I tugged the bottom of my shirt down to cover my stomach. “I mean, the weather’s starting to turn. I’m sure I have enough oversized sweaters to get through the winter.”
“Aww, but I’ve seen a lot of cute shops around Aberdeen. We should do food and shopping after the appointment.”
I sighed, reminded of Locke leading me through Edinburgh all those weeks ago, gushing about all the baby things we’d need. That had happened in a different lifetime. Now I was about to do my eighteen-week fetal anomaly scan, and the last thing on my mind was shopping.
Instead, I couldn’t stop thinking about Locke.
It wasalwaysLocke.
And I couldn’t deny that there was a part that wished he was the one sitting next to me at the moment, driving me to the appointment. But that was absurd to wish for. I hadn’t talked to the man for weeks. And Cat, by contrast, had been sticking to me like glue, making sure I was okay. I hadn’t even asked her to come to the scan—this baby was my responsibility. But the moment I’d mentioned it, she’d said, “What time do we have to leave?” I really couldn’t have chosen a better friend in this life. I had no business wishing Locke was there in her place.
But I did. Oh, I did.
“How are things going with your dad?” Cat asked as she slowed at a traffic light. “You said he’d been bugging you since the festival about getting together for lunch.”
I burst out laughing. “Are you kidding?” I gestured to my stomach. “And have to explain this?”
“You’re going to have to tell him at some point,” Cat pointed out. “What’s the plan, just show up in Edinburgh with the actual baby next March?”
“I mean…not exactly,” I said, narrowing my eyes as I gave that some serious thought. “But now that you mention it?—”
“Isla!” Cat laughed, proceeding through the intersection, following the signs for Aberdeen Maternity Hospital. “You can’t just spring an actual baby on people.”
I huffed, flopping back against the seat. “I just don’t want to have to explain everything to him right now. I don’t want to have to tell him I got knocked up and Locke and I have broken up. Dad literally thinks we wereengaged. Explaining that whole mess would be a nightmare.”
“You mean how you faked a relationship to secure the property deal and then fell for each other for real?” Cat quipped. “Yeah, that’s probably not going to go over well.”
I rubbed my eyes. “It all sounds so much worse when you say it out loud.” I groaned. “It was supposed to be so simple! Pretend to be his fiancée. Get the property. Break up. Live our merry little lives and co-parent Lockette.”
“You need to stop calling your baby that,” Cat said, grimacing. “Names are important. They set your kid up for success. And Lockette sounds like she’s going to be nabbed in the woods by some bum fae prince with mediocre powers and anger management problems.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said, rubbing at the space beneath my collar bone. It ached every time I relived the breakup. I couldn’t be with Locke. Iknewthat. But my heartstubbornly insisted on wanting impossible things. And I didn’t know how to proceed.
“How to do what?” Cat asked.
“My mom basically raised me all by herself,” I said. “I thought I could handle it too. I told Locke I could do this alone, that I didn’t need anything from him, but now I feel like a failure. Because here I am, missing him and wanting him and—” I bit my cheek to keep the tears at bay, staring out the window.
“Your mum didn’t, though,” Cat said quietly.
I turned back to her. “What?”
“She didn’t do it all on her own. Your dad was around in the beginning,” she said, turning into the hospital parking garage. “For the appointments and building the nursery and the late-night feedings. I know things weren’t perfect, but your mum wasn’t completely alone. Not until she moved you overseas. So cut yourself some slack,okay?”
Cat lucked into a parking spot as an elderly couple was leaving the garage. “I guess you’re right,” I whispered. But did that really make anything better? My mom might not have been on her own—but I was. And I missed Locke so much, not just for the baby’s sake but formine.
I’d fallen for the fairy tale. I started to believe the ring on my finger meant something. I started to crave him next to me in bed and across the breakfast table. And I was a fool for all of that. I’d known the kind of man Locke was from the moment we’d met. I’d known he was too consumed by his work. Yet I let myself love him anyway. An overwhelming sense of loss pulsed behind my eyes.
“Every day, it’s going to get a little easier,” Cat promised.
But would it? Would it really? It had been almost a month since I’d last seen him, and that ache still burned in the space behind my ribs.
“At least you’ve stopped bursting into spontaneous bouts of tears in the corner of the café,” Cat said. “It was getting difficult to explain to people.”
I laughed. I’d cried over my fair share of hot chocolates this last month. “Yeah, I think that’s how Jo figured out we broke up.”
Cat gave me a small smile. “Small-town problems.”
“Small-town problems,” I agreed.
