mend it. I had to bite my lip to keep myself from bursting into tears, and I pressed my palm against the glass, silently begging him to forgive me, to let me back in.
Slowly, he got to his feet and came over, opening the door. It hadn’t been locked.
“Phil,” I whispered brokenly, a sob catching in my chest.
“Yeah?”
I looked down and opened my bag, pulling out a tattered notebook that I used to write poems and short stories in when I was a junior in high school. They were all poems and short stories I’d written about him, the secret fantasies I’d had of Phil. The poems he himself had inspired my ridiculous teenage heart to write. Slightly mortified by what I was doing, my hand shook as I held it up for him.
“Of course I want to marry you and have your children one day. You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted that with.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’ve changed my mind,” he said, his tone flippant, his eyes hard.
Oh, wow…that hurts.
I stared at the bloodstain on his shirt, and my nose throbbed in pain for a second. Then, that pain spread throughout the rest of me, and I found it hard to control the trembling working its way through my whole body. I took a deep breath and located my balls.
Looking up into his eyes, I saw something stirring in there, something I feared I had killed.
“What is this?” he asked, his voice cold.
Abject humiliation. “It’s yours, whatever it is,” I replied.
He opened it, not stepping aside to let me in or anything.
The first page was an artful rendition of our names entwined with hearts and doodles of Kenna Deveraux and all sorts of embarrassing girlie shit.
“I’ve loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, Phil. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself. Even when I couldn’t in my right mind use my birthday wish for us to be together because I wished for my mother to live, you were what I truly wanted,” I told him, the tears spilling over now. “My heart and soul wished that I could be yours even though my head screamed at me to save my mother’s life. I wanted to believe I was a good person and that I could give up my own desires for someone else, but in the end…I’m so happy you came true—not that I actually believe in that sort of shit…but still.”
His eyes met mine, and they were blazing at me, searing me deep to my spiritual core.
“But now that you’ve changed your mind…” I choked and took a step back, my heart shrieking at me to get the hell out of there before I lost everything that I was.
He grabbed the front of my shirt, bunching the material in his fist, and hauled me toward him into the house, his mouth seizing mine in a desperate kiss. His tongue invaded my mouth, staking a brutal claim.
“How stupid can you be, Kenna?” he whispered harshly, his lips forming the words against mine. “I’m never lettin’ you go.”
“Then, why—”
“Because you needed to feel what you made me feel!” he snapped, tossing the notebook aside. He wrapped an arm around me while the other released my shirt and reached up, spearing his fingers through my hair, holding me right where he wanted me.
I was just so fucking happy that he really hadn’t changed his mind, that I was in his arms as he was in mine while we pawed at each other like wild beasts. With a deep growl, he lifted me by my ass and dropped to his knees so that I was sitting on him, chest to chest, and he fisted his hand into the hair at the back of my head. Right there, next to the open door.
Angling my face slightly, he pressed his lips to my ear. “When I fuckin’ propose to you, Kenna, what are you gonna tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you gonna marry me one day?”
“Yes.”
“Are you gonna give me children?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“You’re the only one I’ll have that with,” he told me, his voice husky and raw. “If I can’t marry you, if you don’t give me my babies, then I won’t have any. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but I really didn’t. Other women could most definitely give him children. I would kill them all if they tried, but that was beside the point.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of it, of havin’ a family with