by Rachel Woods
“My sister doesn’t need or want you in her life,” Rae said. “So, why don’t you just go back to wherever you came from. Better yet, go to hell!”
After a few more choice invectives, Rae tried to slam the door in his face. Anticipating her intent, Sione stopped her, pushing the door back and forcing her to retreat backward into the small foyer. An aggressive move. He wasn’t proud of his excessive force, but he didn’t regret it. He wasn’t leaving until he saw Spencer, until he could tell her how sorry he was and how he desperately wanted her to give him a chance to prove his love and devotion to her and the baby.
“I want to see Spencer,” he told her. “I’m not leaving until I do.”
“What makes you think Spencer is here,” Rae sneered.
“DJ told me that Spencer was staying here.”
“Spencer doesn’t want to see you,” Rae said. “And after what you did to her, you don’t deserve to see her!”
“I know I hurt Spencer, but—”
“You hurt her? Is that what you think you did?” Rae asked. “You did so much more than hurt her! Hitting her in the face would hurt her. Saying something mean and insulting would hurt her. You destroyed my sister. You put a knife in her heart. You almost killed her. You know, I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t. I stayed up all night watching her, scared to death that she was going to hurt herself!”
Sione looked away, feeling like a heartless bastard. He hated the thought of Spencer broken and abandoned, because of him.
“You shouldn’t have come here. You need to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I see Spencer.”
“She doesn’t want to see you,” Rae said.
“Then let Spencer tell me she doesn’t want to see me,” Sione said. “Where is she?”
“What part of she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you do you not understand?” Rae glared at him. “You made it very clear that you didn’t want her in your life, so why did you come back?”
“I came back to tell her that I love her,” he said. “And that I can’t live without her. I came back to ask her to forgive me.”
“You think you deserve forgiveness?” Rae asked. “After what you did? You kicked her out in the middle of the night, half-naked and barefoot! You better be glad that our sister, Shady, always prays for us, because anything could have happened to Spencer! She could have gotten hit by a car, left to bleed to death in a ditch somewhere.”
Rubbing his chin, Sione took a breath and tried not to do something he might regret. Antagonizing Rae wasn’t a good idea. A combative, defensive attitude would only hinder his chance to talk to Spencer. Rae’s condemning judgment shamed him. He’d been unnecessarily brutal to Spencer that night. He’d wanted to hurt her. He hadn’t given one thought to any dire consequences she might have suffered because of his cruelty.
If something bad had happened to Spencer that night, because of him, Sione would never have forgiven himself.
“I think you should go.”
Standing his ground, Sione shook his head. “I need to see her.”
“I’ll tell her you stopped by,” Rae said. “And maybe, if she wants to see you, which I doubt she will, then she’ll call you.”
“I’m not leaving until I talk to her,” Sione said, unfazed by the wicked evil eye Rae gave him. “If she’s not here, then I’ll wait. But, I have to tell her how I feel. She has to know that I still love her. I never stopped loving her, and I never will…”
Standing in the hallway around the corner from the living area, Spencer listened, barely able to move, barely able to believe John was here.
With shaking hands, she wiped away tears.
Rae’s ranting and raving took her back to the night she’d tried to forget, the worst night of her life. The night John had told her to leave. He’d kicked her out of the house, wearing nothing but a kimono, with no shoes on her feet. Barefoot, she’d managed to walk to the guard house at the front of the gated community. The guard on duty, a young guy she sometimes waved to, recognized her but didn’t interrogate her. The tears and disheveled appearance seemed to unnerve him, initially, but he regained his composure. After making sure she wasn’t physically hurt and hadn’t been assaulted and didn’t need him to call the police, he allowed her to use the phone, and she called Rae.
Rae arrived with Mr. Cephas in his dark Bentley. Rae jumped out of the car and ran to Spencer, who collapsed in Rae’s arms. Spencer didn’t remember much about that night, but she vaguely recalled wanting to die, and maybe she’d said it out loud, but she didn’t want John to know that…
She didn’t want John to know how weak and helpless she’d been.
She was so ashamed when she thought of how she’d broken down, hadn’t been able to keep it together, and had just given in to the desolation and despair, allowing it to drown her, swallow her whole.
Cradling her stomach, drawing strength from the little one, Spencer glanced at the ceiling. She didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to think. She still wasn’t convinced that she wasn’t dreaming. Moments ago, when she’d heard John’s voice, it took her a moment before she’d recognized it. The voice had seemed familiar, but it had been so long since she’d heard the soothing baritone. She’d never thought she would hear it again.
Her emotions were all over the place from rage to elation to fear and back to an anger so intense that the only thing that quelled it was the little one growing within her. The baby kept her from giving in to the psychotic hysteria. The baby she and John had created together…
Spencer sighed and glanced at her barely there bump.
