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“I’m sure she would be happier to have you come back and help be a parent than to abandon her with the entire job,” Kenton said. “I bet you she’s going to be pissed, but can you blame her for that? You are the one who fucked up here.”
“Right,” I said.
And I was ready to take responsibility for what I had done. If she was pissed with me for what I had done, well, she had every right to be. It was a massive asshole move for me to have left her the way I did, and no matter what I had to say about it when I got back, that wasn’t going to redeem me for what I had done already.
But, Kenton also had a point.
I could stay on the run from this, and she would hate me forever. Or, I could go back and do what I could to turn it around. I would apologize to her, and I would assure her that I was there for her and the baby no matter what. I wasn’t going to keep running, and I would beg her to forgive me for what I had done.
“Suppose she doesn’t want to get back with me, though,” I said. “Then what?”
“I guess that’s when you figure out how you are going to raise the kid together but not being together,” Kenton replied. “You fucked up here, and now you have to make it right. You are human, you are able to make mistakes. But it’s not that you made the mistake that makes the difference in your life, it’s what you do with it after the fact. Now that you know what you did was the wrong thing to do, you can turn this around by going back and telling her that you’re there for her now.”
I nodded.
Kenton was right. It surprised me how wise he was when it came to things like this since he had never been in this same situation, but that was a conversation for another time. I wasn’t going to ask him more about that now. I had a lot of thinking to do.
All that mattered now was how I could patch things up with Laurel. I wasn’t sure she would take me back, but I couldn’t let that be the determining factor over what I did next. If she was pregnant with my kid, then I had to do the right thing and go back to her. I had to be there for her through the pregnancy and birth, and I had to do my part with raising the kid, too.
It wasn’t her fault that she had gotten pregnant. We were both sleeping together, and while we hadn’t talked about it, we both knew that a pregnancy could happen. It was just one of those risks that we had taken with the act that we did.
Now it was my turn to step up and be a man about this whole thing.
“I’m going back to Seattle,” I said. “I have to.”
“I think that’s the best idea,” Kenton replied. “You want a hand with that part you broke first?”
“Oh, fuck you,” I said again, but this time with a smile on my face. If there was anyone who would be able to fix this, it was Kenton, and I was glad he was so willing to help me even after I had snapped at him and clearly shown him I was in a bad mood.
However, he also had been there for me and listened. He had given me great advice, and I knew he was right. I might not be perfect, but I was willing to own up to the mistakes I made.
I had no control over how Laurel would react to my apology or my coming back, but I did have control over what I did next. And the only thing I could see to do now was to make sure she knew I was there for her, and I would be there for her moving forward.
I didn’t care how hard it was or how long it took me to wrap my mind around the fact I would be a parent.
I knew what I had to do.
THIRTY-SIX
Laurel
“And I wantthose paintings upstairs. Once that’s done, you can focus on laying out the rugs, and we should be golden,” I said.
I looked around the bustling lobby as the team worked to put together the room according to my directions. I wasn’t the demanding kind of designer who made people feel like crap, but the encouraging kind who would try to tell people what to do so they got it right the first time.
It was especially easy with the fact that we were now going back to my original design of the room.
The design was pulling the room together perfectly, just as I had envisioned, and I was proud to see how well everything simply worked. This was the way it was supposed to be done, and the rush I got from seeing it coming to life right in front of me left me with a tingle of excitement running down my spine.
It was bittersweet to be finished with this hotel.
It meant that I would be heading home tomorrow, which had its benefits, but there were also the drawbacks.
Going home meant going back to my old life. It meant going back to working practically around the clock every day of every week. But it also meant that I was finally going to get back to my normal schedule. My normal routine. Things were going to just go back to normal all around, which was what I wanted most right now.
But, going home also meant that I was saying goodbye to this crazy adventure that had been my life for the past couple months. It was hard to believe that I had been a virgin at the start of this, and to see where I was now. While my heart still ached with the pain of the breakup, I felt I had grown with the drama that I had been through.
I felt stronger, smarter, and more capable of being able to handle myself no matter what I was going through. I also felt that it was smarter for me to focus on my career than it was for me to try to find love. I loved my career, after all, and I felt confident in that.
