Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 104869 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104869 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
“We should have a baby,” she stated as plainly as she could, yet he still stared at her with that glazed, confused look in his eyes.
“Smith?” she prompted, baffled by his response—or lack thereof.
“I-I don’t think—” He swallowed, the ashen waxiness of his complexion going a little green.
“You don’t want a baby?” she asked, hurt starting to supersede the confusion. What was going on here?
“I do. I just didn’t think you wanted another baby.”
Another baby?
“We’ve never had a baby, Smith,” she reminded gently, wondering why she always had to point that out to him. That first time… It hadn’t been… It was…
Her brain glitched as she found herself unable to define exactly what it had been. She’d tried not to dwell on it for too long afterward. What would be the point?
She dismissed it from her mind and focused on Smith. “It’s the next logical step in our relationship, Smith.”
“Is it?” His mouth tightened and something resembling anger sparked in his eyes. “Logical? Right.”
Oh, that was anger.
Why?
“Where is this coming from, Kenna?”
“I don’t understa—”
He shook his head, the gesture curt, almost impatient, and interrupted her before she completed her sentence. “Why have you suddenly decided that you want a baby? And don’t give me any of that shit about it being logical and expected and the right timing. Why now? Is it because your brother’s wife is pregnant? Because Tina had the twins?”
Tina was his younger sister. Her twin boys were born shortly after Kenny’s miscarriage just over a year ago.
“Is it because you think if we make another baby, you can pretend the last one never existed? Although you’re doing a pretty good job of that already, aren’t you?”
She stared, unblinking. Unsure of how to respond to the acid in his voice. The bitterness in his eyes. His words hitting harder and truer than she would ever have believed they could.
“You didn’t leave…after what happened. And we managed to find this routine that works for us. I thought it meant we’d continue on, and now seems like the right time for us to start a family.”
He looked honestly staggered by her response, his eyebrows rocketing to his hairline.
“Didn’t…don’t you agree?” God, why did she have to be so damned awkward when it came to stuff like this? She was a leader in the field of medical and gynecological oncology, highly respected by her peers, but she couldn’t have a conversation with her own husband over something as important as this without becoming confused and flustered.
Kenny didn’t do well with interpersonal relationships, didn’t know what to do with all the messy emotions that accompanied them. She’d come to appreciate what she and Smith had. An understanding. A relationship based on mutual respect, sexual attraction, and possibly even friendship.
This was not how she pictured this conversation going. She’d expected pleasant agreement, and a conversation about ceasing birth control, ovulation cycles, and schedule adjustments.
Not this wall of resistance coming off her bare-chested husband.
“I do not agree.” His tone was firm, cold, absolutely uncompromising.
“I thought you wanted a child. That’s why we married.”
“I didn’t know you as well as I believed I did when we married. Now I know you well enough to recognize that you’re the last person on earth with whom I’d ever want to have a child.”
The words left her reeling, landing like crushing blows and inflicting whatever the emotional equivalent to gross bodily harm was. Up until this very moment she’d never really understood how badly Smith could hurt her. She hadn’t even recognized how truly important his opinion of her had become.
She’d spent her life insulating herself from emotion, from close attachments, but Smith had somehow crept beneath all of her defenses. She’d kept Smith at a polite distance for so long because she’d expected him to leave. But that hadn’t happened and she’d allowed herself to become complacent. Content, even. She’d let down her guard and hadn’t spent enough time shoring up her weakening defenses.
But she could now see that creating a life—and life—with Smith, sharing intimacies, a home, meals, conversation, had given her a sense of kinship. She’d started seeing them as a team, a solid unit that had each other’s backs.
So his words—spoken in a quiet, almost gentle voice while dripping with acid and disdain—absolutely ruined her.
Her chest felt like it had caved in beneath the shattering impact of that statement and she found herself unable to speak as she battled to breathe.
“Shit.” Smith looked pained, regret pooling in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Did you mean it?”
His hesitation told her all that she needed to know.
“How long have you felt this way?” she asked.
More hesitation. Then, “I don’t know.”
She saw the lie in the furtive movement of his eyes and the restless play of muscles bunching and contracting beneath his smooth skin.
“I don’t believe you,” she challenged.