Christmas Box Set

by Nella Tyler

  “You were on birth control the entire time we were together, Lacey,” I countered, crossing my arms, too. I hadn’t stepped aside to let her into my apartment and I didn’t plan to do so. “You were really careful about it. You wouldn’t even let me touch you that time you were on antibiotics because it messes with the effectiveness of the pill somehow.”

  She lifted her chin again in that challenging way she had, her dark eyes narrowing to sparkling slits. “No birth control is one hundred percent effective.”

  I swallowed, unable to come up with anything to challenge that. Not that it mattered. I could clearly see she was knocked up. Fuck.

  “This is your child, Blaze,” she said, her voice rising just a touch. I could see she wasn’t far from shouting at me. If she did that, I’d have to drag her in here to keep from waking up my neighbors, even if it meant that Sami would hear us, too. “You need to take responsibility for it. I wasn’t planning on having a baby right now, either, but here we are. You deal with the situation you have, not the situation you want.”

  I wanted to argue, to find a way out of this, but the truth was right here in front of me, that small swell in Lacey’s stomach where a baby was growing. My baby. I swallowed again to keep the sick roiling in my gut from creeping up the back of my throat and spraying all over my tiny front foyer.

  “I’m not getting rid of it, Blaze,” she snapped.

  “I never asked you to,” I whispered, my low voice urgent. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to overhear this train wreck of a conversation, especially Sami. I had to figure this shit out before I told her about this.

  If I told her about this.

  There might be a way out, but I needed time to think. My head wasn’t working properly right now. I needed to get her the hell out of here so I could get my thoughts in order and find a solution to all this.

  “Then you need to do the right thing, Blaze,” she fired back. “This is your child. You need to take care of it.”

  I rubbed my forehead. This was the last thing I wanted, but what was I supposed to do? “You know I’ll take care of my responsibility, Lacey. I’m just surprised by this. I didn’t expect you to show up out of nowhere and tell me you’re pregnant with my child.”

  I heard a sharp gasp behind me.

  I turned to find Sami hovering just inside the living room, wrapped in my robe, her hair messy from sleep and dark eyes wide. For a moment, I was able relish how beautiful she was standing there, even as the surprise and hurt filled her face before that panic seized me again, freezing my words and locking my lungs in place.

  Sami took a step back towards the bedroom where we’d slept through the night together for the first time ever. She’d always had a reason before for why she had to go if we were at my place or for why I couldn’t spend the night if we were at hers. She rested a hand on the doorframe, not taking her eyes away from mine, even as they filled with tears, her small chin trembling.

  “I’ll gather my things and go.” She shook her head when I opened my mouth to speak, cutting my words off before I even managed to get them started. “It’ll only take a moment.” She spun on her bare feet and hurried back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  I watched the door in silence for a long collection of seconds before Lacey cleared her throat behind me. I’d forgotten all about her.

  She was staring up at me with a sly look in her eye. “We can talk about this later, Blaze. Go do what you need to do about your girlfriend. Just don’t forget that you’re going to have a child soon.” She didn’t wait for me to respond. She just walked off down the hall, hips swinging on her way to the elevator.

  I closed the door, my heart sinking in my chest as I turned over the locks. I hadn’t felt this lost in a long time, not since Dad died when I was in high school. I pressed my head against the cool wood of the door, closing my eyes, just needing to breathe, to figure out how I was going to go on now that my life had been ripped out from under me and turned upside down.

  Sami

  The Same Morning

  I was able to keep the tears back until just after the door slammed shut, and then I lost it. I wept like a baby, hiccupping with the tears as I swallowed back the loudest of the sobs, not wanting Blaze or Lacey to overhear me.

  I just wanted to get my shit together and get the fuck out of here. I’d been such a fool to think I could be this happy without the universe finding a way to knock me back down to Earth again. Wasn’t that how it always worked?

  I had a connection with Blaze, but he had a crazy ex-fiancée who — surprise! — just happened to be carrying his baby. That meant she was always going to be in his life even if they didn’t get back together. I couldn’t deal with her constant presence. It was just too much, and maybe I didn’t even have the right to try to stay with him now that he was about to be a father to some other woman’s baby.

  I knelt to pick my clothes up off the floor and began to dress quickly, doing everything through a solid wall of stinging tears blurring my vision. I pulled my dress on and slid my feet into my sandals. I wasn’t going to trouble myself with underwear or my bra — I’d just tuck those into my purse, which was on the side table in the living room.

  I wasn’t looking forward to walking past Blaze and Lacey, but I only needed to pull it halfway together long enough to get out of here. I could have a good long cry when I got home.

  Shit. I had houses to show all day, I remembered. That good long cry would need to wait until after that, but maybe I could drown in a bottle of wine, too. Lisa and Amy could come over. I’d need all the good vibes they were able to send my way. But, right now, my focus needed to be on getting the hell out of this apartment.

  I wiped the tears from my face, chest still hitching, and waited until some semblance of control over myself returned. Then I left the master bedroom, charging into the living room, ready to barrel through the sight of mother and father to be cuddled up on the couch talking about baby names or making nursery plans.

