Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(67)

Chin wobbly, she dropped her hand to her belly and circled her palm softly over that spot that would be getting bigger and bigger during the next few months. It was fine. She’d create her own family and would do everything she could to make sure the little peanut growing inside her would never wonder if she or he was wanted. They would just grow up knowing it.

The knock on the door startled her out of her thoughts, and she roused herself off the bed and went to answer it. Cole stood on the other side, a large fresh scratch across his cheek and a squirming Kahn in his arms. The kitten took one look at her, let out a mournful mewling sound, did the magic liquid trick cats do to free themselves, then sprang free and sprinted into her apartment where he curled up on the couch and started to purr.

They stood there just staring at each other. The silence should have felt weird. It didn’t. It was more of a prelude than a pause. It gave her time to take him in, look for any kind of fuzziness in his gaze or evidence from the concussion. All that she saw, though, was the angry scratch that had to be from Kahn and a man who made her heart stutter stop. It wasn’t just the Not-Thor broad-shouldered hotness of him, it was more. It was everything.

He worked his jaw back and forth for a second, his gaze going up to the ceiling for a beat before landing back on her. “We never got to have that bar trivia night.”

Was there a German word for nostalgia for something that hadn’t happened? There should be, because that’s exactly what was coursing through her right now. Loss for what could have been, but she was going to handle it like a grown-up. Suck it up. Be an adult.

Swallowing past the emotion—fucking hormones and heartbreak—she managed to curl her lips in what she hoped looked like a smile. “We would have killed it.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to come in?”

Damn. She hadn’t meant to ask that. It came out as automatically as her awk-weird fact verbal explosion. And when he clamped his lips together, the muscles of his jaw tightening, it took everything she had not to just shut the door on Cole and pretend he wasn’t standing on the other side of the threshold.

“Sure.” He nodded. “Let me check out the new ceiling.”

He came in, seemingly at ease in her brightly decorated apartment with its plethora of knickknacks, pillows, and snarky tea towels hanging from almost every drawer pull in her kitchen nook. While she was an internal wreck of emotions and pheromones popping up everywhere inside her like wildflowers, he was as cool and unbothered as he always was. It wasn’t fair. Then again, when was life ever fair?

They walked into her bedroom, the bed still unmade and her clothes from last night in a pile by the open closet door. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he walked right up to the edge of her bed and looked up at the ceiling.

“Are they coming back to finish fixing it?” he asked.

“The cosmetic stuff?” She snorted. “Not likely.”

“Your landlord is an asshole.”

Yeah, that was putting it mildly. “Well, he is my mom’s brother, so that makes sense.”

He looked back at her, his focus going to her belly. “Have you told your mom yet?”

“I might include it on the annual Christmas card.” Or not. Really, was the woman who couldn’t be a mom suddenly going to become the world’s best grandma? Did she even want to take the chance when the outcome would probably only be silence?

He shoved his hands in his pockets, suddenly looking a bit lost. “I’m sorry.”

So was she, but not for what he was talking about. The ache in her chest had nothing to do with her mom or the state of her ceiling or the fact that she seemed to always be looking for her place in this world. It was because of him—correction, it was because she was for all intents and purposes saying goodbye to the man she’d fallen for. Sure, there’d be parenting discussions and custody exchanges but nothing else, and that left a burning hole in her heart. And she’d been such a bitch last night, all because he had his forever constant and it wasn’t her.

The muscle in Cole’s jaw flexed while he looked at her, really looked at her, and he let out a long breath. “I better get going.”

She nodded, watching him turn and start back out of her bedroom. Heat made her cheeks burn as her pulse quickened while she forgot how to breath or think or make her heart beat, the whole world seeming to be balanced on the tip of this moment. He got almost to the door before she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Baskin Robbins used to sell ketchup-flavored ice cream,” she said, the words coming out in a rush.

He paused and turned. “Lois Lane had a younger sister named Lucy.”

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and she quickly blinked to keep them from falling—not yet, anyway. She could make it until the door closed behind him. She would make it that long.

After what seemed like a zillion years but was probably two seconds, she managed to find the ability to speak again. “We really would have been amazing at bar trivia.”

“Yeah.” He nodded, his entire body tense. “We would have.”

Then he was gone, moving at a fast clip out of her bedroom and into the living room. Before she even had a minute to process it, she heard her front door open and then the final click of it closing behind him.

The urge to collapse back on her bed and let out the sob bubbling up inside her was nearly overwhelming, but she refused to give in. She knew what this was like. She’d been here before. That moment every time when her mom dropped her off at some relative’s house with her clothes in a battered rolling suitcase that had been used too often to have ever seen better days.