“Well, I didn’t know, for one thing. I was clueless, just going about my life as a teenager, getting ready for college. I went and…bam. Thanksgiving break, I found out they were splitting and had waited until I went away to school. I know now that was out of love and respect for me, but I couldn’t help wondering if my absence from the house had somehow broken the family.”
“Oh, that must have been hard for you.”
“It wasn’t fun, but I threw myself into school and eventually came to terms with their divorce.” He brushed back some hair, looking off into the distance. “I always thought if they could just live in the same house again, they’d figure it out. Then my mom stayed last month to hover over me and…this…” He lifted his arm. “And I realized they were apart for a reason. Plus, I really like Vivien. She’s good for Dad.”
She looked up at him, catching his strong profile as he studied the heron that hadn’t moved from the side of the lake. He turned, catching her looking right at him.
“Good subject change, by the way,” he said. “Right as I admit I like you, I get taken to my childhood, my career choice, and my parents.”
She laughed. “Did I do that?”
“You did,” he confirmed. “And I’d like to know why.”
“Oh, I guess because I’m…cautious.” She wanted to say terrified and broken, but cautious sounded so much more together.
He laughed softly. “I know. You’re also organized, disciplined, focused, and…about as tender as this arm. Press too hard and it hurts.”
She wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but he knew she’d been through…something. He just didn’t know what.
“I’m not usually tender. I mean…I wasn’t. Then…” She huffed out a breath. “Then I did something that wasn’t cautious or smart, and I got hurt and I almost died.”
“What?” He blinked at her. “What happened? Were you in an accident?”
“If that’s what you want to call a brief, brief fling with the wrong man.”
His eyes flashed. “And you almost died? What did he?—”
She put a light hand on his arm, hating the sting of tears that threatened at the protectiveness that bubbled under his surface. It was endearing and made this even harder to share.
But if he really had been “trolling for time with the girl who never stops working” then he should know that girl had…baggage.
“Didn’t your father tell you what happened?” she asked, hoping she could give a very glossed-over account because he already knew about the ectopic pregnancy.
He shook his head. “No. He’s a cop and respects privacy.”
“That’s fair.” She let her hand drop and it brushed his—the good one. Good enough that he clasped her fingers and gave a comforting squeeze.
“Tell me,” he said. “You can trust me.”
She knew she could. That was the terrifying part—she actually trusted him, in a way she hadn’t thought she’d be able to again.
“Well, it was, like I said, very brief. Very…” She didn’t know how to describe the chemistry with Trevor, or the casualness of their affair without sounding like the type of woman she didn’twant him to think she was. But it had happened. And she should stick to facts, not feelings. “I, um, got pregnant.”
He looked startled. “How?”
That made her laugh. “The usual way.”
“No, I mean…you? I can’t believe you’d…”
“Yeah, me neither. So dumb. So careless. And by the time I found out, I had already decided it was a moment of madness and had kind of removed him from my life. But I had to tell him, of course, and then…I had the second bombshell dropped on me one Sunday morning.”
He stopped walking, listening and waiting.
“Turns out he had a wife in Chicago that he totally forgot to mention.” She winced, bracing for his reaction.
He swore softly under his breath.
“Yep. My response exactly.”
