“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
His eyes snapped back to mine. “It’s okay. I understand why you didn’t.”
“Can we still be friends?”
The word landed between us like a grenade. His hands fell to his sides as he took a step back.
“No.” His voice was quiet but absolute.
I held his stare, trying not to look at his mouth, trying not to notice the way the warmth was fading from his expression.
Then he reached for me again.
His hand slid along my arm, guiding me away from the door before he leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead.
It was soft, almost formal, and it lingered just long enough to hurt.
“I don’t want to be your friend, Zadie.” He let me go and walked out.
No hesitation. No looking back. The front door swung shut behind him, and a second later, I heard his footsteps going down the steps.
He was gone.
But where the hell would he go?
I stood alone in the front hall with the taste of him still on my lips, whatever hope I'd let myself feel buried under the wreckage at my feet.
Week 11
Chapter Seventeen
Caleb
The Summit had been transformed.
Orange and black draped every surface, carved pumpkins flickered along the bar top, and someone had strung enough cobwebs across the ceiling to make the place look like it had been abandoned for a century. The crowd was thick with hotel guests, locals, and people from neighboring towns who’d heard the resort threw a good Halloween party.
Half of them were in costume. The other half were in cocktail attire, pretending they were too sophisticated to dress up.
I fit the scene in my black jeans, black shirt, and black leather jacket. But I hadn’t come to celebrate.
The energy in the room was high, the music loud enough to feel in my chest, and none of it reached me. Not the buzz, the excitement, or the pulse of the crowd. It wasn’t that I couldn’t plug into it—I didn’t want to.
There was only one person I had any interest in connecting with.
Zadie.
I’d been replaying our last night together on a loop. Her hot mouth pressed to mine, her lush curves in my hands, and her broken voice begging please, like she was asking me to save her and ruin her at the same damn time.
Fuck, I’d been so hard for her I’d nearly lost it right there in the hall.
Then she’d given me two words that had detonated everything. I’m pregnant.
I’d walked away. Left her standing in the doorway with tears on her face and the truth hanging between us like an open wound. Drove to the Bay and sat staring at the water until my ass went numb.
She was pregnant. With another man’s baby.
The rage it triggered in me wasn’t simple. It was alive—crawling, expanding, looking for a target. And every ounce of it was aimed at her piece of shit ex. The fucker didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her, let alone have a child with her.
