Aggro - CoraLee June Page 0,49

few minutes later holding a shirt. “Put this on,” he then demanded while holding it out to me. I stared at it while clutching the beach towel around me.

“Did you know?” I asked again. Thunder cracked like an echo to my words outside. “Did you?” Tears spilled from my eyes.

Kai’s lips thinned into a fine line, and he ripped the towel from my shivering body. His hands angrily yanked at the waistband of my shorts, tearing them down my slick thighs and completely off. Cool air hit my skin as he reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head.

A numb sort of awareness settled over me. My freezing skin pebbled. My nipples were cutting through my wet bra. “Get changed, and we can talk,” he whispered while staring at me with a mixture of shame and heat.

“Turn around,” I told him. The world stopped for the briefest of moments as indecision stunted his movements. I expected him to give me his back so I could change, but instead, Kai wrapped his arms around me like a hug. I shivered at the contact. The hard planes of his body met my soft skin, and he quickly unclasped my bra. The wet fabric fell at our feet, and my bare breasts brushed against his warm chest. I briefly nuzzled into his neck as water from my soaking wet hair dripped down my back. How could he feel so safe? So comforting? He trailed his fingers down my spine, and my breath hitched.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

When he pulled away, Kai immediately turned around, not sparing me a single glance. I put his shirt on in silence, afraid to break the spell. “I knew,” Kai answered with his back to me. I bit my fist at his words, swallowing back a sob.

“Did you ask her to terminate the pregnancy, then?” I asked, my voice shrill.

“No,” Kai began before turning to face me. “I wanted to keep the baby. But it wasn’t my decision to make.”

I scoffed. “That baby was just as much yours as it was Violet’s.”

Kai’s face fell. “That’s the thing, Breeze. It wasn’t.”

“What?” I asked incredulously.

Kai scrubbed his hands down his face. “It wasn’t mine.”

Dear Diary,

Two thin lines have the power to change everything. Life is such a fragile thing, don’t you think? He’s going to be so angry with me. We were careful, except when we weren’t. Except when we frantically fucked like our lives depended on it. How can something so precious ruin everything?

XOXO,

Violet

“How? Who? Was it Lex?” I asked while stumbling over to the leather couch. I needed to sit down. It was one thing to grieve your best friend. It was another thing entirely to learn that you never really knew the girl you were grieving.

“I was going to break up with her,” Kai explained before sitting beside me. He rested his forearms on his thighs and was hunched over, deep in thought. “A week before her birthday. I was tired of the fucking and fighting. She had been off, and I figured that she was feeling it too. We’d run our course. I didn’t love Violet Jones. In fact, I had started to develop feelings for someone else. It didn’t feel right anymore.”

The thought of Kai having feelings for someone else made an unsettled feeling curdle within me. Violet had mentioned that she and Kai had tried breaking up a couple of times. It just never stuck. “So, what happened?”

“I found the pregnancy test. She tried to deny it, but I finally got it out of her.” I swallowed and nodded, wordlessly encouraging him to continue. “At first, I was freaking the fuck out, yeah. But then I got excited. I even…” Kai paused, then stood up. I watched his back as he walked into his bedroom, and when he came back out, he was clutching a onesie with surfboards all over it—my heart swelled. He didn’t keep the box of Violet’s belongings, but he kept that.

“Oh, Kai,” I whispered before placing my hand over my mouth. He set the baby clothes down with care on the counter before coming back to sit by me.

“I’m a man. A man that takes care of his obligations. I wanted to marry her, make things work good and proper for my kid. But she started to freak out. She said she couldn’t handle it. I thought maybe she needed some time to process it all,” he explained. “It’s not like we planned this.