After throwing the covers off me, I quickly got out of bed and got dressed.
He tells me he can’t do a relationship, that it’s a onetime thing, yet he sleeps next to me all night long. Then he leaves me a sweet note in the morning! The man was confusing as hell. I knew he’d said he couldn’t give me more, but Lord, a part of me knew he hadn’t meant it.
“You jerk! You asshole! You . . . you . . . you confusing man,” I raged, plopping down on the end of my bed while I buried my face in my hands. Then I let out a scream of frustration.
“You’re so stupid. You knew from the beginning, Kaylee Holden. You knew. He told you he couldn’t give you more than one night. You. Knew.”
Dear Lord. I was talking to myself. This was bad.
I jumped up, tracked down my phone, and sent Lincoln a text message.
Me: We need an emergency shopping trip right now.
Lincoln: In case you forgot, I have a baby who is barely over a month old, and a five-year-old son who hears and repeats everything to his father. What’s going on?
Me: I slept with Ty.
Lincoln: Let me call Stella to come sit with the kids. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
I stood, looked at my sheets, and quickly yanked them all off my bed. I needed to wash them and get Ty’s scent off them as soon as possible; then I needed to think about everything that had happened last night, including all the unprotected sex we’d had. In some strange way, that part was the one thing I didn’t regret. I regretted that I had somehow managed to let a piece of my heart fall to Ty Shaw.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” I ranted, pacing across my living room floor while I waited for Lincoln. My hand moved to my stomach, then to my mouth and back to my stomach. One minute I thought I might throw up; the next, my stomach was dipping in delight as memories of last night came back.
The door opened, and Lincoln took one look at me. “Do I need to go hurt him?”
With a smile, I shook my head. “No. But you need to take me into town so I can spend some money. Then I need you to get me drunk.”
“Done. You’ll have to get drunk fast, though. I can only be gone for a few hours. I pumped enough breast milk for Morgan’s next feeding, and that’s it, and I hate being away from her for very long.”
“Fine. We’ll skip the getting-drunk part and just go shopping.”
She smiled, then motioned for me to follow her. I grabbed my purse, and an hour later, we were sitting in the coffee shop on Main Street. Lincoln knew not to ask any questions until I’d gotten in a good shopping session. This wasn’t her first rodeo when it came to retail therapy with me. After John died, and I had finally gotten myself out of the house, I spent a lot of trust fund money from my grandparents on stupid shopping trips. She made out on them as well, though, so really we both sorta won.
I took a sip of my flat white coffee and set it on the table. Lincoln watched me carefully, taking a sip of her chai tea. Then . . .
“I can’t stand it anymore! What happened?” she blurted out.
“So, Ty got a package.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to know about his package. I don’t tell you about how insanely large my husband is.”
I snarled my lip at her. “First off, yes, you do, and you just did, bitch. Second, I said he got a package. Not that he has a package—which, by the way, he has a huge cock. It’s pretty too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dick that I could say was pretty, but his is. Lord, it’s really big too. Did I mention that already?”
Lincoln quickly looked around the coffee shop, her cheeks red. When it was clear no one had heard me, she waved her hands around. “I know about the stupid package! Skip to the sex part.”
I let out a long breath. “He walked into the house after he picked up the package, and I was in the middle of trying to fix a . . . problem . . . I had with the bidet.”
“What was wrong with it?”
With a half shrug I said, “There might have been a small water leak.”
Her eyes widened, then she said, “I’m so glad I sold you that house.”
I chuckled, then went on. “Anyway, Ty insisted on fixing it, and I really wanted to do it on my own. It was a bad day, because, you know . . .”
“It was the anniversary of John’s death.”