Page 82 of Things We Burn

I smiled. “Kind of different, don’t you think?”

His eyes swam with something I couldn’t decipher.

“Do you? Want kids?” I found myself asking a question I didn’t want the answer to. Afraid his answer might show how different our futures would be, further putting a time limit on this relationship.

He didn’t respond straightaway, I could see him thinking. He wasn’t going to pacify me; he was going to give me an honest reply.

“Maybe,” he said as my heart dropped. “Maybe if I wasn’t so fucked-up. If I didn’t have mommy issues that I recognize arenot completely dealt with. Maybe if I didn’t enjoy picking up and leaving on a whim. Maybe if I’d had a better father.” He chuckled without humor. “So no. No kids.”

“But I like the idea of Vermont.” He stared at me.

I stared back, perplexed. “Vermont?”

He nodded. “A cabin, one I built with my bare hands.” He winked. “Or one I pretended to build with my bare hands while paying a very talented carpenter. Land where I could build a custom dirt bike track. A vegetable garden for you, in addition to a huge fucking kitchen, of course.”

“For me?”

He nodded. “You think I’m pretending to build a house for little old me, Chef?” He stroked my jaw. “It’s all for you. You’ll open a restaurant. People will come from all over the country. The world. We’ll fuck out in the woods.”

I let his words wash over me. I couldn’t decipher whether it was just a pie in the sky fantasy or if he was really serious. He looked serious. He was planning a future for us. In a cabin. In Vermont. In any other circumstance, a man planning a future for me would set my hackles rising.

But with Kane, it didn’t.

A cabin, a vegetable garden, woods. Yeah, that sounded … nice.

A restaurant that was mine, really mine, where I didn’t have to cater to anyone for publicity, for articles in magazines.

Kane nuzzled my neck. “I’m not sold on Vermont. Or the cabin. Anywhere is fine, with you.”

“I like a cabin in Vermont,” I said in a small voice.

It was the closest thing to commitment I’d ever done in my life.

It terrified me.

Because it felt right.

“Vermont it is,” he pressed a kiss to my lips.

A brick landed in my stomach. That was not an easy guess. Brax wasn’t saying that to fuck with me—well, the arrogant tilt to his lips told me he was—but what he was saying was true. Because Kane had told him about the promises he’d made of a future that quickly turned out to be bullshit.

Brax didn’t even try to hide his shit-eating grin as he saw the blood drain from my face. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re the second woman this week who had to hear that her plans for Vermont were going to have to be put off. Indefinitely.”

I tasted ash, certain I was going to throw up. Not only were his promises of the future empty, they weren’t even original. There was another woman—one I inexplicably hated even though none of this was her fault—who had thought Kane was hers. If I’d had my wits about me, I might’ve questioned where this woman was, why she hadn’t spoken to the media after Kane’s and my relationship was splashed everywhere. I did not have my wits about me, though. And a guarded part of me had been waiting for this, expecting the other shoe to drop.

Brax crossed the space between us, only able to get close to me because I was frozen in place.

His hands went to my shoulders in what appeared to be a reassuring squeeze, but the pressure was too much, to the point of pain. Well, it might’ve hurt if not for the agonizing split in my chest that left me feeling completely numb.

I wanted to run then. Run from the pain, the excruciating pain, from Brax’s smarmy expression, from the blackness clouding my vision.

But I held fast.

I held on to him.

Kane.

To the moments.

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