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I’d been yelled at plenty of times by an angry man. But never roared at like this. Not with this force of anger.
Kip seemed… unhinged. His eyes were wide, his cheeks were ruddy red, and his body was trembling with rage. His fists were clenched at his sides, and he barely looked like he was stopping himself from… hitting me?
No.
I’d thought a lot of things about Kip since I met him and then married him, most of which were negative. But I’d never thought he would ever physically lay hands on a woman. I’d figured that was a watertight theory. But it seemed like it was leaking right now.
I was frozen in place. I was the girl married to a monster once more, silently submitting, waiting for his judgment without fighting.
Kip stared at me a long time with that wild, terrifying gaze, not moving a muscle, breathing heavily.
“Fuck this,” he muttered before turning around and walking away.
The door slammed behind him.
Then I flinched.
kip
I wasn’t surprised when my best friend sat next to me on the barstool.
Fiona had likely told Nora before she even told me. Chicks did shit like that. Therefore, Nora probably told Rowan at some point. And likely, after the episode at the beach house, Fiona probably got on the phone with Nora, recounted the whole thing, and made me look like the piece of shit I was.
Either Fiona was at Nora’s place or Nora was at our place.
Fuck,our place. It wasn’t that.
If anything, it wasmyplace. I fucking owned it.
I’d been drinking here since I left. Pretty fucking cliché. Man loses it after he finds out his fake wife is pregnant and goes to get wasted.
Well, the fake wife part wasn’t cliché, but the rest was.
Me screaming at her. Me feeling so out of control I was afraid of what I might do. Not to her. Never to fucking her. But I wanted to tear that house apart with my goddamn hands.
Fiona had stared at me like I was going to tearherapart. Like she expected it. Like she’d experienced it before. I’d never forget the fear in her eyes for as long as I fucking lived.
“Another,” I said, pushing my glass forward.
I was on Jameson.
Not my usual drink.
Not in a while, anyway. Jameson and I had been the best of friends for a while, when I was drinking myself into a hole, trying to find the courage to eat a bullet.
“Figured you’d turn up here,” I said to Rowan without looking at him. “Your wife probably sent you to beat me up or some shit.”
I didn’t like the way I sounded. Ugly. Bitter.
But unfortunately, that’s what I fucking was. Underneath the jokes, the smiles, the mask I’d perfected over the years.
“Looks like you’re beating yourself up plenty,” Rowan replied, voice calm and collected like it always fucking was.
Well, like it was now that he was married and had a kid. I remembered when we’d walked into the bakery the day Nora had a black eye. Yeah, there had been nothing calm and collected about my best friend then.
Nor when he’d pulled up to a parking lot and seen some asshole getting in Nora’s face about to hit her.
Yeah, motherfucker was never calm and collected when it came to his wife being in danger. Which was interesting, considering he was the most stable person I’d met in combat. Something about his wife unraveled him.
