Page 16 of Dominated By Love

She sighed. “Thank you, but you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?” I replied.

“Well, can you at least lay with me?”

“I can’t do that right now. Take a nap, and we’ll talk when you get up.”

“OK.” She pouted.

She knew that would work on me. Thankfully, I had enough anger brewing beneath the surface to keep me moving in the other direction. I needed a nap just as bad as she did.

I was one of those people who no matter what time I went to bed, I was up by eight o’clock. If I slept past nine, I felt like I had wasted half the day. With that being said, after getting two hours of sleep, I was up making breakfast.

After the night and morning she had, I knew Sage could use some kind of reprieve. It was too late to order meat for my baby’s breakfast, so the best thing I had was a sautéed vegetable omelet, salsa, and fresh orange juice mimosas. If the bottle next to her bed was any indication, she was probably hungover, so I also had a couple of pills to solve that issue.

I knocked softly on the door before nudging it open. Usually, I would have respected her privacy, but I was almost certain that she was still dead to the world. I understood that but she needed to eat.

A smile lifted my cheeks as I got closer to the bed. Sage was stretched out with her arms thrown out above her head and her mouth hanging open like she was getting the best sleep in the world. She had changed into an oversized T-shirt, which was riding up her thighs almost making me abandon the task at hand.

Balancing the tray in one hand, I adjusted my pants to make room for the parts of me that didn’t care about helping me heal Sage’s heart. I set her breakfast down on the table and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

“Wake up, beautiful,” I urged, gently shaking her.

She rolled over and smiled when she noticed the food. Pushing up on her elbows, she shook her head.

“Why are you so good to me, KD?”

“Because you’re my wife, and I love you.”

“You shouldn’t. I’m clearly fucked up. I still hate myself for tricking you into that shit in the first place.”

“You know damn well you didn’t have to trick me into anything. I loved you from the first time I laid eyes on you.”

She blushed so hard that it was adorable. “You were eleven.”

“I was in love.”

“You should have signed those annulment papers, Klever. I never meant to keep you trapped in that shit forever.”

“I’m not trapped, baby. What part of that don’t you understand?”

“You felt sorry for me. I can’t blame you. I was pregnant and pitiful, wondering how the hell I was going to be a good mother when my own mom was so shitty.”

“And look how you turned out. You’re one of the best mothers I know.”

“Thank you.”

“Eat up. I need you to be fueled up.”

Her eyes lit up, but she took a deep breath to temper herself. “OK. We really need to get that paperwork done while you’re in town, though. Don’t try to change the subject.”

“I told you not to worry about that foreclosure.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. You should have signed those papers.”