Page 30 of Bitter Heat

She was watching him close enough to see him stiffen. Something icy and sharp sliced through her middle as her intuition pinged.

“You got a vasectomy when we were married?” she asked tonelessly.

“Yes.”

She felt as if she had been punched. Her ears started ringing, and the breath whooshed out of her lungs.

“I don’t want children,” he said.

For several seconds, she didn’t react. She couldn’t. He had just dropped a nuclear bomb on a world she was trying to rebuild and decimated the foundations to rubble. She thought she had gained some perspective and peace with the decisions she had made with her father and now closure with Roth, but with a few words, he shoved her back under the arctic waters of their past.

When she could breathe past the ice forming around her heart, she started toward the exit. She had to get away from him. Years of neglect, humiliation, and fury geysered up out of nowhere. Her eyes burned with tears. Fuck him. Fuck himhard. They had been divorced for years, and he still found new ways to hurt her.

When his hand closed around her arm, she wrenched away violently.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” she said in a lethally quiet voice that trembled with rage.

“We never talked about having children.”

She held up a hand. “Don’t.”

He grabbed for her again, and she lost it. She lashed out with every ounce of fury pumping through her veins. Roth’s head snapped to the side as her palm cracked his cheek. He glared at her as his fingers dug into her arm, but she didn’t flinch. Physical discomfort couldn’t compete with the pain radiating from her chest.

“I took care of it,” he said between clenched teeth.

“Took care of it for who?” she hissed. “You? You’re so busy trying to protect yourself from me, you never realized I’d never use a baby against you! I have more self-respect than to trap a man who doesn’t want to be with me. Let me go, Roth, or I swear to God—”

“It had nothing to do with you.”

She swung again, but this time, he caught her hand and yanked it down. That didn’t deter her. She stomped on his foot, but he was still wearing those hulking work boots, so it made no impact. When she tried to knee him in the balls, he thrust her against the wall and pinned her there with a hand around her throat. Still, she fought. She was totally out of control and didn’t care.

“I hate you!” she screamed.

“Stop, Jasmine!”

She didn’t stop until she was exhausted. When anger faded, leaving only pain in its wake, she slumped against the wall with tears pouring down her cheeks. She sacrificed everything for him while he held her at arms length.

“I never intended to have children,” he said.

“Fine,” she said. “Get your hands off me.”

His hand tightened around her throat. He was adding new marks to the ones he had already left, but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore.

“Look at me.”

“Let me go.”

“Not until you look at me.”

She lifted her face and stared at him with all the violent fury pulsing through her. He looked as impassive and untouched as he always did. How had she ever convinced herself that he gave a shit about her?

“Now, let me go,” she said raggedly.

“Talk to me.”

It was so absurd to hear that line from him that she let out a humorless laugh. The knife he had plunged in her heart sank even deeper. “Now you want to talk? After you made decisions about our future without talking to me? Fuck you, Roth.” The laughter vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “You hated my father so much that you got a vasectomy so we wouldn’t have kids?”

“It had nothing to do with your father. I just don’t want children.”

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