For All The Right Reasons

by Brownell, Rachael

  So I don't really want Karen knowing what went down between Quinn and Gabby, but she's not going to let up until she has at least a tidbit of information to share with others.

  I give her a very basic rundown and leave the conversation open for Quinn to fill her in if he wants to. Surprisingly, he tells her everything. How he came up with the idea and why. When he realized his feelings had changed. What happened the night all hell broke loose.

  Even I learn a few things about how it all went to shit.

  How Kara found the list he'd made. His dumb decision to lead Kara on so she would keep her mouth shut and not hurt Gabby.

  The plan was for him to break up with her the night of Halloween, but he wasn't going to do it. Instead, he was ready to profess his undying love. And he would have from the sounds of it if Gabby hadn't taken the reins and broken up with him instead, which he now understands thanks to Jade.

  Also thanks to her, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Like how Gabby went from being fine after Jade invaded her apartment to angry and not wanting to even hear Quinn's name the next.

  Whatever we're missing is information only Gabby has. And as soon as the thought crosses my mind, Quinn asks me to do the one thing I don't want to. Put myself in the middle of all this. I try to push it off on Jade, but we both know Gabby isn't going to talk to her right now. She's too pissed and her anger, when not focused on Quinn, is on Jade.

  "Fine," I finally agree. "I'm already in the middle of this shit, so I might as well, but if she asks me to choose sides, I'm standing by her. She doesn't do things without a motive. There's more behind that slap than either of us knows."

  No truer statement has been spoken since Gabby's ferry arrived. If she's slapping Quinn, she did it for a damn good reason. He's hurt her, and he may not even have realized it. Now it's my job to find out why. And on the sly. Because if she figures out I'm attempting to get information out of her, she's going to shut down.

  Gabby's in the backyard when I get back to the house. I give her time to calm down, a moment to herself to breathe. When she shows no sign of coming inside anytime soon, I grab the blanket off the back of the couch and head out to talk to her. After draping the blanket over her shoulder, I take the seat next to her and wait for her to speak.

  Apparently she's not in the mood, but I can tell by the look on her face that everything is weighing on her. If nothing else, Jade's persistence has rubbed off on me. I want nothing more than to make her talk right now.

  So I build a fire. And once I'm satisfied that it's warming Gabby, I try again.

  "You okay?"

  Not my strongest opening line, but I can't exactly take it back. It's clear she's not okay.

  "Not really."

  Honesty. That's a good start.

  "If it makes you feel better, he's not either."

  And she shuts down again, retreating into her head. I probably shouldn't have mentioned Quinn yet.

  "You know, I think there's more to the story than I've been given. I’m kind of hoping you might fill in the blanks for me because I'm having a hard time understanding why both of you are miserable and why you're not together, when you obviously love each other."

  "He got what he wanted," she mumbles under her breath.

  "I don't think he did."

  "Really?" she replies defensively as she sits up a little straighter, turning in her chair to face me. "What bullshit is he selling you?"

  "I don't think its bullshit, Gabs." I'm trying to keep my voice gentle, but the anger and hurt in her voice have me ready to shed a tear for the two of them. "He loves you with all his heart. All he wants is a chance to prove it to you. To earn your forgiveness even though he has no idea why you’re so upset with him. He has no idea what he did to lose you."

  Gabby is silent as she weighs everything I've just said. I can see her wanting to scream, the urge to get it off her chest bubbling at the surface, so I give her a little nudge.

  "If you don't want to tell me, you should at least tell him. He deserves to know. If the situation were reversed, I'd tell him the same thing."

  "Kara."

  If I didn't already have an idea as to what the problem was, I wouldn’t have been able to decipher the single word as it slipped across her lips on a whisper.

  "What about her?"

  "I saw them together. I went to see Quinn, and he was in bed with Kara. I know that was the plan, but it hurt. It’s what he wanted, but it still broke me. I knew we'd never go back to being friends when I ran out of the bar that night, but my heart still wanted to be with him. So I went to see him, and she was in his room, his sanctuary, in bed, her body wrapped around his."

  What the fuck, Quinn?

  And that's when it hits me. The night Kara decided it would be a good idea to crawl in bed with him and try and seduce him. He was so drunk he couldn't have performed according to him. It was the final straw that destroyed his relationship with Kara. Since then, he's barely spoken to her aside from little texts back and forth about stupid roommate shit.

  She needs to know what really happened. She needs Quinn's side of the story, and I try to explain that to her, but she doesn't want to talk to him. In her mind, she knows the truth. She saw it with her very own eyes.

  What she saw was what she was meant to see. What Kara wanted her to see.

  It's about as far from the truth as you can get.

  Chapter Seventeen

  JADE

  That was the longest weekend of my life. At one point, I honestly thought Gabby was going to murder me in my sleep. Thank God for Nathan. I have no idea how he did it, but he managed to get her to talk. Not only to him but eventually to Quinn.

  And life is good again. They're happy, testing the waters of their new relationship but happy. I'm happy. Nathan is scowling.

