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“She was strong. A fighter. She held on for three days. Like she was waiting for her daddy—” His voice broke. Splintered into fucking pieces.
My entire body trembled with the pain in that sentence, the man inside the man I’d lived with for months. How it hadn’t leaked out of him, how I’d missed it, was anyone’s guess.
Kip cleared his throat. Blinked away tears.
“But I wasn’t there for her,” he grunted. “I let her down. And she died. Without her father. And they buried the both of them before I even got on US soil. I missed their funeral. Didn’t even get to see them. One day we were saying goodbye, I was smelling her hair, and the next I was staring at their headstones.”
If there was a more horrible story I’d been told in my life, I couldn’t fucking remember it. I couldn’t fathom that this man sitting in front of me, this man who had smiled and joked with me, made me mince pies, and rubbed my feet while watchingHarry Potter,had gone through something like that. I didn’t know how someone existed after that.
But Kip had.
He’d had an entire life, an entire family. Then he just… didn’t.
“I made a promise to myself then and there that I’d never fucking love something that much to feel that pain again,” he continued.
His gaze bored into me, melting my fucking flesh off.
“Fuck, I didn’t think I’d have to practice that promise since everything inside me was so goddamn dead that I thought I was incapable of caring about someone again. Survival instinct.” He shrugged. “Then you came along. With your fucking filthy mouth, your tits, the fire in your eyes, and the fact that you went toe to toe with me without hesitation. First, I wanted to fuck you. I mean, who wouldn’t?” He tried for a smile, but it didn’t land.
I tried to smile back, and I feared that didn’t land either.
“Told myself I didn’t like you,” he continued. “I told myself I just liked giving you shit, liked staring at your ass, liked seeing your face scrunch up when you were really pissed, and it didn’t get deeper than that. I’m really good at lying to myself.”
He gripped the sides of his chair.
“Then you were in the bar with those sad fucking eyes and that fear about you, and I couldn’t help myself. Again, I said I was doing it to help you out, and it would in turn help me out because my family—my mother, mostly—have not been leaving me the fuck alone, and they’ve been choking me with their sympathy and worry. I couldn’t stand it. I figured that marrying you would get them off my back.” Another shrug. “And yeah, teasing you makes my dick hard.”
Again with the libido. The car crash didn’t kill it, and it turned out that Kip’s horrific story didn’t kill it either. Did that make me a terrible person?
“I probably knew deep down that I wouldn’t be able to resist you. That we’d fuck.” He sighed. “Again, I thought I’d be able to fuck you without feelings. I’d been doing that plenty.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But, Jesus, Fiona, I fell in love with you. I probably fell in love with you the second you flipped me the bird after I hit on you.”
My body tensed, and a low roar entered my ears.
Kip was telling me he loved me.
While I was in a hospital bed.
Right after he told me about the perfect wife and perfect daughter he’d been mourning for years.
I couldn’t know they’d been perfect when they were alive, but dead wives and children tended to live on in memory with eternal perfection.
“I thought I could handle that,” Kip muttered, looking down at his boots, then back up to me. “Caring about you. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. I’m not across the world fighting a war. Nothing was going to happen to you.” He looked to my stomach. “And then you got pregnant. And I could not survive losing another kid. So… I did what I did. And I’m fucking ashamed. And you’re lying in a goddamn hospital bed.”
More anguish. And guilt. Yeah, he was punishing himself. Clear as day.
Oh, how badly I wanted to get out of bed and crawl into his lap. I wanted to tell him I forgave him.
“There are no words,” I said, my voice scratchy and weak. “Absolutely no words for me to explain how sorry I am that that happened to you. How fucking horrific that is.”
My skin crawled with the knowledge of what he’d had. What he’d lost. It was impossible for me to fully comprehend in this moment, with so much heavy shit happening in a concentrated amount of time.
“But I am sorry,” I told him quietly. “So fucking sorry that happened to you. And now that I know, I can understand a lot of you. I can understand why you chose to live the life you lived. Why you wanted distance between us. Fuck, I can even understand your initial reaction to the pregnancy.”
I stared at the broken man in the chair beside my bed, hanging on my every word, no longer intent on driving me away.
I sighed, frowning at the cast on my arm. “I can get all of that,” I continued. “For a week. Two, maybe. But it’s not going to work as a blanket excuse for you treating me the way you have for five fucking months.”
Kip winced, and the soft part of my heart hurt with the motion, immediately wanting to take the words back. But I also had a harder, calcified heart, one broken and ruined by men, that urged me on.
