Page 29 of Tore Up

“What are you doing?”

He closed his eyes. “What the fuck does it look like? You need sleep. You’re pregnant. And I don’t want to run up and down the motherfucking stairs all night.”

Was he serious?

I tightened my hold on the covers. “I can’t sleep with you sitting there against the wall.”

Without opening his eyes, he replied, “Why don’t you shut up and try?”

He was really going to sit there like that.

“You can’t sleep like that,” I pointed out.

This time, he opened his eyes and turned his head in my direction. “Neither of us can with you continuing to talk.”

I sat there as he adjusted the pillow and closed his eyes again. Lowering myself back onto the bed, I was sure I’d not sleep a wink, but arguing with his stubborn ass was pointless.

At some point, I must have fallen asleep again. When I opened my eyes, the sun was streaming brightly into the room, and Bane was no longer sitting on the floor. I felt some relief. Talking to him this morning wasn’t at all appealing. It was a miracle I’d actually slept with him in here.

There wasn’t a clock in the room, so I didn’t know what time itwas. I wanted a shower and something to drink. My mouth was dry. Finding the kitchen again might be a task, but I thought I could figure it out. If I got lost, I’d eventually make my way back to the stairs or run into one of the many men who lived here and get directions.

Getting up, I made the bed, then took the things I needed before going to the bathroom.

I had a bit of a learning curve with adjusting the hot and cold water, then turning the showerhead on, but I managed with some trial and error. The water pressure was powerful, and I took longer than I normally did.

Once I towel-dried my hair and dressed, I made my way to the stairs. Yesterday had been emotionally draining, but then so had the day before. It seemed each morning brought another layer of heartache. I wondered if Carina and the boys were thinking about me and if Nick had found them. Was he even going to try? With my thoughts on my family who had left me behind, I managed to remember the path I’d taken with Than last night to the kitchen.

I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I had to eat something. Pausing, I looked around. It was clean. All the food that had been out last night was gone, and the countertops were shiny. I wondered which one of them had taken the time to put everything away.

The fridge was three times bigger than the one we’d had at our rental house. I hadn’t realized they made refrigerators this big. Perhaps they needed one this size because so many males lived here. I touched the dark screen on the front, and it lit up, causing me to jerk my hand away. What the heck was that? It had the date, time, weather, a video of the outside of the front door, a photo of a beautiful black horse, and a television screen. Holy crap. Why did someone need all that on their fridge? What happened to magnets? Too basic for them?

Shaking my head, I muttered, “Rich people,” under my breathand opened the other side panel that didn’t have a high-tech screen lighting it up.

This wasn’t what I’d expected. Just like the surprisingly clean kitchen, this was shocking. Ares had never even taken his dishes to the sink, and most of the time, he’d forget to put the milk back in the fridge.

There were no leftover boxes of takeout, beer, or gross, out-of-date things. I almost closed it, not sure what to do with all this. It reminded me of those intimidating grocery stores with the expensive organic food. Fresh berries in glass containers, a lot of freaking eggs, a bowl of red grapes, two metal baskets full of produce, an entire shelf of protein drinks, a drawer with fancy cheeses, a tall pitcher of orange juice, a gallon of milk, yogurts in small and expensive-looking containers, and a host of condiments. I reached for the milk and then looked at the three jars of homemade jams in the side door. Strawberry, blueberry, and peach. I took out the strawberry and closed the door very gently. God only knew what they’d paid for the dang thing.

I turned to study the area and figure out which cabinet out of the many they might keep the nonperishables in. After opening the obvious ones that were largest and having no luck, I wondered if the door that was in that small, odd, little room on the other side of the ovens—yes, plural—was where they put food.

The small room had a wine rack, a liquor cabinet, and what I thought was a food prepping area but no food. Shaking my head clueless as to why this space was needed, I turned to open the closed door on the other side of the wine rack. My mouth fell slightly open as the light came on automatically, and I stared into a room larger than the bathroom I was using. It was a food closet—no, a food room. A closet was too basic of a term for what this was. There were shelves, there were drawers, there were baskets that I thought were also drawers, and there were racksthat spun around.

“Holy moly,” I breathed.

“Are you looking for something or just standing in here to gawk at the pantry?” Bane asked as he walked past me and went to one of the baskets, then plucked out a loaf of some kind of bakery bread. That had not come from a grocery store.

“This is a pantry?” I asked.

I’d heard of those before, but I’d never actually seen one. I thought a pantry was a closet with a door and just shelves. Not a room you could walk inside and sit for a spell.

He reached for something off another shelf, then looked at me. “What the fuck else would it be?”

“A corner market,” I muttered before I could stop myself.

“What?” he snapped.

“A corner market,” I said clearly this time.

He raised his eyebrows slightly and gave me an odd look before walking back toward the door once he found what he was looking for.

---