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“Yes.”
He let out a breath and nodded his head, his eyes downcast and staring at nothing in particular.
“I know it’s crazy—”
“I just don’t know you, Sierra. You… You lefttwice. The second time you snuck off in the middle of the night without a word and now you’re back, pregnant with what could be my baby, and asking me to protect you from your wealthy family andfiancé. It’s a lot, Sierra.”
“I know.” How did he thinkIfelt about all of it? “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. I can leave—” I scooted forward prepared to get up and make a sudden run for it. He stood up and motioned for me to stop, then rested his hands on his hips.
“You’re not going anywhere until we know if this baby is mine. I can’t let you just—just figure this out yourself.”
“Would it be any different if I had any doubt if you were the father?” I asked hotly.
“No, it wouldn’t. I—” He paused, sucking in a breath through gritted teeth. There it was again, that brief flash of emotion behind his eyes. It was something heavy and uncertain, like there was so much he wanted to say that he couldn’t.
Was it the same as me? That something about him, about us, felt like a magnetic, electric pull that I hadn’t felt with anyone else. I hadn’t even thought something like this had been possible.
Love at first sight.
“I won’t leave you stranded. If this baby is mine—ours… We’ll figure it out.”
“It is ours—”
“Ifit’s ours,” he corrected, and a sour feeling settled in my stomach again.
He had the right to question all of this. I couldn’t be mad at him for it, not at all. It didn’t mean the fact that he had doubts about me and about who I was and my intentions hurt any less.
“I’m not asking you to support me or give me money—”
“I know—”
“I have a trust fund. I just can’t access it without them knowing where I am, and Jonah…”
“He thinks that money is his if you marry.”
“Yeah.”
“When was the wedding supposed to be?” he asked as he sat done again.
I let out my breath and clutched the can of ginger ale. “Next month. I… I just couldn’t go through with it.”
“But at one point you wanted to?”
“At one point I believed I didn’t have any other options. I thought everything I’d known was the truth, and that marrying a future politician who came from an old-money family would give me everything I ever wanted.” I looked into his eyes and held his gaze as I continued, “I didn’t know what I wanted because I’d never had the opportunity to explore who I was. Not until last year.” It was all I had the strength to admit to him. I couldn’t bring myself to say that meeting him had been the catalyst to my change of thinking.
For the next twenty minutes I told him all about college and how I’d fallen in with a group of friends from different backgrounds and had started to bulk at the life my parents had laid out for me. They saw that sudden need for independence as a reason to try to marry me off as soon as possible, making an alliance with Jonah’s family. Jonah had courted me without me knowing the truth behind his reasonings. Where I thought there had been real love, there was nothing but a desire for what my money and status could grant him for his own future that had little to do with me.
And I hadn’t known the extent of that until the road trip happened and I met Pete for the first time, spending the next year pining for something I believed wasreal.
I left that part out, of course. He didn’t feel the same.
He’d hadn’t ever felt the same.
“I have a guestroom. You can stay there.”
“I can pay—”
“No,” he said bluntly as he rose and took his empty glass to the kitchen. “You said your suitcase was in the car?”
