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“I know our marriage vows were bullshit, that we didn’t mean them the same way most people mean them, so you were under no obligation to me.”
I twirled the simple gold ring on my left hand. I’d really wanted to forgo wedding rings, but it didn’t look good. And this thing was all about appearances.
“But I also thought we had… something,” I said weakly. “Something neither of us was willing to admit, but something that was there nonetheless.” I took a deep breath, not wanting to say what I had to say next. Wanting to let Kip off the hook.
It was oh so tempting.
“But you got to use your trauma as your own reasoning to check the fuck out,” I said finally. “To leave me to go through this alone. And I didn’t have that choice.”
I bit my lip, bracing myself for what I was about to reveal. “I used to have a husband who would push me down the stairs or punch me in the face when I lost our babies.”
Kip sucked in a harsh breath as if he were sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. His posture went stiff, and fury encapsuled his entire body.
I expected such a reaction.
He might not have lived up to the whole alpha male protective thing over the past several months, but the alpha male in him was awake with a vengeance.
I was surprised he didn’t stomp around the room breaking things.
“Yeah, you’re not the only one with a tragic past,” I told him with a sad smile. “I may have left mine behind on a whole other continent, but it followed me easily. And I didn’t get to escape it. Didn’t get to ignore it like you ignored me.”
I placed my good hand on my stomach. My chest was tight with worry even now. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second before opening them and focusing on Kip once more.
His gaze was glued to me. More torture. More anguish. More fury.
“Now, I’m sure you have had a lot of turmoil,” I said. “I’m not discounting that. But I don’t get to ignore it. I have to live in my body every damn day. I don’t get a fucking moment, not a second, to escape my worry that I’d go through another miscarriage and have to survive it. I’ve had to live with my abject terror. I didn’t get the luxury of checking out.”
Kip’s face was ashen. Guilt overcame me. But he deserved this. Because despite my sorrow for the man, I had been through my own kind of hell. In fact, I was still there, the flames hot and unyielding.
“So, I am infinitely sorry for what you went through, but that doesn’t give you a ‘get out of jail free card’ here,” I said gently. “You don’t get back in my life like that. Our arrangement, which you so deftly crafted, still stands.”
He stared at me, blinking rapidly, his expression tight, full of pain. Full of regret.
“I’m going to win you back,” he vowed after a few long moments where I guessed he was digesting everything I’d just said.
My stomach bottomed out with his words and the resolute tone in which he spoke them. It unnerved me.
“You can’t win me back,” I said, my voice even despite the swirling of my insides. “You never had me in the first place.”
“You’re my wife,” he countered.
“For immigration reasons. Nothing else,” I shot back.
“Maybe at the beginning,” he agreed. His eyes ran down my body possessively. “But even if you won’t admit it out loud right now, you know we were more than that. Most especially when we created her.” He reached out as if he were going to caress my stomach but caught himself at the last moment.
My body tensed. I wasn’t sure if it was in relief or disappointment.
There was too much going on right now. I’d just been in a serious car accident, certain I was going to lose my baby. Then I didn’t lose my baby—yet—and my husband arrived and laid his whole heartbreaking past bare to me. Then I’d done the same. Well, I hadn’t exactly laid it bare. I’d shoved it into one compact sentence, but it got the message across.
This was enough physical and emotional turmoil to last a lifetime. And it had been crammed into a handful of hours.
Too much.
“You need to go,” I told him.
His determined look went nowhere. Neither did that edge of tender… longing.
I hated it. And I fucking hated that it made me feel things other than resentment and hatred. Damn baby hormones making me fond of my husband.
