AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I winced at how it sounded out loud.
“I didn’t forgive him,” I murmured, taking another long sip of my water. “When he told me, when he explained why he’s been acting like he has, when he told me about—” I sucked in a breath, trying to find the strength to say their names. “—Gabbie and Evelyn, I told him I was heartbroken for him and could understand the initial reaction, but I couldn’t forgive him for months of his behavior.” I regarded my new cast, thinking of the expression on Kip’s face when he walked into my hospital room. “Was that too harsh?”
Nora shook her head immediately. “No, it wasn’t too harsh. I’ve felt for him, trust me, and I’ve tried to understand his behavior, excuse it.” She took this moment to pour herself some water. “And, at first, I got it. I was ready to give him some grace, figured he’d come around. But then he didn’t.” Her nostrils flared, and her normally placid face flickered with rage. Well, Nora’s version of rage, at least. “Him having been hurt in the past does not excuse him hurting you and abandoning you in the present.”
But he hadn’t just been hurt in the past. He’d beenruined.
Yet hadn’t I been ruined too? I’d been scraped down, hollowed out, beaten, and completely destroyed.
“Make him work for it,” Nora decided. “The happily ever after.”
I regarded her with skepticism. “You think after all this, I get a happily ever after?”
She smiled. “Yes, I most definitely know you’ll get one.”
I shook my head.
Kip might’ve been trying to play the hero now, but I didn’t think we had the kind of story that ended in happily ever after.
* * *
I was fussed over when I was discharged the following day. Mostly by Nora, but also by Kip, who had slept in my room the night before. I’d been asleep when he came in or I would’ve argued against that. Passionately.
Or I liked to think I would’ve argued against it, at least.
But it was rather… nice to wake up in an unfamiliar room that smelled of bleach, wrapped in scratchy sheets and having had really fucked-up dreams, and see Kip there in the chair with two cups in front of him and a box that looked remarkably familiar.
He straightened the second he saw I was awake. He looked decidedly better than he had yesterday. In fact, he didn’t look like he’d slept in a chair beside a hospital bed. He was wearing his cap, a clean tee, a flannel, and jeans. His tanned skin was fresh, and the dark blond shadow on his jaw only worked for him more. The only slight hint to how he was feeling was his slightly bloodshot eyes. I wondered how much he’d slept.
“Are you okay?” he demanded. “Do you need me to get the doctor?”
I blinked, pushing myself up, until I remembered I had a cast on my arm. I compensated with my right hand, and it made the process a little tougher. Kip rushed to gently prop me up.
“Do you need more pillows?”
“No, I don’t need more pillows or a doctor. I need that.” I pointed at one of the cups. “If that’s coffee, with actual caffeine. And if that is decaf, I will straight-up murder you where you stand.”
Kip blinked at me. Then his eyes lightened, and the corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s not decaf. I wouldn’t do that to you. Although it’s only a double shot, since I think your regular quad shot would put you over the two hundred milligram threshold, especially if you choose the pain au chocolat that’s in here.” He nodded to the box.
I stared at him, still struggling to get my bearings. “Gimme coffee,” I demanded.
Kip gave me the cup, which had the distinctive scrawl from the bakery and was somehow still warm.
I took a sip and let the caffeine run through my system. Then I reached for my phone on the table beside me.
“How is it that I’m drinking warm coffee from the bakery at seven in the morning when it’s almost a four-hour round trip back to Jupiter?” I asked him.
He took a sip of his own coffee, which I bet was a fucking quad shot.
“And how is it that you know I’m only allowed two hundred milligrams of caffeine in a day?” I added.
“Well, Nora opened the bakery early because she knew what you’d need after waking up in a hospital bed was pastries and good coffee, since both of us knew none of the cafés within a fifty-mile radius would measure up to your standards.”
I scowled at him. “It’s not my fault that this country seems to have decided that Starbucks qualifies as ‘real coffee.’” I shivered at the thought of it.
He held his hands up in surrender. “No judgment. I can’t drink anything but Nora’s coffee since I was introduced. It’s been fucking hell having to tolerate the shit from the diner the past few months.”
I raised my brow at him. “Yeah, it must’ve been really tough for you.”
