Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
That obviously didn’t happen, but even in the post-one-night-stand awkwardness, I held out hope. A connection like what Blue and I have—in bed and out of it—doesn’t happen every day. I thought all he needed was time to work through his ethical concerns about dating a teammate’s sister, and we’d be besties with benefits by the time the season was over.
Instead, I found out I was pregnant and that Blue isn’t who he pretends to be.
Maybe he isn’t even the man he thought he was before I dropped the baby bomb. Maybe realizing he couldn’t meditate his way out of an accidental pregnancy is what shoved him into the asshole zone.
In the end, it doesn’t matter.
He was an asshole, an asshole who charged into the asshole zone for five whole months without any sign of remorse.
And I’m suddenly so pissed about it, I feel like I stuck my finger in the light socket by the bed.
Pressure builds behind my sternum. My pulse picks up, the monitor betraying me with a beeping accelerando while my cheeks heat with fury.
Blue’s eyes flick to the machine, then back to me, concern creasing his forehead.
“Is everything all right? Should I get a nurse?” he asks in the sweetest, most concerned rumble I’ve ever heard.
And that—that, for some reason—is what breaks the dam.
He hasn’t earned the right to rumble sweetly in my direction.
Not even close!
“Is everything all right? No, everything is not all right,” I blurt out. “Why would everything be even close to all right when my best friend and the father of my child couldn’t pick up a phone for five fucking months? Not so much as a ‘maybe we should revisit this conversation’ or ‘are you still alive?’ text in five months, Archer. Not so much as an email. Hell, I would have settled for another shitty letter or a message in a bottle. But I got nothing. Nothing. And believe me, the silence spoke volumes.”
“Wait, Bea. Please,” he says, in that same calm voice that used to make me want to curl up in his lap and purr.
Now, it makes me want to toss my ice water in his face.
“I will not wait. I mean, seriously, Blue. Seriously.” I thrust both arms out to my sides, smacking the IV pole the nurse left in case they decided I needed fluids, making it clang. “What is wrong with you? How dare you act like you care about me, like you know what it even means to care about someone, when you clearly don’t. Not even close. Not even in the realm of starting to know.”
He winces, the words clearly hitting some hidden nerve, but I refuse to feel bad about it. Not when he could have avoided all of this by being the tiniest bit decent.
He didn’t have to be loving or “there for me.” He just had to be a mannerly one-night stand, following up on the status of our accidental fetus from time to time. You know, just in case the person dealing with the major, life-changing consequences of his thirty seconds of pleasure needed info on his blood type or a family medical history for her next prenatal appointment.
And yes, to be fair, it was way more than thirty seconds, and every achingly beautiful minute of it lives in my head rent-free, but that isn’t the point.
No amount of dick sorcery can make up for the way he’s behaved since then, and if I’m meaner now than I used to be?
Well, he helped make me that way.
“Don’t you dare tell me you lost your phone in a tragic hockey-practice accident and couldn’t remember my number or something, either,” I barrel on, “My brother is a professional hockey player. I know you aren’t allowed to have your phones on the ice, not even at practice. Speaking of my brother, you could have asked him for my number anytime. You didn’t have to tell him that you wanted to talk to me about the night we fucked like bunnies and got knocked up.”
I flop an arm toward him again, careful not to hit anything this time. “You could have just said that you’d lost your phone. Baylor knows we’re friends. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But you didn’t, and I know you didn’t, because Baylor would have told me. Because my brother isn’t a shithead full of shit!”
Blue nods slowly, seriously, as if agreeing with me, which only makes me angrier for some reason.
Before I can figure out why—or suffer from another bout of verbal diarrhea—a perky knock sounds from the door.
“Hey there, how’s it going in here?” A nurse pokes her head in. She’s younger than the last one, with box braids pulled back in a neat ponytail and kind, but sharp brown eyes that glance back and forth between us. “I’m Wella, just came on shift. Saw your BPMs were getting a little fast in here, and wanted to make sure you were okay.”