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“Um. Ian, this is…” I begin to introduce, but he cuts me off. His tone a little different. Surprised, I think. Low, and a little questioning maybe.
“Sara. We’ve met.” He looks at her with a brief, stiff smile, and Sara just stands there with her jaw open. That’s when it hits me—I think she’s found her one-night-stand man.
I hurry into the apartment to get showered and dressed, then stress about what to wear. I slip into a comfortable pair of dress pants and blouse, with a thick belt, and a long gold necklace. I check the time, and once I’ve spent 20 minutes waiting, I text him.
Are we still on for tonight?
No reply.
I grab my sketch board and try to make some drawings, then call his number and get voicemail. “Hi. Is everything okay? Call me, please, I’m worried.”
Two hours pass. I stiffen every time I hear an ambulance outside, and I keep replaying the time I got a phone call to let me know my parents had passed. The news is on to ease my paranoia.
He’s all right, I tell myself, fighting my subconscious fears from surfacing.
I fall asleep with my sketchpad in my hand, still dressed, with my heels on.
Sara doesn’t come home until the next day.
“What happened? Did the whole city get lost last night?” I rant, worried about her too.
“We got a hotel room. We fucked, okay? End of story. He’s gone again.”
Wha—?
“Sara!” I say as she heads to her room, lightening up with the news. “You have his name now. Ian Ford.”
“Yes. He’s some mogul/magnate I couldn’t resist, but it’s done with.” She then notices my attire. “Where are you going?”
“Was. I got…I got stood up. God, I can’t believe he stood me up.” I bite my lip and shake my head. “Something is wrong. I can feel it.” I clutch my stomach.
“You’re just paranoid. He’ll call.”
But he doesn’t.
On Monday morning, I call his office. By the afternoon, when there is still no word, I head over to Christos and Co.
Bryn
I cross the lobby and go directly upstairs, where his assistant is hustling to get shit done, as always.
“Is he alone?” I ask.
“Sorry. He’s not.” Click, click, click, I hear the keyboard.
“Did you tell him I called?”
She nods. Click, click, click.
“Why hasn’t he called back?”
Click click…” He doesn’t report to me, dear.” Click, click. “I’m sure he’ll call when he wants to.”
God. That’s it? “Will you stop typing and look at me.”
Robertha stops typing and looks at me, her eyes wide in surprise over my outburst.
“Will he see me or not?” I demand.
Alarmed, she slowly picks up the phone, but I’ve had it with waiting for an ounce of his attention. The least he could have done was call—text. Send a courier. Fucking answer my dozen calls worrying about him. Obviously nothing happened to him. Obviously he hasn’t crashed, gotten robbed, kidnapped, or killed. The man is fine. He’s at work, isn’t he? I start for the doors.
“He’s in a meeting—” she says.
I ignore her and head straight to the double doors leading to Christos’s office. I push them open.
Christos is at the long table at the far end of his office, wearing a white shirt and slacks, his jaw shadowed with three days’ growth of beard—while two men stand with him, reviewing some sort of paperwork.
The relief I feel when seeing him—and confirming that yes, he is fine!!—is nearly knee-buckling. But the feeling is quickly replaced by confusion. He looks raw, a little filthy, as if he hasn’t showered at all.
His eyes lift to mine when he hears me walk in—and all my hope that we could maybe work it out vanishes when I meet his eyes. They aren’t cold. They aren’t hot. They are simply…sunken.
Turbulent.
The opposite of Christos’s eyes.
For the first time since I’ve known him, Christos looks absolutely lost. Like a man living a nightmare.
My stomach roils with my sudden concern. What happened? It’s all I can think. What happened, what happened, what’s wrong?
“I need to talk to you,” I rasp out.
He glances sharply at the men, who look back at him expectantly. “Give us a minute,” he tells the men after a moment.
Even his voice is different, low and toneless. He sounds numb.
It takes forever for the men to depart. I wait until they shut the door behind them, and then we’re alone.
Aaric Christos and I.
His posture is defeated as he rakes a hand through his hair restlessly, pacing as I stand in the middle of the room, stand there like a fool who just barged into his meeting, feeling uncertain about everything.
Something is wrong. He doesn’t love me. I’m so sure I start to tremble. But I want him to tell it to my face. I want him to tell me how stupid I was—how right I was in the beginning. In not wanting to get involved. Wanting to be careful.
Hell, even if I’m wrong, even a broken clock hits the right hour once a day.
He’s lost interest.
I was a challenge. He’s had me. Now we’re done.
After pacing a restless circle, Christos stops at his window and his shoulders look stiff and rigid—acting like a wall between us.
It pisses me off, his silence. Seeing his hard, chiseled profile as I stress to know what he’s thinking and why the fuck he’s pulling away from me.
“Look at me, you son of a bitch,” I say.
He turns around, one brow raised in surprise over my bad mouth. But the moment our eyes meet, the way his eyes blaze at me—as if he’s living in the pits of hell—strikes me once more.
“I waited for two hours Saturday night! Then I fell asleep, still dressed, to wake up and see you hadn’t bothered to call. What the fuck is wrong with you? I left you like 15 messages. You could have died! You could have been kidnapped! There could have been a fire somewhere and you could have been in it,” I demand. My voice breaks, and an unnamable emotion etches across his face as my words register.
“God, I’m sorry, Bryn,” he says. He raises his hands in the air and then he pulls them back, fisting them at his sides.
“Tell me, Aaric. Please.” My voice breaks.
“Miranda’s pregnant.”
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
“What?”
I blink several times, but he still has that look on his face. The look that says he bit out the words that I just heard.
“Miranda.” He drags a hand over his face, the little muscle at the back of his jaw about to break from exertion. “She’s pregnant.”
His ex-girlfriend is pregnant.
Aaric is going to be a father.
Aaric is going to be a father of a baby that is not mine.
My eyes begin to sting. “It’s yours? I…of course it’s yours, you were dating still.”
I speak then. After a long, long moment. “She’s pregnant with your baby.”
Envy.
Jealousy.
All of those emotions that I don’t like to feel, that make me feel low and worthless, are in me now.
I clutch my stomach.
“Bit.”
“Don’t bit me. Don’t…don’t come any closer.”
Christos starts walking forward. I back away three steps and then stop. He stops two feet in front of me. “I never touched her after you came back. You’ve got to believe me,” he hisses under his breath.
I meet his gaze, my chin up at an angle that belies the way I feel. Like crumpling into a stupid goddamned ball. “You know as well as I do you’re not the asshole they say you are,” I say. “You won’t leave your child fatherless like your father did. That’s not who you are.”
He looks at me fiercely, as if he needs me to understand. “I wanted it to be you,” he whispers.
“Well, it’s not me. It won’t be, Aaric.”
I stare at his eyes and quietly beg him, please, I love you, don’t torture me anymore…
We stay there, in silence. Both of us grappling with the news. This is nothing we planned for our future, nothing we could see coming.
