Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
“Yeah!” Micah cheered.
I smiled—
“Aww, you never come with us!” Lily complained.
Unfortunately, you’ll find out why very soon, darling.
“Wait, what’s this?” Ash sat down at the table, focused on Micah. “You wanna learn chess?”
Our boy nodded proudly. “Hallie showed me on her laptop. It was fun.”
Ash didn’t need more than that to get fired up. “That’s fantastic, baby. I think you’ll like it. Maybe we got ourselves a future grand master right here, huh? Our next Kasparov or Polgár.”
Good grief. Leave it to Ash to already know stuff about a game he’d never claimed interest in. Then again, he had this thing where he researched the basics of most sports before a major championship. He didn’t always watch the games, but he followed the stats for some reason.
Micah snickered and hugged Ash’s arm. “I’m always gonna be Mikey!”
“Damn right, you will.” Ash dropped a kiss to the top of the boy’s head. “All right, let’s eat. I take it Dylan’s gonna sleep away the day.” He reached for some toast. “Can we just put it out there that Daddy’s hella handsome in his glasses?”
What the—
What was he doing?
Hallie eyed us curiously. Lily definitely found me handsome, and Micah just scrunched his nose.
“I ran out of contacts,” I muttered, focusing on plating some scrambled eggs. “The new ones will be here tomorrow.”
“Okay, you can watch your cartoons for twenty minutes,” Ash said. “Then we gotta get you dressed so we can head over to Uncle Theo’s. And then we’re gonna play…?”
“Hurry Up, Chicken Butt!” Micah and Lily yelled.
I smiled to myself and brought some dishes back to the sink.
The little ones ran out first, quickly followed by Hallie, and then there were two.
Like a flip of a switch, tension filled the kitchen, but it was all on me. I made it that way, because I was the one with a split personality at the moment. My heart had never been so set on just forgiving and forgetting and begging him to take me back, at the same time as my head ran in the opposite direction. I was gonna stand firm. Instant gratification would do nothing but delay the inevitable, and I refused to go there.
“Can we talk?” Ash asked, closing the dishwasher.
I glanced at him before taking the rag to wipe down the table. “Yes, sure.” Now what? Another event he was attending? Maybe he’d found a date for the masquerade ball after all? Walking over to the table, I tried to unclench and lighten the mood. My mood. “If you’re coming clean about your new fashion choice for this summer’s pool outfit, I already read the news online.”
“Uh…what?”
I smirked and started wiping the table. “I heard you and Reese lost a bet to all the brats at the event yesterday.”
Apparently, the whole community could now look forward to a summer of Ash and Reese wearing white swim trunks with red hearts. And a bunch of creative statements from the brats, who were allowed to doodle on said swim trunks.
“Oh,” Ash chuckled. “Yeah, we decided to let the little shits win one. In my defense, I wasn’t really part of it until the end.”
Uh-huh.
“Anyway, uh…” He cleared his throat. “What I wanted to say was, uh—you were right. About pretty much everything.”
What? I straightened and looked over at him.
His discomfort was clear as day, and he flicked a glance at the doorway, maybe making sure we were alone.
“I treated you horribly,” he admitted. “Even though everything I said was true—about me being happy without Daddykink in my life—you saw that I was missing something. You knew all along. And I can only imagine how you figured it out, how I… How I treated you when I—” He cut himself off, visibly upset.
I swallowed and felt a rush of unease swell over me, like a big wave that pulled me under.
Where the hell was this coming from?
“It’s my only regret in life, that I couldn’t be braver,” he went on. “It didn’t occur to me until recently that I put you in a fucking awful position.”
Oh my God.
Emotions welled up within me, and my eyes smarted faster than I could blink.
“I mean, I know I told you I would’ve done the same thing, but…” He coughed and looked away. “You did everything you could—and I understand why you couldn’t go on. I wouldn’t have wanted that on my conscience either, the risk of you growing resentful one day or living with regrets. I’d never want you to deny a part of yourself.”
I pressed a hand to my mouth as I felt a sound travel up my throat. Tears blurred my vision and ran down my face before I could even try to hold anything back, and I quickly wiped at my cheek. I couldn’t believe he was actually saying all this to me. The words I’d never thought I’d hear come out of his mouth.