Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 142976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 477(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 477(@300wpm)
Weren’t babies meant to be conceived in memorable, glorious acts of love and affection?
Okay, that was an embarrassingly naive thought. Of course, he knew better than that. He’d never really considered having kids but if the thought had fleetingly passed his mind at some point, it would have been within the context of something similar to what Gideon and Beth had. Love, marriage, the whole shebang. Not an arrangement with a stranger. A stranger whom he felt indifferent toward at least and slightly contemptuous toward at most.
He stared at the blob for a long time, not sure what to do for it. Not sure if it even was his place to do anything. She’d made it more than clear that she didn’t want or need his involvement. But the reality was… he was going to have a front row seat to this pregnancy. She would be living in his home, growing bigger and bigger with a baby that she called hers but that was actually theirs.
How was he supposed to remain unemotional and detached from that? Was it even possible?
He didn’t want to get attached, he didn’t want to love it… then again, that eventuality was probably highly unlikely. He felt a distant, vague sort of recognition currently. This wasn’t something he’d gone looking for. It wasn’t anything he’d ever wanted. And maybe that was how it would remain. Maybe he would watch her grow bigger and bigger with her baby, in distant and uninvested interest.
If nothing else the pregnancy added viability to their fabricated love story. The ultimate happy ending. The whole world would know him as the father of this child and eventually that child would know Cade as his father. A child that would have expectations of its father. And Cade—in his effort to remain distant and uninvolved—would disappoint the kid and hurt it.
The pounding echoing invocation of fucks started up again… soaring and swooping all around him. And this time, there was no goddamn way to silence them.
Cade—after remaining cooped up in the bedroom for nearly two hours—joined Fern for dinner but remained mute throughout the meal. She was beginning to recognize that he was an innately quiet man who spoke only when absolutely necessary, but this silence brimmed with everything that he deliberately left unspoken. Possibly because he thought the words were unnecessary, but more likely because he wasn’t quite sure how to say them.
Fern didn’t want to push him. There really wasn’t anything that needed to be said. She’d conveyed a crucial piece of information that did not at all change their current situation or their immediate futures. The baby was here. It existed. Everything else remained the same.
So, they ate in silence, after which she retreated to the bathroom for a shower and a change of clothes. While Cade—who had showered and changed during the two hours he’d been hiding from her— caught up on his business correspondence.
They didn’t speak at all for the rest of the flight and when their plane landed a little after one-thirty am Saturday morning at a private airfield, they were both exhausted and not really in the right frame of mind to talk anyway.
It was close to three in the morning when Cade and Fern wearily trudged into his luxurious apartment in Clifton. Fern was so exhausted, she only vaguely registered her airy surroundings, absently noting a lot of white on white on beige. Cade, who’d driven them from the airport himself, gently deposited her one suitcase on the floor just inside the front door, and shrugged his own larger, heavier tote bag from his shoulder, carelessly dropping it with a thump.
“There are two spare bedrooms,” he told her stifling a yawn as he spoke to her for the first time in hours. “Choose whichever one you want.” He jammed his hands into his charcoal gray trouser pockets and stared at her broodingly. “I haven’t slept since this all began; I’m going to bed.”
Before she could respond, he picked up his bag again, and stalked down the softly lit hallway. He turned into what she assumed was a bedroom and shut the door with a quiet snick.
Fern stood just inside the front door where he’d abandoned her, staring after him and knew that this was a small taste of what was to come over the next thirty-six months. She’d known not to expect friendship, but she’d hoped for at least some kind of amicability between them. This wasn’t a very auspicious beginning and she couldn’t help feeling hollow and a little despairing.
“Stop it,” she admonished herself impatiently, wrapping her arms around her quivering body. She couldn’t keep telling herself—and him—that she expected nothing from him, only to turn around and feel sad and sick to her stomach when nothing was exactly what she got.
She was being ridiculous and childish and stupid and she needed to grow the hell up fast. For the sake of her sanity and for her baby’s well-being.