Page 9 of Faking Forever
“It was the only reason you married me. The baby.”
He blinked. Stared. Blinked again. While the silence stretched on into eternity.
“It wasn’t theonlyreason,” he finally said, after long fraught moments of nothing. “We had—have—chemistry. We are intellectually and financially compatible. We’re…”
“You didn’t love me,” she interrupted quietly.
“What I felt for you was…” He shrugged a little helplessly. “It was complicated. But come on, Kenna. It’s not like you lovedme. Did you?”
Now it was her turn to hesitate, because she wasn’t surehowshe felt about him. She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of falling for him. Even though she easily could have. He was… Well, simply put, he waslovely. And in those first four months, when they’d been flirty, lighthearted, and easy in each other’scompany, when all that had been between them was sex, laughter, fun, he had felt like someone she could let herself like.
Even love.
Kenny had felt light in those first few giddy months with him. Unburdened. Free. Maybe even happy.
She’d expected the passion between them to burn out very quickly. Instead it had grown and grown and weeks had turned into months. And their fling had become something perilously close to a relationship.
She had only just begun to explore her complicated and confusing feelings when they’d gotten careless. A forgotten condom. A first for him, if he was to be believed, and shedidbelieve him because she’d forgotten as well. And she was usually extremely diligent about checking.
Frankly, Kenny was surprised that that was the first time they’d forgotten a condom. They’d been so combustible back then and burned out of control every single time they’d made love.
One forgotten condom resulting in an unexpected but not wholly unwanted pregnancy, and Kenny had found herself plunged into uncertainty. About him, about them. The flirty lightheartedness had completely and almost instantly disappeared from their burgeoning relationship.
As had the carefree, explosive sex.
All that had remained was tension, unease, awkwardness, and an inability to communicate. And a few sexual encounters which—while good—had never gotten close to matching their pre-pregnancy encounters.
Although, Kenny knew she was largely to blame for the latter. She tended to close herself off when she had more to lose. And with Smith she feared the losses would be catastrophic and leave her broken beyond repair.
“Did you?” he prompted when she remained silent.
His voice was harsh, laced with contempt and cynicism.And when she still couldn’t find a response to the question about whether she had—or did—love him, he swore viciously beneath his breath and then sneered at her.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” he decided, frost on the edges of each word. “I can’t live withyouanymore. I can’t talk to you, Kenna. You give me absolutely nothing to work with. You’re too terrified of relinquishing an ounce of that control.”
She floundered, searching for something to say, something to fix this. Because now that her worst fears were coming to fruition, now that the moment that she’d been expecting for a year and a half was finally here, Kenny found that she wasn’t ready for it. She wasn’t ready to give him up.
She tried for a rational voice, hoping to instill some calm into this emotionally fraught moment. Even though she felt far from it. The panic clawing its way from her stomach up into her throat, was a living thing, fighting to find its way out by any means possible.
“I think—” Her voice was unsteady and she paused for a moment, trying to compose herself. “If we applied ourselves, we could still…still save this marriage. We could have a good life together and?—”
The obscenity that flew from his mouth startled them both. And she stared at him with huge eyes, his unpredictable mood stunning her.
“There’s nothing to save. It’s over. It never really began,” he told her from between gritted teeth, clearly fighting to maintain the calm she usually so admired in him.
“I’ve tried to make this work. For a year and a half I’ve tried. But we have nothing in common. And the thought of adding an innocent child into this cold, sterile atmosphere, I can’t even…” His jaw clenched as he bit off what he was about to say and stared at her for a long moment as if deciding whether to say it anyway. “You’re like a Barbie doll. All this waxy perfection on the outside but nothing substantive on the inside. I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried, but liking you is hard, Kenna. And loving you? Fuckingimpossible.”
Kenny was numb. She felt like she was wading through mud. Thick, viscous, chest-deep mud. It suffocated her, slowed her reactions, and—blessedly—stifled her emotions.
She was on autopilot, smiling at the right times, trying to make conversation with Niall’s lovely, somewhat shy, new wife Fern, while always aware of Smith quietly brooding in the background. He hadn’t said much since that last painful indictment in the bathroom.
She hadn’t spoken to him either. She’d retreated, fled like a wounded animal seeking a safe, dark haven where she could hole up and lick her wounds…or maybe wither up and die.
But she didn’t have the luxury of taking shelter for too long. She’d had to cocoon herself within the shredded remnants of her pride and dignity, drag her mask firmly back in place, and climb into a car with the man who’d just emotionally eviscerated her. And then they’d both had to put up a pretense of normalcy for her family.
Only Smith wasn’t pretending. He wasn’t eventryingto make it look like they were okay. He didn’t bother exchanging pleasantries with any of her brothers or their wives and had been steadily drinking since arriving half an hour ago.
Kenny tried to focus on other things, tried to put the conversation she’d had with Smith to the back of her mind for now.
