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Kai stared at it, his eyebrows furrowing as he took it in.
The old, matted green carpet.
The brown walls.
The absence of furniture.
The funky smell, which had been much worse before Morgan and I deep cleaned everything.
“It’s just while I save up for my own place,” I told him quickly. “Vi is going to gut it after she’s done with your house.”
“You can’t live here, Spitfire,” Kai finally said. “It smells awful. And you don’t even have a couch.”
Or a TV.
Yeah, I had noticed.
It made the loneliness much, much more obvious when there was nothing to binge after I’d gone home for the night.
“I’m doing the best I can,” I told him. “Support me, or back off.”
He shook his head harshly.
I stalked across the empty living room, tossing a hand toward the bathroom Morgan and I had cleaned. For the other one, I had just left the door closed. The horrors that had been done to that toilet before I moved in would never be spoken of again.
“There’s the bathroom. Look at it, and leave.”
He glanced inside, and his expression grew angrier.
I gestured toward the front door, trying to nudge him in the right direction, so he’d get out.
Instead, he stomped right past me.
And into my bedroom.
I winced, already knowing what he was going to say about the mattress. And the dresser. And the blankets.
So I stepped back out to the living room.
I would’ve sat down on the floor, but honestly, it was still pretty nasty despite the heavy cleaning we had given it.
When Kai emerged from the bedroom, he stormed right up to me. I stayed where I was, my chin lifting as I prepared to go to war for this house.
Myhouse.
What I didn’t expect was for him to say in a low voice, “How many men showed up here to carry that damn mattress in?”
I blinked. “A few.”
His jaw clenched. “And did you mention my name to them?”
“No… why would I?”
He stepped back and shoved a hand through his hair as he began to pace the living room. “A man doesn’t just let his mate move into a place like this. The town already talks enough shit about me and my kid; do you know what they’re going to say when the news spreads that I pushed you to move into this dump? Because it doesn’t matter to them what actually happened; it matters what they decide happened. The narrative that spreads is the one created by the assholes at the top of the social food chain.”
He stunned me to silence with that one.
His breathing grew ragged as he continued. “Do you know how many versions there are of the story of Elle getting pregnant? Of Lucas’s birth? Of how we ended up in the forest? Of how insane I am? Now I’m not just going to be insane to them—I’m going to be the cruel bastard who failed not only one mate, buttwo. I—”
