Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
It was late as we all got up to leave, and I watched Yuki slide her arm through her dad’s as they exited the restaurant and started the walk a block down back to the hotel. Her bodyguard trailed behind them.
The rest of us followed him. The night was cool, and there were a lot more people than I would’ve expected at nearly midnight on a Sunday, with just about everyone doing a double take at the view of Yuki, obviously recognizing her.
Rhodes squeezed my hand. “I think I saw you when they were showing the nominees and zoomed in on Yuki,” he said.
“Did you see us both staring blankly forward?”
“Oh yeah.”
I laughed.
“I thought that sort of thing was fun?”
“It’s not. It’s so boring. We played rock paper scissors and tic-tac-toe on her phone.” I squeezed his hand. “I brought two granola bars, and she had two packs of gummy bears, and we took turns bending over and eating them so the cameras wouldn’t catch us.”
He laughed so loud before releasing my hand and slipping it over my shoulders, pulling me into him. My favorite position.
“We had to help each other use the bathroom,” I admitted too.
He squeezed me even harder. “That doesn’t sound like fun at all.”
“I’m good never doing it again, that’s for sure,” I said, peeking over my shoulder to find Amos holding his sleepy little sister behind us. He tipped up his chin just like Rhodes did.
He had matured so much over the last few years; he wasn’t as tall as his dad, but I thought he was going to get close. To me, he looked a hell of a lot more like his mom, but when he smirked or rolled his eyes, I swore he was a mirror image of his dad. His dad Rhodes at least. He’d gotten his laid-back attitude from his dad Billy, I’d discovered.
Just as I opened my mouth to ask them what they wanted to do tomorrow, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted two familiar figures coming in through the hotel’s other set of automatic doors.
One of them was Kaden.
In a black tuxedo just like the one I’d seen him wearing a hundred times before when he’d leave me in a hotel room. His shirt white, his bow tie still on. And beside him, his mom was there in a stunning gold gown.
She looked pissed. It was funny to see some things hadn’t changed. Wow.
Kaden had managed to stay “relevant” enough to still be invited to awards shows and win sometimes, thanks to whoever he was hiring now. He’d been nominated for something or another tonight but hadn’t won. I hadn’t seen him in person, just the image of him that had appeared on the stage’s massive screen.
Peace like I hadn’t felt in forever filled my heart and, honestly, my whole body.
There was no anger in me. No pain or resentment. Just . . . indifference.
Like he could sense my gaze on him, Kaden’s eyes moved toward us, and I could tell the moment they landed on the very soft swelling at my stomach. I was four months along now, and the dress did little to hide the second baby we were having. Another little girl. We hadn’t settled on a first name yet, but since Azalia was named after my mom, we were thinking about giving baby number two Yuki’s middle name: Rose.
Rhodes and I were so excited. So, so excited. Am was too. He’d put up one of the ultrasound pictures in his dorm room. Beside it, he had one of Azalia the day she’d been born. After all, he’d been the one to drive me to the hospital, and he’d hung out in the room with me, looking green and letting me squeeze the shit out of his hand until Rhodes had shown up literally two minutes before I’d given birth. Amos had been the third person to hold his baby sister, and that, I’d guessed, explained their closeness perfectly.
We’d called him right after we’d left the doctor’s office, and he had let out a noise that made us both laugh. “Holy shit. We’re gonna be overrun with girls now, Dad.”
The man sitting in the car beside me, still holding my hand, had grinned forward through the windshield with bright eyes and said the best thing he could have ever come up with: “I’m not complaining.”
He meant every word of it too.
God knew I could never forget the way that Rhodes’s whole body had trembled after the doctor had confirmed that I was pregnant. How his eyes had filled with tears, how his mouth had pressed against my cheeks, forehead, nose, and even my chin after I’d given birth to Azalia. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner, father, or man than him to spend the rest of my life with. He lifted me up, believed in me, and filled my life with more love than I ever could have asked for.