She would have to tell John about the baby, somehow, someway. Two months ago, she would have given anything to have John come back into her life and tell her he was sorry and he still loved her. Now, she wasn’t so sure, especially since, in the past week, she’d found peace after arriving at a resolute conclusion. She’d spent the days in thoughtful introspection instead of furtive panic and forlorn sobbing. Seven days had passed and not once had she cycled through the stages of grief. One hundred sixty hours with no desolate hysteria washing over her, propelling her to the brink of insanity and back. Yesterday, while on her morning power walk, she became more and more convinced it was time to give up the silly fantasies about being with John. There was no hope of reconciliation. She loved John, but maybe, love just wasn’t enough.
And now, just when she’d given up on John, he was in the living room with Rae, demanding to see her and saying all the things she wanted to hear.
“Where is Spencer?” John was asking. “In one of the bedrooms?”
“Don’t worry about where she is,” Rae snapped. “You weren’t worried about where she was when you kicked her out of the house, so why are you worried about where she is now?”
“Spencer!” John called out.
Gasping, pressing a hand against her mouth, Spencer took a step forward but then immediately retreated two steps back as John called her name again, his voice loud and commanding and yet holding notes of intense longing.
Still frozen, she didn’t know what to do. In the next few seconds, he was going to turn down the hallway, and he would see her…unless she ran back to her bedroom and locked the door behind her. Did she want to hide from John? She didn’t know.
“Spencer!”
“Leave her alone!” Rae said. “She doesn’t want to see you. Don’t go back there, or I will call the cops, I swear!”
“Spencer!”
Panicked, Spencer turned and hurried down the hall toward her bedroom. She couldn’t see John. Not right now. She wasn’t ready. She felt blindsided by his presence. Sucker punched. She needed a moment to think. She needed to—
“Spencer…” John’s voice seemed right behind her, low and tender. “Wait a minute…please…”
24
Houston, Texas
Torrey Chase Subdivision
Spencer turned and looked up.
John was still as tall, muscular, and
handsome as he’d been the day she first saw him.
It would have served him right if, in the months without her, he’d shrank, lost his good looks, and gained four hundred pounds, but she supposed that was too damn much to ask.
At once, memories attacked her.
All the time they’d spent together flashed before her eyes. Vivid images of intimate moments mocked her and told her she should have known John would never love her—that she would never be good enough for him. He’d shown her she wasn’t good enough two months ago, on a humid night in October.
She remembered walking down the middle of the street, stumbling, sobbing, and shivering. Instead of the desolation which usually accompanied that memory, Spencer felt a spark of rage. John had shoved her out of the house with derision and disgust, as though he had never loved her, as though they didn’t belong together.
Spencer felt her chest tighten and felt the anger intensifying.
The urge to slap him was sudden and strong, but she took a breath and then let it out. She wasn’t going to act like a wild, psychotic bitch. She would be civil and polite, the gracious Southern girl her grandmother had taught her to be. And the little one was helping to tame her ire.
“John, what are you doing here?” she asked. “What do you want?”
“I love you and I want you back,” he said. “I’ve been miserable without you, and I hate myself for the way I hurt you. It was cruel and selfish…”
“So, all of a sudden, you love me again,” Spencer said, frustrated and tense, desperate not to give in to him, even though he was saying exactly what she wanted to hear, saying everything she’d hoped and dreamed he would say. “After all this time—”
“I never stopped loving you.”
“Yes, you did, John,” she disputed. “When you kicked me out, you said—”
“I never said I didn’t love you,” he said.
“But you did say you didn’t want me in your life,” she reminded him. “You said—”
“I said a lot of stuff that I didn’t really mean that night,” he said.
“Are you sure you really want to be with me? Can you really forgive me for what I did? Can you even try to understand that I made a stupid, horrible mistake? I know there is nothing I can do to make up for it, and if I could do it all over—”
“If you could do it all over, you would probably make the same bad decisions.” He took a step closer to her. “Because you would be in the same damn impossible situation. You made the worst mistake of your life when you stole from Ben. That mistake gave him the power to ruin you. He took advantage of you, making you think that you owed him something. But I didn’t come here to talk about past mistakes or Ben Chang. I’m here because I want us to be together. I’m here to fight for us.”
Confused, Spencer stared at him, touched and yet terrified by the unabashed devotion in his hazel eyes.
“I tried to tell myself that I would be fine without you,” John said. “Tried to convince myself that I was going to move on with my life and—”
“And you probably should,” she conceded. “You need to find a woman who can be Mrs. Tuiali’i—a kind, selfless, compassionate woman.”
“If I found that woman, it wouldn’t matter,” he said. “She wouldn’t make me forget about you.”
“Don’t say that,” she warned. “Don’t tell me…”
“Don’t tell you what?” he asked. “The truth? Don’t tell you that I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you?”
“Don’t say things you don’t really mean,” she told him.
“I mean every word,” John said. “I love you. I want—”
“Nobody gives a shit about what you want,” Rae said, walking down the hall toward them. “You need to leave. My sister doesn’t—”
John faced Rae. “Can you please just let me have a chance to talk to Spencer alone?”
