He cut me off with more fevered kisses. I felt him, hot and hard, pressed between us, the urge to get lost in him tingling through my nerves.
My heart hammered with the confession that was locked on my lips. I couldn't let him continue, not now, not after this morning, not after what he’d just said.
“You chased the rain clouds away—” he hummed, kissing down my neck in a hot trail.
“Maverick—I—I love you so much and I’m afraid to tell you this one thing, but I know no matter what you won’t be upset—”
“Upset?” His body went rigid beneath me. Every muscle clenched and bunched, the warmth in his eyes suddenly cut to darkness like he’d seen a ghost.
He’d flipped to a stranger before my eyes.
“Maverick...” I swallowed, cradling his cold palms in my own warm ones and then sliding them against my abdomen.“I’m pregnant.”
Long beats of silence hung between us.
I searched for the familiar warmth and caring I’d become used to.
It was all absent.
“Mav?”
His eyes flinched, pupils growing large before his hands dropped from me and he shoved them both in my hair. He clenched his teeth, anger coursing through his body before a look of devastation rolled like a thunderstorm through his eyes.
“Mav—”
“Don’t call me that, please.” He breathed at my ear, a shudder of fear trembling through my veins.
“W-why?”
He pushed himself away from me, dropping his hands from my face to his sides before he sucked in two fierce lungfuls of air and then pulled on a pair of work pants that hung over the kitchen chair.
He shoved his red flannel over his shoulders and buttoned it quickly before he clutched his winter jacket and shoved his feet in his boots.
“Mav—”
He paused, hand on the door knob as the winter blast of morning air rushed through the kitchen. “Shecalled me that.”
And with that the door slammed and Maverick left me alone.
Again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Poppy
Maverick was still gone.
For three hours I simmered and wondered what to do, the tiny double-pink-lined positive pregnancy test still wrapped in napkins and shoved deep in my purse.
Not the beautiful announcement I’d planned in my head, and he’d done so well before that. Everything was so perfect, his tender words and caresses lulling me into a false memory of who this man was.
And now that I knew, now that I’d seen his true colors, he had more than hell to pay.
By the time the sun was setting and the shadows in Maverick’s cabin had grown deep and dark, I was on edge and ready to hike wherever to reach him, or search this house up and down and free it of its demons.
I started a fire and brewed hot cocoa on the stove an hour ago, but nothing could keep me calm without him here.
I was just thinking of grabbing my keys and heading back to my own apartment for good, when faint strains of violin music swept through upstairs. It started off slowly, the romantic notes haunting in the way they clung to the damp night air, but as the tune played on, the notes grew more shrill and fevered.
