Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Was he actually saying what I thought he was saying? That he was willing to raise another man’s child, to take on a responsibility that wasn’t his, not by any stretch of the imagination-that he was going to do that so that I didn’t have to do this all alone? So that I could have a co-parent and someone to financially assist me? So that my baby would have a positive male role model?
I couldn’t handle it anymore. Not the secrets and lies. Not the heartbreak. Not going it alone, or working that stupid job, or the aches and changes in my body. Not my pathetic little apartment in this town that I didn’t even like. None of it.
To my great shame and horror, I burst into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Michael
It put an instant ache in my chest to hear Stevie crying. I pulled her into my arms immediately, cradling her head against my shoulder, holding onto her as tightly as I dared.
I had never heard Stevie cry, not even when she was a kid and hanging out with Brooke. I knew that she had troubles, of course, all teens did, and all adults did as well, but through it all she’d kept a stiff upper lip, as the Brits would say.
To see her crying now, to feel as her sobs wracked her body… it told me just how much stress the poor darling woman had been under. I wanted to take it all away, to banish it, and make sure that she never felt that defenseless, or that upset, ever again.
I kissed the top of her head, and Stevie clung to me like she was drowning and I was the only life raft around. I rubbed her back, and slowly, with a few hiccups and sniffles, her crying began to subside.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her lips brushing against my neck. This was the most intimate we had ever been together. Oh, sure, yes, we had slept together. But this was something entirely different. This was holding one another, this was vulnerability and emotional honestly. There was sex, and there was intimacy. Sometimes they were intertwined, other times they weren’t, and this was definitely the latter.
“I’ve just been so scared,” she admitted. “Scared and so alone, so lonely—nobody’s here that I really care about, I don’t care about my coworkers, and they don’t care about me, and it’s all just a mess… I feel like shit all the time, and I’ve been terrified about—about telling my parents, and my brother, and worrying that everyone would be disappointed in me, and…” She broke off to cry a little more.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. I was certain by now that the baby was mine, and not Cameron’s, even if she hadn’t verbally admitted it. Did I strike her as the kind of guy who would be angry, or refuse to help her?
“How could I?” Stevie asked. “I couldn’t add to your troubles. You had so much going on and I couldn’t add a financial burden to that, especially something like a kid when you’d already done the whole fatherhood thing and you didn’t even want a relationship…”
I was never going to stop wanting to shoot myself in the foot for saying that, was I?
“…and I was so ashamed, with the review, and I basically helped kill your business, I mean I staked it right through the heart, and I had been so determined to help, I’d been so sure that I could help you, and instead it was all blowing up in my face and I was taking you down with me—and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you. I fucked it all up.”
“So you left,” I finished for her.
Stevie nodded into my shoulder.
“You’ve got it all wrong, sweetheart,” I told her. I could’ve kicked myself for that endearment slipping out, but Stevie didn’t seem to mind. Quite the opposite—she clung to me even harder. “You could never fuck things up for me. If anything, I’m the fuck up here.”
Stevie jolted a little in surprise. “What? You? Michael, no…”
“Yes.” I kept rubbing her back. “Hey, I had a really good thing in front of me. You. You were the best thing that had ever happened to me. You had an amazing idea for my restaurant, you were everything I’d ever wanted in a life partner, you were just… everything. And I didn’t make sure that you felt valued while I had you. I was scared and fighting back against it when I should have been embracing it. Embracing you.”
Stevie’s breathing quieted but I continued to hold her, comforting her.
“You were right—about everything. Business is back up at the restaurant and it’s steadily growing. People really do love the new menu. That reviewer didn’t make enough of a dent, just a slump, and I found out—the fucker was paid off by Theo and told to trash our food. It was all a lie.”