  But Blaze was standing in the middle of the living room, looking bereft. Lacey was gone, the front door closed and locked. Not that I was going to let that stop me from leaving. I’d kick it down if I had to.

  “Please don’t leave, Sami,” Blaze said. “Give me a second to explain.”

  I walked over to my purse, stuffed my undergarments into it while he watched, and hung it from my shoulder. When I turned, my face set in the hardest expression I could muster with tears streaming down my face, Blaze was closer, standing right in the path to the door. I wiped my face, angry at my tears, but at least he’d be able to see how much this was hurting me.

  “I didn’t know anything about this until this morning,” he said, hurrying to get the words out. I wasn’t going to leave without giving him a chance to explain. I’d learned my lesson from the New Year’s Eve ball. But I also planned to do the right thing in this situation, and nothing he told me right now would change that.

  “She told me yesterday that she had something important that she wanted to talk to me about. I had no idea…” He swallowed, his throat clicking. “This doesn’t change anything between us, Sami.”

  My face folded into a tight frown, and I backed up a step when he reached for me, shaking my head once, letting him know not to try that again. I didn’t want how good it felt to be in his arms to change my decision now that I’d made it. The decision was about what kind of person I wanted to be, not about how much I did or didn’t love him.

  “How can you possibly say that?” There was absolutely no waver to my voice. Even my tears were subsiding slowly as I resigned myself to what was happening and what it meant for us. I wiped my face again with the heel of my hand, sniffling.

  “I love you,” he said, green eyes wide, the imploring look in them tugging at my heart. I wanted to rise onto my tiptoes and kiss his blemishless cheeks, to just lay my head against his strong chest and hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat…but that was just wasn’t possible anymore. I needed him t
o see that as clearly as I did. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “I love you, too, Blaze, but…” The tears were coming again. I had to stop speaking in order to swallow them back, which gave him an opportunity to continue his argument.

  He ran a hand through his wavy hair, which looked like a nest of fiery cowlicks this morning. It twisted my gut to see him like this and know that he was completely inaccessible now. I knew it was going to be a long, lonely succession of months before I managed to get over him. Maybe longer.

  “We should be together if we love each other,” he said, gaze burning with the heat that still stole my breath away to see. “Of course, I’ll take care of my child. But we don’t have to break up in order for me to do that.” He paused, flinching a little at the hardening of my expression, but kept going when I didn’t speak. “Lacey and I aren’t getting back together because of this. We aren’t right for each other. And, I want to be with you.”

  I shook my head sadly, working hard to keep the look on my face impenetrable, not wanting him to see how badly I wanted to go back to how great things had been just 20 minutes ago, before Lacey’s baby bomb exploded.

  But I’d seen her stomach. There was a life growing inside her, a baby. Blaze’s baby. I had no right to stand in the way of that.

  “No, Blaze. This will change everything. Lacey will be the mother of your child, and that will mean she has to slow down, to stay home, to care about different things. Isn’t that what you wanted from her to begin with?” I lifted my eyebrows and kept speaking as he shook his head. “You broke up with her because she wasn’t ready to settle down. This child will make her want to do that. There’s no reason for the two of you not to be together now.”

  “She isn’t the woman I want to be with,” he argued, his auburn eyebrows pulled down low over his eyes. “You are. Nothing will change that.”

  “It’s only a matter of time before the two of you get back together,” I said, speaking gently but firmly to him. I wasn’t angry at him — this had happened way before we even knew each other. Circumstance had broken my heart, not him, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. “The baby will bring you together. It’s for the best, really.” I tried to smile like a good sport, but that fell completely flat. “A baby deserves to grow up in a two parent home. The last thing I want to do was break up a family before it’s even had the chance to come together.”

  “Sami, please-”

  I just kept speaking, quieting him easily even though my voice was hardly above a whisper. “This might have been fate. Lacey was on birth control, but here you are anyway about to be a father.” I shrugged, my voice wavering at the end of the sentence so badly I had to take a second to compose myself. I had to get out of here right now or I might never leave.

  “I don’t really know how the universe works. I just know that we don’t have as much control as we like to think we do.” I stepped around him and walked to the door, my trembling fingers fumbling over the locks in their haste to get them turned over.

  “Sami, don’t leave. We can figure out how to get past this. Please. I don’t want to lose you.”

  I clenched my jaw, my shoulders rigid, and took a moment to gather myself and carefully arrange my face before I turned to look at him again. His eyes were shiny, like he was as close to tears as I was, and he’d moved close enough for me to throw my arms around him.

  “I can’t do this, Blaze,” I said in a trembling voice. A single tear leaked from my left eye, and I wiped it away before it got too far down my cheek. “I think it’s best if we don’t see or speak to each other for a while. I need time to think. We both do.”

