Wild, full, fucking beautiful.
“My wife… my first wife… I loved her,” he said in a tone I’d never heard before. It was soft, tortured, regretful. He hadn’t even had that tone the night of the storm. It speared me right in the fucking heart.
He kept a firm grip on me.
“I loved her like a boy loved a girl, thinking that love made him a man,” he continued. “It wasn’t mature, it wasn’t ugly, it wasn’t complicated. It was simple. And it might’ve stayed that way, it might’ve stayed just fine, if I didn’t make the choices I made.” He sighed. “Again, I wanted to be a man, one who wasn’t like my father, one who wasn’t confined to life in a small town. I was selfish and looking for glory.”
I wanted to argue with him, tell him he couldn’t possibly have been selfish, even then. I wanted to tell him to stop being so fucking hard on a boy who was doing the best he could.
“At the beginning, I don’t think it bothered her that I was deploying,” Kip said. “Yes, she was plenty worried about me and didn’t want to be without me, but she was young too. Looking for her own identity. And at first, she liked the title of ‘Army wife.’ Liked that she was serving in her own way.” He shook his head, looking out to the ocean for a few beats before returning his gaze to me.
“The reality of it all was quick to hit us,” he murmured. “Quick to bruise that pure, young love of ours. It might not have scarred if I didn’t find my place out there, if I didn’t have the skills that kept me gone for longer and longer at a time. But I did. So I was gone. And she didn’t much like being alone all the time. I don’t blame her. We were meant to love each other but let each other go. That’s what I think. But we didn’t. She thought when she got pregnant I’d come home for good. A lot of people thought that. I thought I would. Until it actually happened. I wasn’t man enough, not even then, to stop killing and go home to my life. My daughter.”
His hand went to my stomach, rubbing it as if to reassure himself that it was still there. That our daughter was still there.
I knew the feeling. I would chug ice water and chase it with Skittles in order to ‘wake her up’ if I didn’t feel her kick in a while. Not that I had to do that often because Kip’s daughter kicked the fuck out of me.