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He moves closer. I can feel him approach, hear the fall of his booted feet as they hit the floorboards, and I swallow as he stops just short of touching me.
“What you heard… What you think you heard… That wasn’t what you thought it was, baby.”
“Don’t. Don’t call me that.” I squeeze my eyes shut tight as another tear slides free and this time I let it fall. “I know what I heard. You don’t want me. And you proposed because you found out I’m pregnant.”
“Brandi.” His hand flutters against my shoulder and it takes everything I am not to lean back, not to melt into his touch. “I saw the pregnancy test,” he says softly.
“You could have said something then.”
“Yeah, I could have done just that. Instead, I called my mother, and I got the ring I didn’t ask her for with Jessica. Because you were here, you were living here with me, and the thought of going one more day without putting my mark on you permanently was enough to drive me crazy. Add in the fact that you’re carrying my child.Our child.I had to do it. I didn’t have any other choice. My heart wouldn’t let me do anything else.” He stops speaking and then gently turns me to so that my body is facing him and weakling that I am, I let him without a single objection. “Look at me, Brandi, please?”
I do just that. And my heart wobbles in my chest and starts to crack apart because he’s not just watching me with empty eyes.
He looks like I feel.
Like he’s been dragged through the lowest part of Hell and then fought his way back to the surface only to find out that there’s no way for him to find happiness. Like everything in his world lies in pieces and he doesn’t begin to know how to put it back together again.
In another life, I’d have thought it was all for me.
But I know the truth. It’s not just me.
He’s been hiding the truth about his ex. His brother, too. And here I am, standing in the—
“I have to go.”
Before he can stop me, I’m gone through the door as fast as I can manage. Being miserable on my own is a hell of a lot better than sitting in a house with the man who’s shown me repeatedly that he’d rather have his secrets than any future with me.
“Sweetie?” Maya peers at me over her sandwich at lunch the next day.
My life might be falling apart, but the baby I’m currently incubating like it’s my job, which I guess it technically is, demanded food.
But now I have my lunch, which the smell of made my stomach revolt. I think it’ll taste good. Maybe. If I could eat any of it. I pick at the soup, my stomach turning and churning in ways that have nothing to do with morning sickness and everything to do with my really uncertain future.
“Yes?”
“I’ve been talking for the past five minutes and you’ve grunted.” Maya points with her sandwich. “You’re not listening. And I know curtain fabric isn’t exactly the most exciting of topics, but you didn’t even blink when I mentioned the aliens or the tentacle porn I found to read.”
“Aliens?” Heat shoots through me and I hang my head. “Tentacle porn? Will you send me a link for that?”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just been going over some things in my head.” My stomach turns again, and I swear it’s like I ate something bad. At this point I’m struggling not to gag on air, and it’s ridiculous.
Maya sets her lunch down and catches my attention with raised eyebrows. “You worry too much about… well, everything.”
“Maybe,” I murmur, stirring my cooling soup with the plastic spoon. I’m not even sure it’s still soup at this point. Did I order soup? “There’s just… It’s just… There’s so much going on.”
“You know, things might have seemed all shiny on the outside to you when me and Brian got our happy ever after, but that’s when life starts. Yeah, we’re happy, and it’s going to be ever after, I know that. But sometimes, it sure doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes, I want to strangle that man and bury his body under my vegetable garden.”
But Maya’s smile is so bright and dreamy as she says that, I can practically see the hearts dancing in her eyes.
“But you know he loves you.” I pause my ridiculous stirring of the soup I’m never going to eat. “And—”
“You don’t think Travis loves you?” Her smile melts into a frown. “Things moved fast between you, but that man doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to.”
I bite down on my lip and stir the soup some more. “He told Brian he knew I was already pregnant. That he knew before he asked.”
For a minute, voices around us in the little café surge and bubble, and then Maya speaks. “If you’d known that, would you have said yes?”
