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“I’m fine,” she snaps, staring out her window.
Yikes. Not fine at all. “I didn’t know she’d be there.”
“You dated Gemma Maze? I don’t know how I feel about that, Decker. I thought you had better taste than that.”
Reaching over, I try to lighten her mood. “My taste improved with age.”
“It sure as shit did.” The edge to her tone could slice through any tension if the tension was rolling off of her to begin with.
“I’m sorry for bringing you here. You like to party, and you always seem up for a good time. So, I thought—”
“That wasn’t a good time. That was me watching you get lady-handled by cougars and coke heads.” She cracks her window and inhales a deep breath. I stop at a stop sign and look over when she turns toward me. “I can’t drink and I’m pregnant. I feel bloated and I’m not even showing yet. What’s it going to be like when I’m nine months pregnant?” Her voice keeps rising. “I’m going to be sitting home in Manhattan while you’re out “closing deals” at parties in LA? That’s not how I saw things going.”
I hate fighting in a car, the confinement is too limiting in thought and space. “Can we please talk about this when we get home?”
“Home? There you go again,” she says, sounding like she’s given up. “This isn’t my home, Harrison. And as much as you hate it, this baby goes where I go.”
She’s getting close to those lines, if crossed it can be hard to undo the damage already done. “Tatum,” I warn, getting her attention. “I don’t hate that you’re having my baby—whether that be in LA, New York, or Nova Scotia—don’t turn me into the bad guy for something I never said or even inferred. I’m going to say this again. We’ll talk about it when we get home. I’m not doing it in the car.”
“Maybe you don’t get that choice. I don’t have a say? God, I thought you were different. Sure, you have an arrogant side, but it wasn’t jerk macho.”
I grip the steering wheel, my anger starting to boil. “That’s a lot of fucking accusations in a four-block radius. Keep going, Tatum, and we’ll fucking do this and get it out of the way.”
“I don’t want to get it out of the way. I want it resolved. You have me living in a purgatory not knowing if I’m going to heaven or hell.”
“Hell, being LA? Wow,” I say, shaking my head.
“To me, it is. Watching you at that party wasn’t what I expected to see. You know I get jealous and although I’m working on that, I don’t like women shoved in my face.”
“You’re confusing what you think happened and reality.”
She scoffs so loud and then laughs deliriously that I glance over at her. “Me confusing reality. That’s rich. And while we’re at this, why are you driving your pregnant girlfriend when you’ve been drinking?”
She backs her bark with her bite, cutting her teeth deep. I need to take a breath, take a walk, put some space between us. I pull into my garage and cut the engine, ready to face her head on with this since that’s the road she’s choosing to travel tonight.
She gets out so fast that I don’t even have time to help her. I follow her inside the house. She takes off her heels and then storms down the hall. “This was supposed to be my birthday present, not Decker’s back in party mode weekend.”
I expect the sound of a door slamming. I don’t get that, though. Walking slowly toward the bedroom, my frame fills the doorway. I don’t breach the entrance, giving her all the space she fucking needs to cool down. When she comes out of the closet with her suitcase in hand and dumps it on the bed, I ask, “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.”
“It’s eleven o’clock at night. Where are you going?”
“I’m sure there’s a redeye I can catch,” she replies with her back to me.
My eyes practically bulge out of my head. “You’re flying home?”
Whipping back, she says, “Yes. Exactly. Home.”
Now I’m pissed. “That’s it. That’s fucking it.” I walk into the bedroom and shut the damn suitcase to the sound of her gasp. “You’re not running away from this, away from me. This isn’t what you do anymore. You have to break the pattern, Tatum.”
“Every time I stay, I’m the one who gets screwed.” The anger has left her shoulders sagging. Defeat rings through her tone, but I’m not sure what she thinks she’s lost. An argument? Me? What she thought her life would be?
I’m lost in her hurricane as it destroys everything in her path. Am I next? No. I refuse to be. More than I did before, I get why she’s defensive. Her parents suck. But I’m not like them. I desperately want her in my life. I love her, for fuck’s sake. Now calls for being honest with that love though. “The second we touch on something too close for comfort, you barricade yourself behind walls too thick to break through.”
