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Heat flushes through my body at his accusation. “Because you didn’t want her.”
“That’s not true.”
“Do you need a history lesson? Because I’m happy to teach it.”
“What you remember and what really happened are two different things.”
“Let’s start with you leaving me alone in a hotel room with a text for agreat layand asee ya later.”
“That’s not what I wrote. It wasn’t like that.”
I push off the back of one of the chairs. “You’re right. It wasn’t. It was followed by a sweet voice mail and then the ghosting of a lifetime.” I start to move about the conference table, no longer needing the space from him as a surge of pent-up anger rages through me. “I should have known you were too good to be true with your corny lines and charisma, practically stalking me for three days until you got me spread-eagle in the damn canopy bed. I thought you were the real deal, Luke, and then you vanished. I wasn’t planning on ever talking to you again, and yet two weeks later, I got the surprise of a lifetime. The first thing I did was call you, but lo and behold, you blocked my number.”
His eyes close in response, as if he’s mentally scolding himself.
“I was tempted to just leave you in the dust, but I couldn’t do that. You had a right to know. You have no idea how impossible it was to hunt you down. Incendio isn’t exactly the easiest name to spell. I had to track down some part-time bartender in a foreign country who had taken a picture of your license in order to get it. Of course, there was no number listed for that address in Boston. I should be a detective if this wedding planning life doesn’t pan out because I called every Incendio in the book.”
“You called my parents’ house,” he says, his dark brows clenched together.
He clearly remembers me calling years ago and him telling his family to tell me he was unavailable.
“I was pregnant, alone, scared, and you made me go on a wild goose chase for you. I found you. I did the right thing, and I found you.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you. Jillian. You have no idea what happened back then.”
“Neither do you, and it was awful. I had no one. I might have been a grown woman, but I couldn’t tell my judgmental parents I had gotten impregnated by some guy I’d met in Aruba who vanished into thin air. Who does that? You, Luke. You cut me off completely.”
His hands rise to his head, and he turns away from me, probably because I must look like a wild, raging lunatic of a woman. My finger is in the air in an accusatory pose. My chest heaves, and I feel my cheeks rising to stop my emotions from spilling down my face.
I will not cry for this man. I will not let him know what happened next utterly destroyed me.
“It didn’t stop you,” he says over his shoulder.
He knows this story well.
He knows just how tragic it became.
After a week of calling his parents’ home and being given the cold shoulder, I finally heard his voice when he answered that goddamn phone.
My jaw quivers as I ask, “Do you remember what you said to me? The horrible, awful words you sputtered?”
This beautiful man with his smooth skin, chiseled features, and pouty lips looks heartbroken and shattered as he faces me with a dire expression. Too bad there’s no amount of beauty that can hide the ugly we hold inside.
Since he’s not going to answer my question, I answer it for him.
“You told me you didn’t want our baby. You said to get rid of it.”
There’s a mist of dread that falls upon his face as he relives the moment that absolutely crushed my soul.
With a step forward, he declares, “I was drunk, Jillian. I didn’t mean it. That wasn’t me speaking. It was grief. And whiskey.”
“It doesn’t matter what you were going through or feeling at the moment. All that matters was, you had a choice to make, and you did it with conviction and never turned back.”
The clench of his jaw hardens as he shakes his head. His stance widens. The muscles in his arms flex with his sudden change of physical emotion.
“Never turned back?” His voice rises. “That’s what you think? You believe that all these years, I had zero regrets about how things ended between us? That I haven’t—” The lines in his forehead deepen as he shakes his head and lifts his chin. “No. None of this matters. Those eyes of yours, they fucking struck me dead the first time I saw you in that bar and have always shown exactly what you’re thinking. Right now, they’re saying all that needs to be said. No matter what comes out of my mouth, you’ll never believe me. There is so much more to this story, but right now, all that matters is Ainsley. I’m her father, and I’ll be damned if I’m not in her life.”
“You can’t swoop in and disrupt her world.”
