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Mack’s eyebrows furrowed up to the point it looked as though he was sporting a unibrow. “You’ve never kissed?”
“That day he claimed me in front of the club was the only time and then he quickly explained he just wanted to be friends. There have been little pecks from him on my head or cheek, but otherwise, that was the extent of it.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on with Tripp,” my brother muttered.
“Well, that makes two of us.”
I had been sent home by Ratchet shortly after he took my brother to the office to fill him in on what happened with Tripp at the Piggly Wiggly. He didn’t want me there to cause a scene or cry all over his bar after Tripp got back, so Mack escorted me home to make sure I made it back safe, considering my emotional state.
I wanted to kick them both in the balls for thinking that I couldn’t handle myself. Was I on the verge of tears while serving beer at the bar? Yep. But dammit, I deserved to be. I’m pregnant and it’s not easy to contain my emotions. Plus, they weren’t tears of sorrow. They were the dangerous kind – angry tears. Okay, actually, Ratchet might have been right to send me home because otherwise, Tripp might have met a quick death when he showed up.
“I’m going to lay down. Feel free to go back to the clubhouse. I’ll be fine. I just need to wallow in my own stupidity for a while.”
“Not your stupidity,” my brother disagreed. “He’s the idiot.”
“He for sure is an idiot, but it was my stupid heart that got her hopes up again, so I guess we both take the blame for how I feel.”
“I can call the clubhouse and tell Ratchet I’m staying.”
“Nah, I really just want to be alone right now.”
“Fine, but you call if you need anything, even if it’s just a hug, okay?”
I loved my brother. He could be a clueless dipshit sometimes, but he loved me fiercely and I couldn’t ask for a better person to be in my life. He really would come all the way back just to give me a hug if it would make me feel better. I nodded to him and then he took off, leaving me to fall asleep on my bed where I fell into dreams of a sweet life that hadn’t fallen completely apart.
At one point, my dreams felt so real, like Tripp was there holding me, talking to the baby. It felt like I could wake at any moment in his arms and reality would have just been a nightmare, instead of him lying there with me being the dream.
Chapter 19
Tripp
When I pulled up, Mack was sitting outside on his Harley getting ready to leave. “Is she here?” I asked, not sure whether he would tell me the truth if she decided to take off.
He played around with his keyring for a minute until one of the keys was stripped off the ring and in his hand. “She’s in there,” he said as he offered the key to me. “You hurt her any more than you already have, and I swear to fuck I will bury your body so deep they won’t find your remains for another millennia.”
I nodded, because what could you really say to your best friend after a threat like that? It was deserved, so the answer was, nothing. There was nothing to say, at least not to him. All the words I needed to get out belonged only to the woman behind that locked door. I watched Mack leave and then continued to sit outside the house for a while, thinking about what in the hell I could say to make anything I did better.
There really weren’t good enough words for. “Sorry I kissed my ex while you watched”. “Sorry I kissed my ex” was probably a better start, though. It didn’t matter if she had been there to see it or not. I was sorry it ever happened and angry with myself for getting caught up enough that I didn’t stop it before it started.
After what seemed like forever, I finally found the courage to go inside, even if the proper apology still alluded me. The house felt too quiet and empty for her to be there as I turned and locked the door behind me. I followed the hallway back to the bedrooms when I realized she wasn’t in the living room or kitchen.
Kim was lying on her side on her bed facing away from the door as I entered. She had obviously fallen asleep. I walked around the bed and fucking hated myself even more than I did before. Her eyes had dark circles under them and were red-rimmed. Tear tracks still stained her cheeks, and her face was puffy and swollen, too. That was all on account of my dumbass inability to control the way I felt upon seeing my ex for the first time since we split up.
It wasn’t fair to Kim that everything happened in the wrong fucking order and made it impossible to move on with her and away from June. There were still feelings for June, even though they’d been tainted by angry words and loathsome actions. There were also feelings that I’d been developing for Kim over the past few months, starting the night of that party when we really first got to talking.
One should have never overlapped the other, and that’s where it all started to go wrong. The worst part of it was that Kim was taking the brunt of the pain from all the confusion I’d brought packing with me when I plowed into her life.
I moved back to the other side of the bed, the one my best friend had dumped me in five months ago that started this whole tangled mess we were now living with. I wish I’d been given the opportunity to truly end things with June before they started with Kim. She deserved that clean slate. There was no denying I wanted her. What I’d said to June earlier had been true. Kim fit. She more than fit, she molded around me and my lifestyle like she was born to be there, and maybe she had been.
Kim was lying on top of her covers, so I hopped in bed behind her and scooted as close as possible until our bodies were almost touching. She never woke so I leaned my head down on the pillow behind her and kissed her head. Then, I reached around and placed my hand on her belly under her shirt and ran my fingers slowly over the swell where our baby was growing.
“I’m so sorry, Kim. I keep disappointing you and don’t fucking mean to. You are so far out of my league that I never deserved a first chance to be in your life, let alone a second, and now I’m here to beg you for a third. I don’t want to be friends. I mean, I do, but I don’t just want to be friends. This was always leading somewhere… What we had was always leading somewhere and I don’t want to lose that.” I kissed her shoulder and lie there beside her for a few more minutes.
Any other apologies were a waste, considering she was asleep, so I soaked in her presence and hoped like hell that she would be able to forgive me one day. Sooner would be better, but I’d take later too if it ended with her by my side.
~*~
The next night, when Kim came in to work, she didn’t say a single word to me, even though I sat at the bar and waited to get her attention. Feeling fucking clueless, I didn’t know whether to push my apology on her or wait until she was ready to start a conversation with me.