“Spencer doesn’t want to talk to you.” Slipping around John, Rae stood in front of Spencer, acting as a barrier, though Spencer could still see John, looming over both of them. “You should get the hell out of here. Now.”
“Is that what you want?” John asked, staring down at Spencer. “You want me to leave?”
Spencer looked down. She really didn’t know what she wanted. She just knew she couldn’t talk to John right now. She didn’t really know how she felt about him or their situation. She was going to have to deal with him. There was no getting around that. John was back in her life, like it or not, but she wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse.
“Spencer?” John prodded.
Glancing at him, Spencer opened her mouth, but words wouldn’t come. She didn’t know what to say or how to say it. She wanted to explain her feelings, but she didn’t understand them herself. With tears threatening, Spencer shook her head, turned, and hurried into the bedroom. John tried to follow her, but Rae blocked him, and Spencer was able to close and lock the door.
Trembling, she walked to the bed and threw herself across it, burying her face in the pillow as she cried.
25
Houston, Texas
Torrey Chase Subdivision
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Rae suggested, standing in the doorway of the bedroom Shady had converted into an office.
Spencer glanced away from the computer to frown at her sister and then cut her gaze back to the screen. “I’m busy.”
For the past two hours, Spencer had been browsing mommy-to-be blogs, online baby stores, and several “what to expect when expecting” websites. Normally, at nine in the morning, she’d be halfway finished with her morning walk, but she’d suspended that practice last week—because of John.
Sighing, Spencer asked, “Is he outside?”
“Where else would he be except where he’d been every day for the past two weeks?” Rae asked. “Parked across the street. From sunup to sundown. Pathetic asshole. Fucking stalker.”
With an irritated exhale, Rae left, grumbling curses.
Spencer sat back in the chair and rubbed her eyes, wondering if Rae was right. Maybe it was time to have a long, serious conversation with John. But would doing so help the situation or make it worse. Ignoring him hadn’t worked, that was for sure. Insisting she didn’t want to see him again hadn’t made him any less adamant about his intentions.
Since his return two weeks ago, John had been determined to prove he wasn’t leaving until she changed her mind about being with him. He’d been camped out across the street from Shady’s house, watching, waiting for her to leave the house and when she did, he would follow her wherever she went, hoping and praying for a chance to talk to her.
The day John had come back Spencer had thought he’d head back to Belize after Rae kicked him out. But, the next morning, when she’d left the house to do her power walk, she was shocked and irritated, and maybe secretly thrilled, to find him walking next to her.
Trying to walk faster than him was pointless. John was tall, and for every stride he took, she had to take three. As a result, she was forced to listen as he’d begun to tell her everything she wanted to hear. She struggled not to take his words to heart. But then he said something that stopped her in her tracks and yet made her want to run for the hills.
“I want us to have the future that we want and deserve. You, me…and our baby.”
Flabbergasted, Spencer had stared up at him, shielding her eyes from the sun. “You know about the baby?”
John nodded and smiled. Spencer had taken a step back and then looked down and bit her bottom lip so she wouldn’t smile back at him. She wasn’t quite ready to let him see the joy reflected on her face.
“How?” she asked, and when he told her, Spencer hadn’t been surprised. It was Rae’s damn fault for using John’s VISA card.
Spencer said, “So, that’s why you came back. Because of the baby.”
“I came back because I love you,” John insisted. “I never should have let you go.”
“You didn’t let me go,” she scoffed,
noticing a U-Haul truck idling in front of a two-story brick house, halfway down the street. “You kicked me out.”
His expression pained, John said, “I shouldn’t have kicked you out. It was cruel, and I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, arms crossed, watching the moving van struggle to back into the driveway. “What matters is that we don’t belong together.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I have to say it,” she said. “Because it’s true.”
“You don’t believe that.” He stepped closer to her. “You know we belong together. You, me, and our baby.”
“It’s not going to be you, me, and the baby,” she said, feeling slightly manic, as though she were about to say something she would never be able to take back, something that would make her cringe and kick herself later. “It’s never going to be you, me, and the baby, and do you know why? Because you don’t deserve to be with me and my baby! Me and my baby will be fine without you! We don’t need you!”
“Are you saying that you’re not going to let me have anything to do with the baby?” John asked. “You would really try to keep me out of the baby’s life?”
“I’m saying that I wish you didn’t know about the baby.”
John stared at her, and for a minute or two, she thought she might have gotten to him, might have finally convinced him that trying to reunite was a losing battle, one it was pointless to fight. Something flickered in his hazel eyes, darkening the irises to a moss green, reminding her of how his eyes would change colors whenever he made love to her.
The animosity in his gaze began to fade, and in its place, there seemed to be a mix of disillusionment and despair.
Her own spitefulness started to wane, diminishing rapidly, leaving behind regret, frustration, and confusion. And shame. What the hell was her problem? She sounded like some vengeful, overemotional baby mama.