AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I snatch the dangling bag from his finger. “I know what it is! Told you you’d regret it.”
He slides behind the wheel and grins over. “I grew up in a house with four women, Annalise.Allwomen. I have three…count them.” He holds up three straight fingers, hinging them backwards and forward. “Threesisters. Older and younger.” He pulls his door shut with a bang, still smirking. “You’re going to have to do a whole lot better than that to embarrass me.”
CHAPTER 17
Marco
The clouds have followed us from the coast, and with every westward mile, I feel, physicallyfeel, Annalise’s mood slide. Plenty of possible reasons why, but I think I stepped over the line back at thestore.
“I’m sorry.”
Her arms are still curled around her middle. “For what?”
So much, but I say, “Embarrassing you. Making things awkward.”
She sighs. “That wouldn’t take much, would it?”
No, no it would not. We began at awkward.
She stares out her window, and I barely catch her words. “You do realize you’re not supposed to know any of this, right?”
She’s not talking about female kinds of stuff, she’s talking aboutherstuff.
Clenching the wheel, I jerk a nod. “I know.”
She may be crying again. I’m afraid to look. Then I hear a sniffle, a gurgly one, so, yeah, tears are involved.
I hate when women cry.Hate. Tears were the worst thing about growing up in a house full of women. I’m a fixer. It’s how I’m wired. When Mom or my sisters cried, I swooped in with my handy repair kit, something which, strangely,costme brownie points, and I hated the utter powerlessness I knew in those moments. Eventually I learned the art of commiseration—but how do I do that with a woman I barely know?
“I’m sorry about the baby, Annalise. For your loss.”
One palm goes to her stomach, her empty stomach, and I figure that’s all the response I’m going to get. But then, softly, “I didn’t know.”
I wish I could see her face. I might know better how to respond.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant until last week, at the hospital...”
My eyes swerve from the road. Seriously?
“I thought I might be a few weeks ago but was too scared to find out. And then…” She darts me a quick look. “Well, then girl stuff happened and I figured I wasn’t. I was so relieved. But I guess what I thought was…” Another glance. “Anyway, clearly I was wrong. And honestly, I was so out of my head by the time I got to the hospital, you may have known before I did.”
I tap the window control and lower the glass a couple inches to let in fresh air. Yep,awkwardis an understatement.
And yet, I want to curl my hand around Annalise’s and tell her, promise her, that everything is going to be okay.
I settle for, “I truly am sorry.”
Who can blame her for not responding? Certainly not me.
Annalise
Marco is trying to be kind. Possibly genuinelyiskind. How would I know? What I do know is that he’s over there squirming like an F student on report card day. Could be his discomfort is less awkward topic and more guilty conscience. After all, he picked me, a total stranger, up at a bar. Who’s to say he hasn’t walked this exact scenario before, only as a main character and not an innocent bystander?
My chest tightens. I’ve never been a man-hater. Some of my friends are, but I’ve always gotten along well with guys. I never thought I’d bethatwoman, the bitter, been-done-wrong-ain’t-ever-happening-again woman, but I’m suddenly feeling a kinship with the been-scorned crowd.
Maybe men are nothing but rats and liars and cons. I would never have slept with Kyle had he not led me to believe our relationship was more than it was. I’m beginning to see how my mom’s younger sister, my spinster aunt, ended up and is mostly content living alone with her novels and her cadre of cats.
I’m also starting to glimpse how my mom—myrealmom—ended up with five baby daddies.
