The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea. She could walk to the bakery, prep everything for tomorrow, maybe make something special, and when she was too exhausted to continue, she’d take a nap on the couch in their office. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was something for now.

*-*-*-*

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he demanded, once he caught up with the insane woman just as she lost her footing again and went sliding, but just like the last few times, she somehow managed to catch her balance before she fell on her ass and continued walking.

“Just go away, Duncan,” she said on a long-suffering sigh, acting as though he was annoying.

He knew that tone by heart, had used it on pretty much everyone in his family and he really didn’t appreciate the little jinx using it on him. He wasn’t annoying. He was far from being annoying. He was the helpful fucking one. Everyone fucking loved him, he told himself as he glared as the small woman continued to ignore him and march off towards God only knew where at this time of night.

“We need to talk,” he said, daring her to give him that look that he used when people pissed him off.

“No, we really don’t,” she said, shaking her head as she doubled her steps to get away from him when she should have been jumping at the chance to spend time with him.

He chuckled without humor as he reached over and gently grabbed her arm, wanting to get this over with so that they could move on and forget that this ever happened, but something strange happened the moment that he pulled her towards him so that he could apologize.

He realized that he wasn’t sorry.

It didn’t matter that he knew what he did made him an asshole, that he should be muttering an apology, turn around and walk away, doing his best to make sure that their paths never crossed again, but the moment that he looked into her beautiful gray eyes, he was lost.

Before he could stop himself, and he knew that he should have stopped himself, he found himself pulling her into his arms, leaning down and-

Gasping in pain as her knee made contact with his balls.

*-*-*-*

“Oh…fuck,” Duncan gasped in pain as he cupped himself and dropped to his knees, immediately falling onto his side and curling up on the salted sidewalk while she stood there in shock.

Oh, crap…

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She tried to apologize, but she really had absolutely no idea how to apologize for slamming a man’s balls back up inside his body. She considered telling him that it was a natural response that her grandfather had drilled this into her head since that incident on the playground.

“If a boy lays his hands on you, you take that little pointy knee of yours and ram it into his balls and then when he’s down, you kick him in the balls again for me.”

Her foot twitched with the need to finish the job, but thankfully she was able to overcome years of conditioning. When he started coughing and muttering, “Someone fucking kill me,” she decided that maybe it would be a good idea to help him.

Not really sure what to do, she looked around, trying not to panic, but of course she couldn’t help it. She’d kicked the man that she’d been infatuated with, and yes, she realized now that it had only been an infatuation, in the balls less than a day after she’d given him her virginity. Besides giving her a less than pleasing response to her declaration of love, and had she seriously told him that she loved him? he really hadn’t done anything wrong.

Okay, so the condescending glares were really annoying and she was done with those, but he hadn’t deserved a kick to the balls for-

Wait, why exactly was he following her at this time of night after a major storm? Was the man insane?

Then again, she was going for a walk late at night in the freezing code so perhaps she shouldn’t be judging? she mused as she looked around desperately for something to help him. When her eyes landed on all the snow and ice around her, she had a “duh,” moment, grabbed a big chunk of hard snow and somehow managed to slip on the ice and slam her knees into the hard, salted sidewalk.

Fortunately for her, she was able to stop herself from slamming face first into the sidewalk. Unfortunately for him, she was only able to accomplish this because that large chunk of ice that she’d been holding managed to slam down at just the right angle and hit poor Duncan in the previously affected area. Well, more accurately, the large chunk of ice slammed into Duncan’s hands, which caused a chain reaction, a new and much louder curse and terrified her into trying to make it better.

Which probably wasn’t a good idea, she realized as she grabbed another chunk of ice, desperate to make this right and-

“Fucking hell!”

Yeah, she probably should have thought this one through, she decided with a wince and a cringe as she watched Duncan’s handsome face turn an unhealthy dark purple as he closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the pain, and there was no doubt that the poor guy was in a lot of pain.

Nervously, she chewed on her bottom lip as she glanced around the empty street and decided that perhaps it was probably for the best if she stopped trying to “help,” him.

Chapter 19

“Fucking pathetic.”

“No, shit,” Trevor said in agreement with Jason as Duncan laid there, curled up on his cousin’s couch, terrified that his balls were about to explode and take his poor dick along with it.

He tried to open his eyes to glare at his cousins, tried to tell them to go fuck off, but at that moment he couldn’t do much but-

“I think he’s going to be sick again,” the abusive woman that had probably robbed him of the ability to have children said nervously as he rolled over and vomited into the small wastebasket that the woman from hell was holding.

Once he was done vomiting, the pressure in his balls eased up enough so that he could open his eyes and glare at the woman that he should have stayed away from, but for some seriously fucked up reason, hadn’t been able to. When he spotted her outside his window, navigating the poorly shoveled walkways he should have just closed his blinds and gone back to bed, but he just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do the right thing and apologize to her.