Page 9 of Flashback for the Forward

He took a seat, but instead of picking up the fork and taking a bite, he shoved the plate away. Reclining, he placed one booted foot on the opposite knee. “I’ll wait while you make me something fresh.”

My jaw unhinged. He had to be fucking kidding me, right?

When all I did was stare at him, he got irritated and barked, “Get moving.”

Almost as if I were on autopilot, I moved about the kitchen—grabbing ingredients out of the fridge and pantry, setting a pot of water to boil on the stove, stirring sauce. Less than half an hour later, I was presenting Aiden with an overflowing plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

With an arched eyebrow, he asked, “Where’s yours?”

I shook my head. “Oh, I already ate.”

“And you’ll eat again with me,” he declared before shoving a forkful of pasta into his mouth. “I like you with some meat on your bones.”

That’s funny, because I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, and only a week ago, you were telling me how lucky I was that you could still get your dick up to fuck a fat girl.

The mind games he played were something else. The constant contradictions made me feel as if I were going crazy most days.

He humphed when I sat down with only a tiny portion of spaghetti on my plate, two meatballs off to the side.

I pushed the food around, only taking a bite when I could feel the intensity of his stare.

After what felt like an eternity, he shoved his chair back. “Time for bed.”

Thank God. I needed a mental reset.

But unfortunately, sleep was the last thing on Aiden’s mind.

We’d barely crossed the threshold of the bedroom when he said, “You’re ovulating.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “And how would you know that?”

He didn’t spare me a glance as he stripped off his uniform, replying casually, “I’m tracking your cycle.”

Sure, because that’s completely normal. Not.

At a loss for words, all I could manage was a drawn-out, “Uh . . .”

Aiden padded toward the ensuite, completely naked. “When I told the guys at work we’ve been trying to get pregnant for almost a year, they suggested an app that will tell you when your peak fertility days are. If we want a baby, we need to start working smarter.”

Did the man give a damn that I didn’t even want kids? Hell no. He saw a baby as the ultimate way for him to keep me trapped here, tethered to him from now until eternity.

But I wasn’t about to let that happen. No way, no how.

After shoving a pillow under my ass and demanding that I keep my legs elevated for no less than twenty minutes to give his swimmers the best chance possible, Aiden promptly passed out.

The second he began snoring, I eased off the mattress, tiptoeing to the bathroom.

Latching the door, I used an ungodly amount of toilet paper to wipe away the cum leaking from between my thighs. If it didn’t increase the risk for a yeast infection, I would have gone so far as to douche to eliminate every last trace of his seed.

I flushed before washing my hands, then gripped the edge of the sink, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

How the hell did I get here?

Once upon a time, I’d thought having my heart broken was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Turned out that was only the first domino to fall.

Six months after the love of my life dumped me, my older brother got hurt in a hockey game. The violent hit to the head required a CT scan, and the results blew up my entire world. At only nineteen years old, Bennett was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an often fatal form of brain cancer.

Less than a year later, he was gone, and my family fell apart. Mom fell into a depression so deep that she tried to take her own life—more than once—and there was no other option but to have her permanently hospitalized. Dad went in the opposite direction when dealing with his grief. He took off and started over. Last I’d heard, he had a three-year-old son with a woman who was barely older than me, and they lived in Colorado.