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She hesitated like she wanted to tell him to fuck off but finally gave a short nod. “Wouldn’t expect anything different.”
This was it. It was really over.
Aaron turned without another word and walked out of the penthouse.
Becka barely had the energy to walk down the hallway to collapse on her bed. She buried her face in her cold pillow, hating that it wasn’t the one on Aaron’s bed that smelled like him, and hating herself even more for wanting that in the first place. She screamed into the offending pillow, but it didn’t make her feel the least bit better.
Why would it?
Aaron had left.
Not only left—left because she’d freaked out on him and kept yelling until he couldn’t stand to be in the same space as her. Just like her parents.
No, that wasn’t fair...
But Becka didn’t feel much like being fair right then. He threw that marriage proposal—if someone could even call it that—at her like it was the most logical step to take. And when she—understandably—freaked out, he cut and ran.
He left her.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the white ceiling. “Okay. Okay, he left. Which is a shitty way to end an argument. But this is Aaron we’re talking about. Maybe he just needs to walk it off a little bit and then he’ll be back here with some kind of plan and we’ll figure this out in a way that doesn’t involve a shotgun wedding.” She took a shuddering breath. “And then I will put my issues on hold and talk to him instead of freaking out.” Not an easy task by any means, but she could make an effort. She would make an effort.
She might not be ready to marry him, but she did care about him and she didn’t want to be without him. Becka scrubbed a hand over her face. Trust their first real fight to be one for the record books. She rolled over to get more comfortable and stared at the clock. An hour—two, tops—and he’d be back there. She just had to smother her instinct to flee the penthouse until then. She curled her legs and hugged the second pillow on the bed.
Just a little longer...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, Becka ran out of excuses. Aaron hadn’t come home last night, and though she’d called in to both her jobs because she wanted to be here when he did come back...he didn’t. She checked her phone, but her single text had gone unanswered.
He left me.
No, stop that. Maybe something happened. This is Aaron. He wouldn’t have just left. Not like that.
She scrolled through her contacts to find the one Aaron had given her when she’d first moved in. There might be times when she needed to get ahold of him and wasn’t able to, and so he wanted her to have Cameron’s number. She held her breath as she pressed dial.
An unfamiliar voice answered almost immediately. “Cameron O’Clery.”
“Hi, Cameron. This is Becka. I’m, ah, Aaron’s... Whatever. I was wondering if you’ve seen him?” Please say he’s okay. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if something happened to him.
“Yeah, he’s in his office right now.”
She stared at the wall, her breath leaving her in a whoosh. It had been bad to think that Aaron might be hurt in some hospital in the city and unable to contact her. Knowing that he was fine, that he’d chosen not to call her or come home...
It was worse. So much worse.
“Thank you,” she said through numb lips and hung up.
Becka looked around the room that had ceased to be hers the second she’d ended up in Aaron’s bed a month ago. She’d built this fiction around the idea that Aaron was different from her father—that being with him was different from every relationship her mother had ever been in. From every relationship Becka had been in. She’d believed him when he said they were in this together, when he claimed she wasn’t alone. That declaration had only lasted as long as their honeymoon period had. The second things got rough—and they had gotten rough—he’d bailed.
He left.
She shoved to her feet and rushed to the closet. He wanted in the baby’s life? Fine. She might feel like he’d ripped her heart out of her chest and thrown it into a wood chipper, but she wasn’t completely delusional. He loved the baby as much as she did.
He just didn’t love her. If he really had, he wouldn’t have pulled a cheap stunt like this.
Maybe he’s clearing the way for me to move out without him having to deal with me again.
She threw her clothes onto the bed and had to lean over to wait for the lurching of her stomach to pass. A lie. It had all been a lie. Becka packed as fast as she could. She had things in his room, but she couldn’t bear the thought of crossing that threshold and being assaulted by all the good memories they’d made there.
