Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(77)

Standing in the middle of my bedroom in my bra and unzipped jeans with one shoe on and the other in my hand, I feel something snap on a cellular level.

I’ve always been a relatively calm person.

But in this moment, as red clouds my vision, consuming my mind, I lose control over everything.

I feel as if I’m hovering above my body, watching it all play out like a scene from a movie.

The shoe in my hand flies across the room, making direct contact with Asher’s head, waking him abruptly. When his eyes meet mine, he looks sleepy and confused. Then he turns to look at the sleeping body beside him. I watch as everything registers, just how bad this is. His eyes grow wide and his mouth gapes like a fish as he scrambles for words—an excuse, a plea, an apology? I don’t know, but I don’t allow him the luxury of figuring it out.

Blindly, I begin to grasp for something… anything. Whatever my hands find becomes my next weapon as I begin launching objects across the room. Anything I can lift becomes airborne.

Glass breaks, things shatter into a million pieces—picture frames, the vase my mama bought us for our wedding flowers, the lamp on the dresser… my heart, my past, my present, my future.

Everything splinters into a before and after.

My throat burns and it’s then I realize I’ve been screaming. Coughing, I brace my hands on my knees and try to take a breath, but it gets lodged in my throat on a sob.

“Tempest!” Asher yells, taking advantage of the pause in action to get off the bed. Hands raised, he looks at me like I’m a stranger, not his wife of eight fucking years. “Get a damn grip on yourself. What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

A harsh bark comes out—deep from the pit of my stomach. “Me?” I yell back. “I think the better question, Asher Williams, is have you lost your goddamn mind? What is she doing here? What have you done?” I scream. My voice sounding foreign, like it’s sourced from the pits of hell—torn and feral. “How could you do this?”

“I can explain—”

I don’t let him finish that sentence, instead, I pull a dresser drawer open and start throwing clothes at him. “Get dressed and get the hell out of my house!”

“Em,” he says, pleading as he eases toward me like I’m a caged animal. Maybe I am, because right now I feel like I could chew off his right arm and shove it up his ass… and then… I finally allow myself to look over at Mindy who’s standing on the other side of the bed with the sheet covering her naked body.

My fucking sheets.

My fucking husband.

“You,” I say, voice trembling as I redirect my ire. I begin to take a step toward her, but Asher tries to intercept, so I turn back to him. “Get. Out.” It’s half cry, half plea, all demand. I need them both out of my house right this second. I need space. I need air. I need … I don’t even know.

I came home to make a baby … to make love to my husband.

And this ...

“Maybe you should …” He starts to suggest something, bringing my gaze back up to him, and his expression changes—self-preservation, regret, resignation… I don’t know. But he thinks better of whatever he was going to say. “Okay. We’ll go,” he says, climbing onto the bed to make his way over to her … to Mindy. The way he slips an arm around her waist, protectively, like he’s done to me so many times, it makes me lose what tiny grip on sanity I have left.

When the dresser hits the ground, my eyes go wide.

I didn’t even know I could do that.

As I’m inspecting my work, the door to the bathroom that’s attached to our bedroom shuts behind me and I hear the lock slide into place.

My head whips around as I glare at the closed door.

Oh, that’s rich.

“Are you seriously locking yourself in the bathroom?” I scoff. “Are you scared, Asher? Not man enough to face me?” A humorless laugh escapes and I begin to pace around the room and that action brings me back to the reason I’m here in the first place. Pacing … Ovulating … Happy …

When the lump in my throat becomes too much to bear, I finally let the tears fall.

My insides begin to rip in two, part of me wanting to stay angry—fired up, and downright pissed the hell off—while the other part wants to crumble into the used sheets and fall apart.

When I open my mouth to speak this time, it’s broken and small. “How could you…” About the time I let the tears break free and collapse to the floor in front of the bathroom door, I hear sirens from a distance.

They get closer and closer until they’re right outside the window.

The next thing I hear is the front door open and my daddy’s voice coming from downstairs. “Em,” he calls out. “Em, it’s Dad. I’m gonna need you to come down here, honey.”

I shake my head as the lump is back and it begins to squeeze, making me unable to speak.

“Emmie,” he says a second time, firmer, but I can’t talk. I don’t budge. I can’t. I won’t.

This is my house.

Asher is my husband.

I came home to make a baby.

How did this happen?

“Tempest?”

This time it’s Sheriff James’s voice that’s carrying up the stairs. “Honey, can you please come down here so we can talk this out like adults? I don’t want to have to take you in.”