Page 110 of Things We Burn

I stopped on the porch, staring at his sleek, black motorcycle next to the SUV I bought after researching what was best for fuel economy, accommodating things like a car seat and a stroller along with Maine winters.

“Keys.”

Kane’s voice pervaded the quiet morning.

When I looked at him, he had his palm out open toward me.

“Excuse me?”

“Keys,” he repeated, tilting his head to my purse.

“We’re not taking the bike?”

Before, we never went anywhere unless it was on the back of Kane’s bike. Well, after his accident was a short exception, but he was back on before the doctors could approve.

Seeing it parked in my driveway sent a yearning through me. To be pressed against him, to feel the world speeding by.

“Are you fuckin’kiddingme?”

The harshness of the words snapped me back to Kane, ’who had pushed his glasses to the top of his head to regard me, even more pointedly, before lowering his ridiculously-wide eyes to my stomach.

“You’re eight months pregnant. You think I’m puttin’ you on the back of my bike, even courting the chance of somethin’ happening to you or the baby?”

I looked down at my stomach, having forgotten momentarily that I was pregnant. I’d gone back to life with Kane before the arrest, before the baby, when there were no worries, no barriers between us.

“Aren’t you supposedly the best rider in the world?” I joked, not intending on arguing the point, just desperate to sever the tension between us.

It didn’t work.

“Iamthe best in the world,” he growled. “But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to put my baby at risk. Keys.”

The jovial man I knew was gone. An angry, bitter person standing in his place, palm outstretched.

I wordlessly gave them to him, striding to the car so he wouldn’t see my watery eyes. Not once in my past life had anything brought me close to tears. Yet I was on the edge of a full blown meltdown with Kane’s presence mingling with the pregnancy hormones.

Part of me wanted to spar with him, to give him the coldness I was so well-known for. But bigger parts of me were exhausted, hurt, confused and desperate for Kane. And the guilt… It weighed too heavily on me to fight back.

Though I thought I moved quickly, Kane made it to the passenger door first, opening it for me.

I kept my eyes down.

“Chef.”

Though I wanted to deny him any eye contact, feeling helpless, I looked up.

He was standing behind the door, hands resting on the top of it, gaze intent on me, glasses now down so I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.

His body was tense, jaw hard.

I watched his head rear back as he read whatever emotion I was failing to hide on my face. The stern frown on his lips, visible below his glasses, softened.

“Chef.” His voice was inconceivably tender.

I ground down on my molars. All I wanted was this version of him, yet now that I’d been presented with it, I couldn’t handle it.

“We’ve got to go,” I snapped. “If I don’t eat within an hour, it makes me sick.”

Not a lie, but the coward’s way out.

---