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)
“In the end, I don’t think she loved me much,” he said, shocking the absolute shit out of me.
I blinked at him. His eyes weren’t watering with the love he was holding on to. They were sad, to be sure. But not wistful.
“I don’t think much of what we were remained. But I still loved her. For staying. For trying. For bringing my daughter into the world, caring for her.”
He stroked my face, wiping away a tear that had escaped my eye. “What I feel for you isn’t young, it’s a little bit ugly, and it’s sure as fuck complicated. I hated myself for loving you more than I loved her. Thought that made me a bad man. Without honor.”
He looked down at the stomach between us.
“I know for a fact that I’ll love her just as much as her sister.” His voice broke a little, and I sank my teeth into my lip in order to restrain my sob.
“I’ll love her exactly the same.” He paused. “Maybe I’ll love her big sister a little bit more, because I only had a short amount of time to give her that love. I’ve still got a whole fucking lot of it inside me.” His eyes bored into mine. “I’m not gonna promise that I’m not gonna make mistakes along the way, because a lifetime is a long time, and I’m an imperfect man. I’m gonna fuck up. You’re gonna yell at me. I might yell back.”
He leaned in to kiss my nose.
“We’ll fuck and make up,” he murmured. “We’ll have a messy life. And you’re outta your goddamn tree if you think I’m gonna walk away from that. But—” His hand went from my chin downward to my left hand, lifting it to examine the simple gold band I’d been wearing since he slipped it on my finger in the bakery. “—we’re gonna need to get you a diamond. And we’re probably gonna have to do another wedding.”
That was a lot of information for me to digest at once. Even under normal circumstances where I had a lot more control over my hormones. As it was, I did not have control over those fuckers, so I went from quietly crying to full-on ugly sobbing.
“Are you asking me to m-marry you?” I asked between sobs.
Kip chuckled as he leaned in to kiss my head. “We’re already married, baby, but yeah, I’m asking if you want to do it properly. Maybe not get so drunk and glare at me while you’re walking down the aisle. I don’t mind if you wear red, though.” He winked.
I let out a half-hysterical laugh.
“I wore red because I was dressing for war,” I told him.
He smiled at me, brushing my chin with his thumb. “And when you walked down that aisle, you looked like the most beautiful soldier I’d ever seen. I fell in love with you right then and there, even if I was too much of a stubborn bastard to admit it for—”
“Months,” I interrupted. “Actually, over a year.”
“If you wanna get technical, you haven’t said the three little words to me yet,” he teased.
I pursed my lips. “You haven’t really said them either,” I challenged, suddenly terrified. The hospital didn’t count, I decided. Emotions were running high then, and he hadn’t mentioned it since.
“I love you,” he said without hesitation. “I love that you’re cranky in the morning. I love that you swear like a sailor. I love that you adopt cats without eyelids. I love the way you look growing our daughter. I will love every part of you for the rest of my days.”
My lip trembled. “Okay, that’s overkill,” I said, voice thin and weak.
He chuckled. “Gonna say it back?”
“I’m not gonna say it because you’re telling me to say it,” I snapped.
Kip’s eyes glittered. “I’m not telling you to say it,” he returned. “I already know you love me.”
I glared at him. “You don’t know how I feel,” I replied snippily, fighting with him mostly on instinct and also because this conversation was scary. Sure, I was married to the man, living with him, and pregnant with his baby, but telling him I loved him seemed like a leap of faith I wasn’t sure I was capable of.
He kissed me, then shrugged. “You don’t want to say it now. I can wait. I’ve got forever, after all.”
My knees almost buckled.
Kip stepped back, unaware of how tenuously I was staying upright. “Now, you want to eat some pies?”
I stared at this man. This muscled, gruff, cocky, sensitive man. My husband.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Let’s eat some pies.”
“Mum,” I said, the title coming out as a sigh.
I’d been dodging her calls. Not that there were many to dodge. The woman rarely kept in touch. Sometimes she sent me articles on Facebook, which were mostly wild conspiracy theories about the New World Order and population control, though in the past few years they’d been veering toward holistic remedies and a reminder to ‘ground myself’ every day.