AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It was testicular cancer.” He drops his gaze again like he’s embarrassed to look at me.
“But it’s gone now? You’re fine now?”
“I can’t give you kids, Kenzi.” He’s still staring at my feet. “The tumor was in a complicated place.”
My mouth plops shut, my back teeth meeting with a click, understanding twisting up the back of my spine and taking hold in the base of my skull, every time he told me he wasn’t the man for me suddenly making sense. I part my lips to say something, but nothing comes out, his pain—his blatant distress robbing all of the words I need. “Mylo…”
His gaze finally lifts to my face, eyes watching me from beneath lowered eyelids. Waiting.
“Take me home.” I hold his stare even when his lips tug down, and he scratches his jaw through his beard.
“Kenzi—”
“Take me home.”
TWINTY-FIVE
Kenzi
I follow him into his apartment after yet another silent car ride. He didn’t talk. He wouldn’t look at me. He’s in remission, but he can’t have kids. My mind skips from thought to thought, too scrambled to settle on any one in particular. I want to cry. I want to laugh. I started the day thinking he was dying, or sick or both. I stop in the living room, staring at his back.
He doesn’t turn. Doesn’t even acknowledge I’m here as he slips his jacket off and throws it onto the arm of the sofa, but the tension in his movements gives him away.
I place my purse on the side table and blow out a steadying breath in the quiet apartment identical to mine in layout only. His sofa is massive and deep gray, the walls white. Nothing personal, bar the framed photo of Mylo and a little boy and girl that can only be his niece and nephew. He’s grinning in it, his hair shorter, nothing more than stubble covering his jaw. He has the little blond-haired girl on his shoulder and the boy under one arm, both of them laughing. They have his eyes. A fresh wave of sadness for him almost leaks out of me.
My feet move. One, two, three steps until I’m standing behind him.
His back straightens, shoulders lifting with his intake of breath. “Kenzi, I don’t need your—”
“I don’t care,” I blurt out, gaze fixed on the long strand of hair that’s escaped the knot on the top of his head, my eyes still stinging, my temples pulsing. “I still want this.”
He turns, and my neck arches to look him in the face.
His brows are low, his thick neck contracting with his swallow as his gaze travels my face, jaw hard, eyes even harder.
I don’t look away. He needs to know—to see. “You… not being able to have kids.” My breath stutters under the pain that flashes over his face. “It doesn’t change anything. Not for me.”
His snort is rough, the curl of his lip bitter and so, so cynical. “I won’t do that to you.”
“You’re not doing anything to me.” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with someone I haven’t even had sex with yet. I take a deep breath and continue regardless. “I don’t even know if I want kids, and even if I did, there are a million different options. But we’re nowhere near this being a problem.”
“But we could be one day.” He rakes his bottom lip through his teeth and shakes his head, lifting his gaze to the ceiling. “You should go.”
“No.” I scowl.
“I want you to go.” He scowls harder.
“You don’t.”
His chest expands as he lowers his head.
I close the distance between us, hold his stare and do the only thing I can think of to show him that nothing’s changed. I reach for him. Smooth my hands up the sides of his neck, my thumbs brushing the warm, soft skin where his beard stops at the edge of his jaw. I breathe in the spicy musk of his aftershave and the underlying scent of clean man that’s pure him. “This changes nothing, Mylo.”
His eyelids lower, but his hands stay resolutely by his sides.
“I want you.” It’s almost a whisper, the only sign he’s heard me the working of his jaw. “Don’t push me away.” I run my hands over his shoulders, down over the solid bulk of his chest, willing him not to.
I brush my hands down his stomach.
