Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
That’s a bold fucking statement, but he doesn’t stop there.
“Whatever her reasons, it happened. It’s done. Decide if that’s a deal-breaker for you because if you’re not on the team, I don’t have time to deal with you right now. Kennedy needs support. I think some of the shit I said to her before may have made all this worse for her, and I’m trying to… make up for the damage I inflicted. If you love her, great—fucking prove it. Set aside your bruised ego and help me take care of her in her time of need. Love isn’t always easy, isn’t that what Mom always said? If you love her, then help me. If she was just a hot lay you enjoyed for a while and now you’re done with her, so be it. Just stay out of the way and let me try to get her over this.”
My brow furrows for a lot of reasons. Reasons I don’t even expect, like, when the fuck did my son become such a grown man? I’m reluctantly impressed with him for standing up for her the way he is, even if it’s me he’s standing up to.
But mainly it’s the fact that he still seems to think I fucked Kennedy.
Kennedy was a virgin. If he slept with her last night, he should know I didn’t.
He looks at his watch. “I’ve gotta leave. Can you play nice?”
“Of course I can play nice,” I mutter, mildly aggravated by the question. “I don’t need you to police my interactions with Kennedy.”
“And I don’t need you pushing her over the fucking edge with some possessive bullshit she doesn’t need right now,” he says, heading for the stairs. “I’m running this up to her and then I’m leaving. Make sure you keep an ear out for her.”
I sit back down at the island and mull over the shit he said. It’s not all new information or thoughts that haven’t already passed through my own head, but some of it is.
It’s irritating that Jonathan seems to think he was 100% right, and I was 100% wrong because my way would have protected her much more effectively. His way indulged her most destructive instincts. He did nothing to insulate her from the damage she’ll do to herself if she’s left to her own devices in an apparently compromised mental state.
Left alone together with her self-destructive tendencies and his fucking cockiness, these two are going to create a colossal mess even I might not be able to clean up—if they haven’t already.
Plan B as fucking birth control.
This is why the inmates can’t run the fucking asylum.
I try to focus on getting some work done while he’s gone, but my mind won’t stop traveling down roads I don’t want us all to go down. I’m picturing Kennedy pregnant with my son’s baby and all the ways that can be a fucking disaster. I consider her coming out of this on the other side but with him because he’s the only one she could see being there for her when she needed someone the most.
If she’s already pregnant, there’s not much I can do, but I can damn well make sure he doesn’t get any more chances.
Jet comes home before Jonathan does. I ask him to check in on Kennedy when he goes upstairs.
I’ve gone up there a few times and stood in the hall outside his bedroom until I heard her.
I don’t like the implications that he’s worried enough to insist on wellness checks on her. Jonathan isn’t an overly protective person; he would only worry about that if he’s seen a reason to.
I wait for him to get back to start dinner. Not because he told me to, but because I finally get in a groove with work and don’t even realize how much time has passed until he walks through the door.
When he comes in, he’s carrying a pregnancy test, and even though I know it’s only a precaution and he’s just preparing for the worst-case scenario, my stomach hollows out.
“I’m gonna go get her,” he says, watching me.
I nod wordlessly and he disappears around the corner.
Jet is sitting at the other end of the island. I feel his gaze on me, so I turn my head and look over at him.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod, but I can’t speak. My stomach is roiling and I think I might be sick.
“It’ll never work between them,” Jet says, trying to make me feel better. “They’re not romantically compatible. The sex is probably great because they feed on one another’s toxicity, but in a relationship, that same toxicity will tear them apart. All they have right now is a trauma bond at best. Believe me, they’ll fall apart.”
His words only make me feel sicker. “They’re not together,” I say more shortly than I mean to. Especially because I don’t even fucking know if what I’m saying is true. I have no idea what has been going on behind those closed doors other than what Jonathan has told me.