Page 109 of Things We Burn

And there were the suffocating walls of the house with me and Kane in it. The anger from last night was still there, a living, fire-breathing thing that had not been resolved nor addressed yet.

Because I wanted to give Kane privacy, I went downstairs to let him get ready after throwing on a cotton dress. I had never been a dress person, but I'd become one out of ease. Dressing a bump in a warm spring, approaching summer, I needed simple and breathability.

My hair was much longer now. Before, I’d had a standing appointment in New York, getting a trim every six weeks. Obviously, I couldn’t make that appointment anymore. And I didn’t have the energy to sit in a salon chair with a stranger while making idle conversation. Especially since a pregnant womanwas a magnet for people wanting to converse with a stranger. It felt like I was a carnival game. In line at the supermarket, the doctor’s office, the gas station. Everyone wanted to know how far along I was, what the gender was, did I have a name. The questions were endless and infuriating.

At least the people of Jupiter, Maine didn’t seem to recognize me from the photos posted all over the media during Kane’s trial. Granted, I looked different being very pregnant, my face rounder than it was with the extra weight, my hair longer. I wasn’t unrecognizable, though. So people were either very polite, didn’t know who I was or didn’t care.

I didn’t mind any of the above as long as I was left alone.

Alone. Lonely, was a better term for it. Never in my life had I been so terribly, painfully lonely.

“You ready?”

I jumped from where I’d been standing at the window, watching the waves, contemplating.

Kane was in the arch separating the kitchen and living area.

His hair was still wet, curling around his neck. I marveled at the tattooed arms, stretching the sleeves of his black tee. They were larger, much larger than they had been before. They were crossed over a chest that was wider, broader. Even though the day was warm, he wore jeans, ripped at the knees, and Converse.

He seemed to be doing the same inspection of my outfit. Simple white cotton dress that should’ve gone below my knees but because of my stomach, it brushed mid-thigh, showing off legs that were now tanned from my endless strolling along the beach with Blanche.

Same with my face. I had freckles I’d never had before … which made sense since I had spent most of my days inside a kitchen without windows, blasted with artificial light. Because of all the extra blood flowing through my veins, it seemed my nowrounder cheeks were always flushed with color. And that made my green eyes look brighter.

“You look different,” Kane said.

“Obviously,” I replied, gesturing to my stomach.

He shook his head. “Not that. Even though I couldn’t have known it until last night, you were born to walk around, heavy with my baby.”

My breath hitched at the casual yet possessive statement. One I shouldn’t have liked. I didn’t believe women were ‘born’ to be anything but whatever they wanted to be. They certainly weren’t born to be mothers. Unless they made that choice themselves.

But yet…

“It’s … something else,” Kane rubbed his jaw, looking at me with an inquisitive gaze. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head. “Let’s go,” he stated instead of saying whatever it was he was going to say.

Nodding, I pursed my lips to not let my disappointment show.

“After you,” he said when I stood there unmoving.

We’d gone from him uttering something profound, intimate, loving to bumbling about like strangers on a first date, unsure of how to act around each other.

I hated it.

Because we were worse than strangers, we were people who once knew each other intimately and now we were … something else.

I held my breath, keeping a wide berth as I brushed past him in the archway to get to the hall that connected to the front door. Regardless, I was somehow engulfed in the smell of him mixed with my soap.

I swallowed down the burn of my arousal, since Kane seemed to be doing the same to his. Yes, he’d been hungry for me lastnight, and there’d been the kiss in the kitchen, but all of that was now packed away, locked down.

Outside, I inhaled the morning air, the dampness from the storm still hanging around, leaving humidity heavy in the air.

Before all of this, I wasn’t someone who appreciated simple things like spring mornings after storms. I wasn’t someone who slowed down in order to appreciate things like that. Now I did reflexively, not by choice.

I’d felt like I was going insane my first few weeks there. Stuck in survival mode, I’d forced myself to meditate for ten minutes a day, even though I didn’t believe it would do a thing for me. Being pregnant meant I couldn’t self-medicate, so it was a last-ditch effort to slow my mind.

It hadn’t worked at all at first. But slowly, it helped quiet everything.

Yet with Kane back, things were loud.

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