Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Then, like a shot through the heart, I made the connection there, too.
The iPad started to slip from my fingers, but showing she was a mother and had eyes everywhere, Folsom caught the tablet before it could fall even an inch.
She placed it down carefully on the table beside her before she said, “I don’t think you know it, but that night, you saved my life. I’d decided to give up.”
I felt my stomach fall at her words.
“You would’ve made it,” I rasped.
I knew that down deep in my heart. She would’ve survived, with or without my help.
I swallowed hard and looked at the young girl. Folsom’s daughter.
The product of insemination.
“She’s not Farrell’s daughter, either,” Folsom whispered then.
I looked over at her for the first time. “What?”
“I’ll start from the beginning.” She swallowed hard.
CHAPTER 10
I want to K I _ _ you. Results may vary.
-Coffee cup
FOLSOM
Giving someone my life history was tough.
One, I was a very private person. That information had always been mine, and I didn’t like people knowing anything about me.
Two, I’d been doing such a great job at hiding who I was over the last quarter of my life that it was almost ingrained in me not to share at this point.
But this was Kobe.
I knew, in the end, he would be there to protect me.
Getting to know him, knowing his desire to protect, I knew he would be there for me and for JP no matter what.
Even if it did go against his moral compass not to solve the case.
“When I was twenty-two, my best friend got married to her long-term boyfriend. It was found out within half a year that she had issues that would be incompatible with her carrying a baby. And since we were best friends…I offered my uterus to her.”
He stayed silent, allowing me to keep talking without interruption.
“I guess, maybe, I wasn’t thinking right. I was twenty-two, fresh out from graduating from MIT, and I had the world at my fingertips. I just offered because she was my best friend, and it hurt my heart to see her hurting when she found out that she couldn’t have any babies.”
Kobe shifted his feet on the seat of the bench, his head drooping as he listened.
“I guess I was just flabbergasted at how much work it would be. I signed all these contracts, then I had to inject myself with all kinds of things. Stuff to help prepare my uterus. I don’t know. Then I was informed that I couldn’t sleep with anyone six weeks leading up to or after the implantation.” She sighed. “I’ve never…anyway, that wasn’t something that I would’ve done anyway.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue when I almost admitted to the man I found highly attracted that I was a thirty-two-year-old virgin. There I was, mother of a nine-year-old, with her cherry still intact.
Then again, being on the run constantly wasn’t conducive to sleeping with men.
“The first three times didn’t take. And honestly, by the fourth, I was ready to call it quits. It’s exhausting, to be completely honest. It’s time-consuming, and every time the pregnancy didn’t take, I freakin’ hated myself and her. Then the fourth time came around.” I scrubbed my hands down my face. “This time was different, I’ll give you that. But that time…” I sighed. “I don’t know. I was just doing my best to block everything out. I told myself that it was the last time, and they could take whatever “extreme” measures they wanted. If it worked, perfect. If it didn’t, I’d have to tell my best friend that I wasn’t willing to do it anymore. Which I somehow knew would break our friendship.”
He growled under his breath.
“I guess I’m just a dumbass,” I admitted. “There was this procedure that they gave me medication for that was supposedly to ‘relax me.’ What it did was put me out on my ass, and when I woke up, apparently that’d been the time that they’d done the egg retrieval. The next procedure…that was when they implanted the embryo inside of me.”
I swallowed hard. “It was only after we found out that I was well and indeed pregnant that I felt like something was off this time. She was acting super weird, always wanting to know my every whereabouts. She would call and ask me what I had for dinner and whether or not I got my ‘greens’ in today.”
“I thought it was just her being overprotective and overreactive. I don’t know. But then when the sonogram for the twenty-week scan came up with some abnormalities…”
“What kind of abnormalities?” he rasped.
I scrubbed my hands down my face. “It was found in a blood test scan that JP had hemophilia.”
There was a long moment of silence and then, “Why would that be something that they would test for?”