Chapter 9: Twenty Seconds

Kendrick woke before six, as he always did, and for a moment forgot what was different.

Then he turned his head and saw the sofa.

She lay on her side with the blanket pulled to her chin and one bare foot out of it.

Her dark hair had come loose from its pins in the night.

The red marks on her wrist had turned to purple.

He looked at them until his jaw hurt.

Two years ago he would have crossed the room and put Colby MacCormack through a wall.

Now he lay still and counted the bruise, and he thought about the other thing, the thing he had not told her.

He had known her groom's name for two weeks.

He had not told her since, and he lay there in the gray light and knew that he should.

He did not move.

Becky stirred and turned over, and her bare foot slid back under the blanket.

The line of her shoulder rose and fell.

He felt it low and hard in his body.

He had assumed the crash had taken that ache from him, along with a few other things.

It had not.

That was an odd mercy.

He gave her a few more minutes, and then he did what he did every morning, because the doctors had told him to.

He swung his legs off the bed.

He took hold of the rail Max had screwed into the wall by the window and he stood.

His legs shook, and pain ran from the small of his back down through both thighs.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Dumped at the Altar, Claimed by a Hidden Tycoon from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.