  "What's wrong?" I ask as I toss my brush into my overnight bag.

  Gabby and Quinn took the early ferry back this morning, leaving Nathan and me to ride home together. Not that I mind. We haven't had much alone time since we arrived, our primary focus being on reuniting our friends.

  Thank fuck it worked.

  I was ready to announce our relationship if the situation called for it, but I was also scared to death.

  Now that they're on a good track, planning a summer-long getaway to Europe, things should settle down, and when we do finally announce our relationship, it may not end up being as big of a deal as it could have been if we had told them when we first planned to. Almost ten months ago. Right after Gavin broke up with Gabby. Back when Quinn was still stuck on Kara and dealing with the fallout of her breakup.

  It's amazing how much has changed in less than a year.

  "Being back here, in the place it all started... it makes me remember how much fun we had that summer. I was hoping to relive a few of those adventures with you and didn't get to."

  He's being a whiner.

  "Like what?" I ask, rolling my eyes as I zip up my bag.

  "Well," he begins, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist. His voice has taken on a sultry tone, and I know exactly where this conversation is headed. I walked right into his trap. "For starters, I was thinking we could consummate our relationship. Right here. Like the first time we were together."

  "You do realize we've consummated our relationship multiple times, right?"

  "Yes, but not here. Not since we made it official. The last time we were together here, on the island, we were both trying to convince ourselves that it didn't mean anything."

  "I thought it didn't back then," I reply, craning my neck so I can look up at him.

  "Oh, it meant something, Jade," he replies, feathering a kiss against my lips. "Every time you've let me touch you has meant something. Back then. Right now. Every moment in between."

  Damn, he's good.

  Turning me in his arms, he captures my lips and walks me back until my legs hit the edge of the bed. Slowly, he lowers me onto it and crawls on top of me as I shimmy further up the comf
orter I just straightened, our lips never breaking contact.

  If he wants to reenact the first time we were together, we can do that. We'll catch the next ferry and still make it home before dark. Gabby and Quinn aren't the only ones who have a big week ahead of them. Between packing up Nathan's apartment and clearing the clutter from mine, it’s going to be a stressful week.

  On top of that, he has two phone interviews, and I have one in-person interview. The future that lies ahead of us is uncertain. We're trying to figure out where to go now that college is behind us. And I can't think of a better person to take the journey with.

  "I love you, Jade," Nathan whispers against the shallow of my neck as he kisses his way down to the curve of my breasts.

  He loves me.

  I heard him say the words, yet my reply is lodged in my throat.

  I want to tell him I feel the same way. That I've been in love with him for years. From the moment I laid eyes on him. That I always knew he was the one I wanted to be with.

  Yet nothing comes out, and he doesn't pressure me to say anything. He doesn't stop his assault on my body with his lips and hands, or his assault on my heart with his words.

  "You're mine. You've always been mine. You'll always be mine."

  When Nathan slips inside me, I lose all sense of the world around me. It's just us. Together. Nothing and no one else matters. The house could be on fire and I'd beg him to stay with me. Here. In this moment.

  "Jade," I hear Nathan call. I'm staring at the little stick in my hands. Wanting to scream. To cry. To feel something, anything, other than disbelief.

  "Babe! Where are you?" he asks, his voice closer than it was before.

  Opening my makeup drawer, I shove the test in a bag and into the back of the drawer. I hear his footsteps getting closer, so I put a dollop of paste on my toothbrush and shove it in my mouth. I need to brush again anyway. I've puked at least three times since getting home.

  I was hoping it was just nerves. Anxiety. A debilitating illness I didn't know I had.

  No such luck.

  The door opens seconds later, and my amazing, perfect, handsome boyfriend is smiling at me.

  "There you are. Almost ready for dinner?"

  The thought of food causes my stomach to turn, and I have to swallow the lump in my throat. My toothpaste goes with it, causing me to gag.

  "Five minutes," I say through a forced smile.

  This is bad, and I can only see it getting worse.

  Things between Nathan and I have been somewhat strained since we came back from our little excursion to the island to fix Gabby and Quinn's relationship. Why? For starters, we’re living together now. That wasn’t the easiest transition. Then there’s the fact I still haven't been able to tell him I love him. I have no idea why. I know exactly how I feel about him. I try to show him as often as I can, but the words won't come.

  And every time he says it to me, it makes me feel like shit.

  We've tried everything to alleviate the mounting tension. We took a weekend trip just the two of us. We have date night twice a week, like tonight, even though we've been living together for almost two months. Hell, we even tried having sex multiple times a day, but it just started to feel forced. Like it was a chore. So then we went the opposite route and stopped having sex altogether.

  Nothing is helping. Anytime we take two steps forward, we take four back. It's like we're preventing ourselves from making progress, and I'm starting to wonder if part of the problem has been me lately. I've been... emotional. Edgy. Easily set off. One minute things will be fine, and the next I'm upset with him for the stupidest shit.

  Even I know it's stupid, yet I can't help but get pissed.