  He didn’t move as I stepped closer, lifted onto the tips of my toes, and planted a soft kiss near the corner of his mouth. When he tried to wrap his arms around me, I backed away, staring up at him sadly for a moment before turning and leaving his apartment. By the time I reached the elevator, I was running. I collapsed inside of it, hammering on the button for the ground floor. As soon as the doors closed and I was on my way, I dropped my head and wept.

  Blaze

  Mid-April

  I was lifting much more than I really should have been, my muscles feeling ready to tear from my bones, which also felt ready to snap under the pressure. But I needed to keep my mind clear, and punishing myself physically was a sure way to achieve that goal. The harder it hurt, the harder it was to think.

  Johnny was spotting me, his dark eyes shaded with concern, but he wasn’t saying a damned thing, which wasn’t like him at all. Hector was on the treadmill. I’d caught him watching me over the last few days, ever since I told him and Johnny about the nuke Lacey had dropped right into the center of my life. But we hadn’t really talked about it in between calls and training. I didn’t want any of the other guys to know, not until I’d found my peace with it, and that didn’t seem like it was going to happen anytime soon.

  Roaring from the strain behind clenched teeth, I finished my set, put the bar on the rack, and sat up, dripping sweat that I wiped away with a hand towel, the muscles in my arms trembling badly. I could feel the guys staring at me, their eyes boring into the back of my head. I was tired of them looking at me like I was either about to break or explode.

  “How are you holding up, Blaze?” Hector asked. He was in the middle of a ten miler, his pace even and quick.

  I hadn’t spoken to or seen Sami in a week. I was honoring her wishes by not even texting her to see if she was okay, though the silence was killing me. I wanted this woman in my life, but now that I was going to be a father, I didn’t know what right I had to expect her to stand by me.

  “About the same,” I said finally. “Sami still hasn’t reached out to me, and I have no idea what I’d say to her if she did. I want her in my life, but I don’t know if that’s even right.”

  I shook my head. No amount of thinking was helping me with this problem. Lacey was pregnant. What could I really do about that now that she’d decided to have the baby? At this point, I was just along for the ride.

  Johnny just stood there over me, watching as he rubbed the back of his neck. His usual go-to was to diffuse a tense situation with his brand of smart assed humor, but he wasn’t even making an attempt today.

  “Do you think it’s fair to ask her to stand by you when this child will create a permanent bond between you and a woman you were only a few months away from marrying?” Hector asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know a damned thing about what was going on in my life lately, why should this be any different?

  “I believe you when you say you don’t have any feelings for Lacey, but Sami didn’t expect you to have a child with your ex-girlfriend.”

  “Shit, she wasn’t the only one,” I replied, scowling sharply.

  Hector’s expression didn’t change as he watched me. He just increased the speed of his run with the press of a button on the digital face of the treadmill. “If you’d met after you had this child, Sami would have known what she was getting herself into. It might be unfair to expect her to accept these new terms at this point in your relationship.”

  “Lacey just sprang this shit on me,” I said, wiping my forehead with the towel again. “She never even wanted kids. I was the one who wanted them, but not like this. I wanted to be married and settled down first.” I shook my head, squeezing the towel in my fist.

  “Sami said that I should get back together with Lacey, that it was the best thing for the child. I agree with her that a child should have both parents, but I can’t fucking trust Lacey any further than I could throw her. I mean, maybe a kid would change her running around on me, but how can I be sure about that?”

  Hector’s light footfalls on the treadmill were the only noise in the room as the three of us stayed silent for a few seconds, our thoughts spinning in different directions. Finally, he said, “Do you even want to be with Lacey?”

  I answered immediately. “Hell no.” I stared hard at him as he lifted his eyebrows. “But don’t I owe it t
o my child to at least try to make things work?”

  Johnny cleared his throat, drawing our attention. He hadn’t spoken at all since we’d started our workouts. “I know you guys never really listen to what I have to say about relationships, but I actually know what I’m talking about this time. Kids don’t change anything about a relationship. I saw that firsthand with my mom. She had a couple different kids with a couple different men, but the result was always the same.” He swallowed, the seriousness of the situation hardening his expression.

  I’d known his childhood was rough, but he never really talked about it more than to say he’d had it hard coming up. “A kid only emphasizes what’s already there. If you have something good, a kid can make it better. But if you have something bad, a kid will only make it worse. You don’t trust Lacey. It’s why you ended things to begin with. All that’s going to happen if you get back with her is that you’ll be unhappy and make the child unhappy, too.”

  I considered his words, giving Hector a surprised look. It was rare that Johnny schooled us both, especially about relationships, but he clearly knew what the hell he was talking about this time.

  “I have to agree with Johnny here,” Hector said. “Kids aren’t the solutions to problems. They are problems themselves.” He grinned when I glanced up at him with a confused look on my face. “Don’t misunderstand me, I love my kids, but they make things more difficult than you can ever imagine before you have them. You need a good solid relationship to weather that storm. A child isn’t there to solve the problems you have in the relationship with your wife or girlfriend.”

  “And, can I just mention the obvious?” Johnny asked, staring at me first and then Hector, his eyebrows raised and pulled slightly together.