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)
“I loved being her dad,” he said with a smile, with eyes that communicated he wasn’t seeing this hospital room.
“Even though I didn’t get to actually be there for her.” He sighed, rubbing his jaw. “Not really. Because I thought I was making her proud, thought I was providing for my family, being a fucking hero.” He shook his head, disgust with himself clear. I could feel it. The self-hatred, the regret. It was thick in the air.
“They didn’t tell me straight away,” he said, quieter now. “I was on a mission.” He let go of my hands so he could clench his fists so tightly his knuckles went white. “Gabbie died on impact. But Evelyn held on.” He smiled again. The saddest smile I’d ever seen in my fucking life. It tore me apart.
“She was strong. A fighter. She held on for three days. Like she was waiting for her daddy—” His voice broke. Splintered into fucking pieces.
My entire body trembled with the pain in that sentence, the man inside the man I’d lived with for months. How it hadn’t leaked out of him, how I’d missed it, was anyone’s guess.
Kip cleared his throat. Blinked away tears.
“But I wasn’t there for her,” he grunted. “I let her down. And she died. Without her father. And they buried the both of them before I even got on US soil. I missed their funeral. Didn’t even get to see them. One day we were saying goodbye, I was smelling her hair, and the next I was staring at their headstones.”
If there was a more horrible story I’d been told in my life, I couldn’t fucking remember it. I couldn’t fathom that this man sitting in front of me, this man who had smiled and joked with me, made me mince pies, and rubbed my feet while watching Harry Potter, had gone through something like that. I didn’t know how someone existed after that.
But Kip had.
He’d had an entire life, an entire family. Then he just… didn’t.
“I made a promise to myself then and there that I’d never fucking love something that much to feel that pain again,” he continued.
His gaze bored into me, melting my fucking flesh off.
“Fuck, I didn’t think I’d have to practice that promise since everything inside me was so goddamn dead that I thought I was incapable of caring about someone again. Survival instinct.” He shrugged. “Then you came along. With your fucking filthy mouth, your tits, the fire in your eyes, and the fact that you went toe to toe with me without hesitation. First, I wanted to fuck you. I mean, who wouldn’t?” He tried for a smile, but it didn’t land.
I tried to smile back, and I feared that didn’t land either.
“Told myself I didn’t like you,” he continued. “I told myself I just liked giving you shit, liked staring at your ass, liked seeing your face scrunch up when you were really pissed, and it didn’t get deeper than that. I’m really good at lying to myself.”
He gripped the sides of his chair.
“Then you were in the bar with those sad fucking eyes and that fear about you, and I couldn’t help myself. Again, I said I was doing it to help you out, and it would in turn help me out because my family—my mother, mostly—have not been leaving me the fuck alone, and they’ve been choking me with their sympathy and worry. I couldn’t stand it. I figured that marrying you would get them off my back.” Another shrug. “And yeah, teasing you makes my dick hard.”
Again with the libido. The car crash didn’t kill it, and it turned out that Kip’s horrific story didn’t kill it either. Did that make me a terrible person?
“I probably knew deep down that I wouldn’t be able to resist you. That we’d fuck.” He sighed. “Again, I thought I’d be able to fuck you without feelings. I’d been doing that plenty.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But, Jesus, Fiona, I fell in love with you. I probably fell in love with you the second you flipped me the bird after I hit on you.”
My body tensed, and a low roar entered my ears.
Kip was telling me he loved me.
While I was in a hospital bed.
Right after he told me about the perfect wife and perfect daughter he’d been mourning for years.
I couldn’t know they’d been perfect when they were alive, but dead wives and children tended to live on in memory with eternal perfection.
“I thought I could handle that,” Kip muttered, looking down at his boots, then back up to me. “Caring about you. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. I’m not across the world fighting a war. Nothing was going to happen to you.” He looked to my stomach. “And then you got pregnant. And I could not survive losing another kid. So… I did what I did. And I’m fucking ashamed. And you’re lying in a goddamn hospital bed.”