  I've never lived with a man before, but I assumed that was part of the problem. This was all new to both of us. Moving in together was a big step. One I don't think we really thought through at the time. It was about saving money, combining our finances so neither of us was struggling. Getting him out of student housing since college was over.

  We were adults now. We were trying to do make adult decisions.

  But we weren’t thinking things through like adults.

  We've made a shit ton of mistakes since we've started dating. Poor decisions. Lied to our friends and families. And now... now I have a secret I'm afraid to share with anyone. Even Nathan.

  Not because I think he's going to run away from me but because I think he'll do the exact opposite. He'll want to take care of me, of us. He'll step up and be the kind of man every woman wants when she finds out she's pregnant.

  And I'm not sure I'm ready to raise a baby.

  Or be someone's baby mama.

  I know I'm not ready to hear someone call me mama. That wasn't part of my five-year plan.

  Traveling the country, road tripping, that was my plan. Eating weird food. Swimming in every ocean. Standing in two states at once.

  Being a mother wasn't even a blip on my radar, and yet here I am. Pregnant only a few months after graduating from college. I don't blame the child growing inside me for ruining my plans. I blame Nathan. After all, he's the one who knocked me up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  NATHAN

  She's acting weird. Weirder than she has been since we moved in together. I'm not going to lie and say it's been fucking easy. In fact, it's been the exact opposite. Not because she's a hard person to live with but because I think we lost a little bit of the magic we were holding on to.

  When this first started, it was exciting because we were sneaking around. We had to be careful every moment of every day. She was adamant that Gabby and Quinn didn't find out. Maybe because she was ashamed of what we were doing, maybe because she was a private person. Whatever her reason was, I went along with it.

  I made sure not to pay too much attention to her, especially if one of them was around. I even made sure I wasn't looking in her direction and checking her out all that often. I saved my 'sexy eyes,' as she likes to call them, for the bedroom. The looks I wanted to give her all day, the things I wanted to say to her, were reserved for when we were alone.

  And we were on fire. Whatever was happening between us burned brightly all summer.

  Hell, it still burned inside me with such strength that I couldn't stop thinking about her even after summer was over.

  She got under my skin, into my heart, and took up residence.

  I wanted to be with her in a way I'd never felt before. It was almost primal.

  Then I finally found the courage to make my move. I didn't care she had a boyfriend, who I later found out wasn't real. All I knew that night in the lake was that I wanted to continue what we started. Because, if I was being honest with myself, it never ended for me. And apparently, she felt the same.

  So we snuck around some more. Kept our relationship from our friends. To spare their feelings at first with all the drama that was consuming their lives. But now... there's no more drama. Nothing preventing us from coming clean and announcing our relationship.

  And that realization caused the fire burning between us to start to fade.

  It scares me. Not just because I love her but because when I picture my future, she's the one I see standing by my side.

  Sure, she hasn't said it back to me. I'm still waiting. I tell her every morning before I leave for work and every night before she falls asleep in my arms. She's silent in those moments, and I'm beginning to wonder if she actually feels the same way.

  This past year, I wouldn't have questioned it.

  Not until today.

  It's the first anniversary of our camping trip. The anniversary of that night in the lake where we decided to see where this journey would take us.

  And she forgot.

  She thinks it’s date night.

  Well, I have news for her. Tonight is going to be more than just date night. More than an anniversary celebration.

  Tonight is the night I'm going to propose to her. I've been planning it for months. Looking at rings for longer than I care t
o admit. With Gabby and Quinn coming back in a little over a month, it'll give us plenty of time to figure out how to come clean with them.

  I mean, we can't just show up at the airport engaged. They're going to ask questions. I'd be happy to answer every one they throw at me, but I'm not sure how much Jade wants them to know. I'm at the point where I want to tell them everything.

  The more we hide, the bigger of a hole we dig. We're going to end up burying ourselves if we're not careful.

  "You look beautiful," I say as the waiter walks away.

  "Thank you." Her reply is monotone, as if she's running on autopilot right now.

  "What's wrong? You seem a little off today."

  You didn't even remember it's our anniversary, I want to say but don't.

  "Just a lot on my mind, I guess."

  Another flippant reply.

  Jade is one of the most upfront, in your face when you just want to be left alone people I've ever met. She doesn't back down when she thinks you need her, and right now, she needs me, so I'm going to take a play out of her book and give her a taste of her own medicine.

  "You are not okay. Whatever is going on, you need to tell me. There's no problem too big or too small that we can't solve it together. Just let me help. Please. Whatever it is."

  Yeah, so much for sounding like Jade. I'm practically begging her to tell me what’s wrong. It's not far off from how I feel, but I was hoping to sound more confident.

  It has to be the ring in my pocket. The diamond is jabbing into my leg, a constant reminder of what I have planned when dessert arrives.

  "And that's the problem," she states, her voice turning angry. "You think you can solve every problem in front of us. Well, let me tell you something, Nathan. This is not a problem you can solve. This is a problem you created."