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I’d never quite realized that Kip had major main character energy. Major badass energy, especially when combined with the whole tortured past thing.
He hid it mighty well. Well, maybe not so well these past months. But I’d wrongly thought it was because he was a selfish asshole who didn’t want his lifestyle to change.
The truth of it was a lot more tragic and a fuck of a lot more complicated.
“Well, unfortunately, I don’t have much power over the whole testosterone thing, but you have your own experience in that,” I said after a long pause.
Her husband wrote the book on possessive alpha males.
Nora smiled, not arguing with me.
“It’s kind of about him, though,” I added with a sigh. “And the whole husband thing.” I picked at the cheap hospital blanket.
She scrunched her face in confusion.
“You were surprised, to say the least, when we not only announced we were together but also were getting married in such a short period of time,” I told her what she already knew. Althoughsurprisedwas an understatement. We’d shocked the ever-loving shit out of our closest friends.
Instead of saying this, Nora merely nodded.
“Well, it had a lot to do with my visa expiring and not having any other options to stay in the country,” I explained, not looking at her. “And you already know about what kind of life awaited me back in Australia, so I was kind of desperate. I thought I picked the lesser evil.”
A rather succinct explanation, but I wasn’t too keen to go into a lot of detail, and it got the point across.
“You married him for a Green Card?” Nora deduced.
I nodded. “I didn’t quite foresee all of this.” I gestured to my stomach and the hospital bed. “But I wouldn’t be me if things didn’t go tits up.”
Nora regarded my belly, then me with pursed lips, digesting the information. “First off, I definitely don’t think you getting pregnant with a child you deserve is the definition of ‘tits up,’” she said, using air quotes. “Though to be fair, I’m not as familiar with the term as you are.”
“Okay,” I conceded, grinning, hand on my belly. “Maybe this wasn’t a part of the plan, but I’m not mad that it happened. Although it does tie me to Kip for the rest of my life.” I bit my lip at the prospect. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about it, but the times before had been colored with Kip’s actions and his declaration that he’d effectively be abandoning us as soon as he could.
Now he’d made a bedside promise to ‘win me back’ with a determined tilt to his mouth and fire in his eyes that scared me a little.
Nora sucked her teeth. “Well, it might have started off as an agreement, and you two definitely didn’t seem happy about it at the start, but you obviously were happy enough to make that.” She nodded to my stomach. “So, it wasn’t all bad.”
“No,” I said quietly, thinking about our brief honeymoon period. “It wasn’t all bad.”
“And although I didn’t know what I was seeing at the time, in hindsight, I’ve come to understand that I was seeing you guys fall into a bit of…likewith each other?” she asked with a teasing glint to her eyes. “This turned real at some point.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, not seeing any point in lying to myself anymore. “It did. But then he went and fucked it up.”
Nora nodded. “He did. But—”
“You don’t have to vaguely allude to his trauma,” I interrupted. “I know.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “He told you?”
“Yep. Pretty much as soon as I woke up, he let me in on the entire harrowing fucking story about what happened to his wife and daughter,” I said, my voice rough and raw all of a sudden.
Nora must’ve heard it because she rushed to pour me a glass of water, and I took it gratefully.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said softly, sitting down beside my bed. Her face was a picture of guilt. Unlike me, Nora did not keep secrets, and she did not lie.
“It wasn’t your place to tell me.” I put the water down, my throat still feeling raw. “You did the right thing. It needed to be him.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “I know. But these months, seeing him act that way, seeing you going through what you were going through alone—”
“I’m not alone,” I said, reaching to grab her hand. “I’ve never been alone. You, Tiffany, Tina, and Calliope have made sure of that.” I smiled thinking of how fucking lucky I had been, stumbling upon Jupiter and deciding to settle here and work at a bakery until I got my shit together. “Even if you had told me, it wouldn’t have changed Kip’s behavior,” I continued. “Apparently him thinking I was dead in a car crash was what did it for him.”
