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If I hadn’t seen her swollen with his child, I know that I would have done just that. But knowing she’ll never belong to me again, and that someone else is responsible for giving her a child, kills me.
I need to numb the pain and forget about her but something tells me she’s always going to be with me and that I’ll never be free. I mean, for fucks sake, she’s the only woman to enter my heart and I meant every word of ‘I love you’ when I spoke them.
Perhaps if I’d gone after her in the beginni
ng and explained the reason for my harsh decision when talking to Jace, then maybe she would have still been with me . . . or maybe not.
Not wanting to head home and face my lonely apartment when the plane lands, I turn my truck to Skeeter’s, the bar Jace hangs out in.
At this time, he’ll be here, grabbing dinner and a drink before he leaves for his empty house. I’ve always thought he loved his solitude but for a while now I think his main reason for spending so much time at Skeeter’s is for company. He’s lonely. God, is this how I’m going to end up? Because the thought of not having Dahlia in my life, and knowing she’s having someone else’s child, causes the air I breathe to freeze in my lungs.
I push my way through Skeeter’s and spot my brother in a booth, alone and nursing a beer.
He’s surprised when I slide in opposite him but, before he can comment, a waitress sidles up to the table for my order. I order the same as Jace before briefly meeting his gaze, which is full of curiosity.
“How long are you going to sit there until you tell me what’s going on? And why you are sitting opposite me instead of being in a different state?” He leans forward in his seat and refuses to let me look anywhere but at him.
I sigh and feel emotion choking me.
“Fuck,” he curses. “Tell me.”
“She’s with someone else.” His eyes widen. I might as well get it all out. “She’s . . . she’s pregnant.”
“What the fuck?”
“With him?”
“There was no one else there, so I presume so.”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“What was the point?”
He sits back, his mouth opening and closing a few times. “You didn’t talk to her?”
I shake my head. “She was walking on the beach and then the guy came up behind her. They both rested their hands on her sto . . . stomach,” I trip over the last word.
It still hasn’t sunk in yet that she really is out of my life. That she’s chosen a different direction for herself with someone else.
I feel the tears threatening again, so as soon as the server places my drink down I pick it up and down it in one, and, seconds later, I watch Jace do the same.
Neither of us dig into the food when it’s delivered. We just sit and stare at the other. Me wanting Jace to tell me I’ve been dreaming, but I’ve no clue as to what he’s thinking. He’s good at masking his thoughts, and I guess he’s had lots of practice.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you find some way of talking to her when she’s alone and asking her what’s going on. Because you only saw, perhaps a brief hug, which you could have wrongly misinterpreted.”
“I saw what I saw. I’m not wrong.”
He picks up his knife and fork and shovels a huge amount of the chicken casserole into his mouth. His eyes stay glued to me while he chews. Taking a drink of his new beer that arrived with the food, he places it back down. “If you truly believe that what you saw is fact, and you’re refusing to go and talk to her, then I hope, for your sake, it is the truth. Because if you find out down the line that all you saw was a new friend giving her a hug of encouragement to try and cheer her up because she was missing you, then you’re going to have to live with that.”
I try to eat some of the chicken, but my stomach doesn’t want it. All my heart and soul want is Dahlia.
Dahlia
Today, I’m officially five months pregnant, twenty weeks, and I’ve decided to go back to Alabama to talk to Ryder before I’m too far along in my pregnancy to fly.
Although I need to see him again, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what he’ll say when he sees me pregnant with his child. It’s not as though I can hide it now and work up to telling him. I mean at five months my stomach is already quite large. So much so that I struggle to fasten laces on my shoes, because my stomach gets in the way.
Before I do anything though, I’m going to have breakfast with Max and tell him my decision to finally make the trip back. Even though he’s been supporting my decision, I know the fact that I’ve been keeping my news from Ryder has been bothering Max.
