Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Suddenly, I was going to burst into tears.
It didn’t help that Elden had entered the party and was staring at me from across the patio.
Fuck.
“Can you take him for a second?” I asked Macy, who was thankfully nearby.
“Sure, sweetie,” she frowned, taking Declan from me. “Are you okay?”
But I was already halfway inside by the time she finished speaking.
I’d been planning on locking myself in a bathroom, getting myself together—without the aid of tequila, which would’ve been really great right about then—and going back to celebrate my brother, pushing my problems away for the day, at least.
But Elden wasn’t going to let me do that.
He snatched my wrist just as I walked into the kitchen.
“What’s wrong?” His eyes were glittering with fury, and something else when I faced him.
My eyes bugged out as I scanned the kitchen. Luckily, no one was in there, and from our spot slightly off to the side, no one outside could see us either.
“What’s wrong?” I repeated. “I’m pregnant, and you’re not freaked out about it. Which I guess makes sense because it’s not you who has to make all the choices. Who has to decide whether to drop out of college or have the baby—”
He yanked me closer. “You’re not dropping out of college, and you’re definitely having this baby.”
“It’s your choice, is it?” I ripped myself from his grasp. “You’re going to force me to have the baby?”
I didn’t even know why I was saying that. I was having the baby. That had already been decided. But the way he’d said that, as if I didn’t have a choice in the matter triggered me. I wondered if this was how my mother felt twenty years ago. Except then she had been younger, more scared, without any other choices, without a voice of her own.
Nausea churned in my belly at those thoughts.
“There’s a lot of shit that needs to be sorted,” Elden agreed. “You’re scared. I get it.” He lifted up his hand to trail it over my cheek. “But we’re in this together, baby. You’re mine. Both of you.”
The words hit me bodily. Settling inside me like a rock sinking to the bottom of a pond. It was exactly what I’d dreamed of hearing. Exactly what I wanted to hear. Except it scared the shit out of me.
“We’re not doing this now, though,” I hissed at Elden.
He stalked toward me until my back hit the wall. “We sure as fuck are doin’ it now, Violet.”
I took a deep breath, trying to clear my mind of his effect on me, but that didn’t work well since the breath I took was polluted by his intoxicating, infuriating scent.
His palm flattened on the wall beside my head. “You can be scared, baby,” he murmured. “You can be mad at me. You can be whatever the fuck you want. But it’s not gonna change the fact that you’re mine.” His eyes dropped down to my stomach. “Both of you. And Violet, you in that sundress is drivin’ me fuckin’ mad. So later, we’re gonna fuck. You can still be mad. If you want.”
Holy. Shit.
My cheeks flushed, and my body warmed, desire chasing away the worst of my fury. My breath shallowed.
I leaned in toward Elden, not caring about the party or who could walk into the kitchen.
But he stiffened, taking three large steps back from me without warning. I frowned at him in confusion, but he was focused on something else.
Someone else.
My mother was standing in the kitchen, looking between the both of us in shock.
“Tell me I did not just see what I think I saw.” her voice was eerily calm.
Of all the ways I wanted my mother to find out about me and Elden, I would never have wanted it to be like this.
“Mom—”
She held her finger up to silence me, not looking at me but at Elden whose expression was unreadable.
“You know, if I tell my husband what I just saw … things are not going to go well,” she told Elden softly. “I’m going to get blood on my floor. And I don’t want to have to mop it up. I’ve got a one-year-old … I have enough to worry about, you know?”
Her voice was cold, calculated. She was pissed off. That much I could tell. But there was something else in her words. Betrayal. I could feel it even though she wasn’t looking at me.
“M-Mom—” I stuttered, close to tears.
Again, she gave me a finger to silence me.
“I’m going to forget I saw all of this,” she waved her hand. “Because I don’t want my husband killing his brother today.”
I tasted bile at her no-nonsense tone, at the fear I had been holding onto about that very scenario.
“And also because I don’t want to have to mop up blood,” my mother continued. “Then again, Swiss isn’t exactly one to force household duties onto me, so he’d probably mop it up.”