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“And tell him I messed up my birth control? I have to what? Explain to him that he has to have a whole new family all over again at almost fifty when he’s already set with his daughter? Presume that after four months or so he wants to be with me, to really make it a full deal, after he still mourns his first wife so much? I can’t compete with the memory of Priscilla. If I even tell him what’s happened—that it’s no longer no strings attached—he’ll reject me, and I can’t live like that.”
“So you can live with just running away?”
“I can live with regretting what never was a lot more than I can live with having him reject me to my face and tell me that I don’t matter to him, that he could never fully commit.” I took one of Ally’s hands between my own. “I love him. I’ve been falling in love with him for months, and if he stomped on that, I’d never make it.”
“It’s his child.”
“I can’t do this.”
I pulled out my smart phone and started making flight arrangements. At least I had a good cover. I could get a flight in the next couple of days; Dad had let me have a Black American Express card in case of dire emergencies. This was the biggest one I could think of. If I kept faking sick, I could keep Callum from visiting, especially with his slammed schedule, for a week or so. By then I’d be back in Baltimore, and he could get started with the swinging bachelor lifestyle he needed so badly.
I wasn’t Priscilla. She’d inspired him.
I was just the fling, and I couldn’t put my heart or my child’s heart through that.
“What are you doing?” Allison asked, her tone suspicious.
“I have to make my flight plans. I have to go home.”
And figure out how to hide things from my family forever because they were all three going to murder me.
Chapter Fourteen
Iris
They say you can’t go home again.
I figured that had to go a million times more when you were standing outside of your childhood home about four months pregnant from the man most wrong for you in the world with no job and basically a future from the Maury show in front of you. I just didn’t know what to do. Running home to America seemed like the safer option. Currently, I had my biggest sweatshirt over me and was hoping no one would notice the ten to fifteen-pound weight gain I’d had. I bet Dad would. He was the type to notice every imperfection I had, every way I wasn’t good enough to please him.
Maybe there was no place to go at all.
Either in Baltimore or in Dublin, my heart was going to be shattered into a million pieces.
There was nothing else I could do.
The Uber sped off, and I shifted my backpack on my shoulders and knocked hard on the door. I’d fled with the maximum amount of luggage, but some of my stuff was still back in my apartment in Dublin. I just…too much at once.
Dad opened the door, but Mom beat him to the punch.
“Iris! What on earth? Your dad checked his credit card statement this morning and had a two-thousand-dollar charge for a ticket home. We tried to call you, but you must have already been in transit.” She stopped before throwing her arms around me and instead pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. “You look so pale. Are you sick?”
I crossed the threshold to the front hall. My luggage was forgotten for a moment o
n the stoop. Let David collect it. I was pregnant. I couldn’t tell anyone, but maybe I shouldn’t be lifting heavy things either. I’d use the paleness and Mom thinking I had a fever as an excuse. Besides, it wasn’t far from the truth. It felt like a damn vampire had drained me. I was so tired and exhausted, so depleted in every part of my being.
“I have mono. I was feeling so feverish and crappy that the administration said I should come home. My doctor over there said the same thing. I can come back next semester,” I hedged. “I’ll end up finishing over the summer, but it’s just the mono is, uh, a pretty severe case.”
My father shook his head even as my mom led me to the sofa. “You didn’t even tell us you were sick. That’s extremely irresponsible, Iris. Besides, I’d like to take you to Hopkins for a second opinion. I’m sure we can get you back to Dublin in a week, and there won’t be any delay in your academic record or your ability to apply to MBA programs in a few weeks.”
Shaking my head, I sagged on the sofa. Mom smiled down at me. Her long, dark hair, so like mine, was pulled into a braid down her back like always. She pulled the afghan over me and turned to eye Dad. It was almost comical, like a sparrow and a bull. Dad was a good-sized guy, but Mom had a small, birdlike frame. She didn’t seem to act like that though, not standing toe-to-toe with Dad.
“Seth,” she started.
“Rachel, I can’t believe you’re taking her side.”
“She’s sick.”
“She’s also still in the room,” I groaned. The flight hadn’t done anything for my morning sickness, and I just felt generally crappy and wiped. “I have mono. I can’t do school right now. People get sick, Dad.”
