by Tracy Wolff
She nodded.
“Are you feeling nauseous?”
“I’m fine. I took my medicine.”
“Good.” It was crazy but he couldn’t stop smiling. “How about dessert on the couch, then?” he asked as he cleared the plates, refusing her help when she offered.
“I’m not sure I’m ready for dessert, to be honest.” She pressed a hand to a stomach still so flat it kept him up nights, worrying about her.
“Come on,” he said as he grabbed a couple of forks and the pastry box the dessert had come in. “Live a little.”
Her lips twisted in wry amusement. “I used to be the one saying that.”
“Well, then, you should probably listen to your own advice.”
“Maybe I should.” But once they were on the couch, she let him feed her only a couple of bites of the delicious cream-filled concoction before begging off.
He started to complain, to ask how she ever planned to gain back the weight she had lost and nourish the baby if she wouldn’t eat, but he bit his tongue and kept his worries to himself. That wasn’t what tonight was about.
Setting the dessert aside, he reached down and pulled her foot into his lap. Then began rubbing her arch with a firm but gentle touch. Chocolate and espresso cream wasn’t the only way for a man to work his way into a woman’s good graces.
But he hadn’t rubbed her foot for more than a few seconds when she abruptly pulled it away from him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, startled by the strange and serious look on her face.
She leaned back against the other arm of the couch and asked, “What’s going on, Lucas?”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess I don’t understand what we’re doing here.” She gestured to the dessert, to her untouched glass, to him. “This isn’t us.”
Again, that overwhelming sense of shame washed through him. He’d fallen for her without ever giving her romance. He’d given her friendship, laughter, ease of conversation. He’d even given her passion. But he’d never given her the breathless anticipation that came with romance, even though he’d taken her to his bed twice. How could he have been so callous? Kara deserved better than that. Better than him.
“What if I want it to be?” he finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The fact that you don’t know means I haven’t taken enough care with you.”
Her eyes went wide, fearful. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“It isn’t the same thing.” He reached over, stroked his thumb down the center of her palm. “Just so we’re clear, I have no problem taking care of you, Kara. If you need me, I promise, I’ll be there.”
If he hadn’t been watching her so closely, he probably would have missed the way her lower lip trembled. The way she looked away from him, tears trembling on her lashes. He couldn’t stand seeing her cry. Could stand even less being so close and yet so far away from her. Not sure what else to do, he reached for her, pulling her against him—her cheek pressed against his chest while he stroked her hair back from her face.
* * *
KARA WAS CONFUSED BY THIS change in Lucas. She liked it—she’d have to be crazy not to enjoy being pampered by him when he was at his sexiest, most charming best—but at the same time it didn’t feel right. Like he was putting the moves on her because he thought he should. Because he thought this was what he needed to do for the mother of his child.
She waited for him to say something else, but when he didn’t break the silence, she finally said, “I’m confused. I don’t know what you want from me.”
“That’s just it, Kara. Tonight isn’t about what I want from you. It’s about what I want to give to you.”
“That’s just it.” She sprang up, put some distance between them. She couldn’t think when he was so close to her. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“I get that. I understand how self-reliant you are, Kara. I’m not trying to take that from you. It’s just that I want to take care of you and the baby both.”
“Why?”
Now he looked as confused as she felt. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you want to take care of us?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re my responsibility. Of course I want to take care of you.”
There it was, the word she dreaded and hated in equal parts. Responsibility. Kara could almost hear her heart break. Lucas cared about her, felt responsible for her, but he didn’t love her. Not the way she loved him.
Swallowing the disappointment that burned in the back of her throat—disappointment that was so much worse after the sweet, tender way he’d treated her tonight—she said, “I don’t want you to feel responsible for me. I don’t want you to do things like this—” she swept her hand around the room “—because she feel like you have to.”
“I don’t feel like I have to do anything, Kara. I did this because I wanted to.”
“Why?” she asked again, her whole body taut with hope and fear.
“What do you mean, why? You’re the mother of my child. Why wouldn’t I want to do something nice for you?”
“That’s it? I’m the mother of your child?”
“Well, you are, aren’t you?”
“I thought I was also your best friend, maybe even your lover. Now I’m just the mother of your child?” No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep the hurt from her voice.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, I think it’s exactly what you meant. I’m pregnant so suddenly you have to do everything right. Wine and dine me, charm me, make me feel special and appreciated.” She kept going without waiting for him to speak, because she could tell from the look on his face that she was getting it exactly right. “How far were you going to take this, Lucas? Ask me to spend the night? Ask me to move in? Ask me to marry you? How far were you willing to go to take care of me and your child?”
“Kara, don’t do this. I know I’ve made a mess out of things, but I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“I know that. You were trying to help me. You’re always trying to help me.”
“And you’re always throwing my help back in my face! What’s so wrong about caring about you? About wanting to make things easier for you?”
“Because I don’t want you to care about me. I want you to love me.” The words escaped of their own volition and the second she hurled them at Lucas she longed to take them back. She didn’t need to lay that kind of guilt trip on him. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t love her. You couldn’t pick who you loved. Hadn’t she learned that as a child when her father had walked away from her mother all those years ago? You couldn’t count on anyone to feel about you the way you felt about them.
“Jesus, Kara, is that what this is about? Of course I love you—”
“Don’t you dare!” She wiped an errant tear from her cheek. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I don’t deserve that.”
“Feel sorry for you? Why would I feel sorry for you when you’re the strongest person I know? Kara, I admire you. And I love you. You’ve been my best friend for seventeen years, the person I turn to when I would never turn to anyone else. Surely you have to know how I feel about you.”
“You admire me. You care about me. That’s not enough to build a life on.”
“I thought we’d already built a life together,” he told her, his hands fastening on her shoulders and turning her to face him. “I thought
that was what the last seventeen years were about. I thought that was what this baby was about. Building a life together.”
She shook her head, shrugged his hands off though it was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “I need time to think.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Sure. Of course. How much time?”
“I don’t know. The results of the amnio will be in in a few days. Maybe then—”
“The results of the amnio? When did you go and get that done?”
“This morning. It wasn’t that bad—”
“And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t ask me to go with you?”
“You had work and to be with your sister. I didn’t need you to be there.”
“What if I needed to be there? When the woman I love, the woman who is carrying my child, has a medical procedure like that done, why wouldn’t I be there?”
“You were busy?”
“I was busy?” he demanded incredulously. “No way. You don’t get to pawn this off on me. I told you I wanted to go. I asked you about it. You’re the one who kept it to herself because you can’t stand the thought of needing anyone. It’s not that you’re worried about inconveniencing me, it’s that you’re worried about needing anyone. Your dad left your mom all those years ago, but he also left you. And then your mom left you by dying and now you don’t trust anyone not to leave you. You think the issues are all on my side—that I don’t want to commit to anyone or take on anyone’s baggage, but the truth is, you’re the one who won’t commit. You’re the one who pushes people away before they have the chance to walk away.
“Why else wouldn’t you tell me about the DHF until you were already healed? Why else would you fight me every inch of the way when I want to be involved in this pregnancy? You’re kicking me to the curb before I can do the same to you. You don’t trust me.”
His words were absurd. Ridiculous, and yet they landed with the power of the most forceful blows.
“It’s not about trust.”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” he said with a sneer. “From where I’m standing, it’s all about trust. Do you know I’ve been talking to every obstetrician I know, trying to find a miracle for you? Trying to find some way to keep our baby alive? To keep you safe? I didn’t want to lose you, Kara. I know how much you want this baby and I’m terrified if something happens to it you’ll be devastated. I thought I was going to lose you. But I was wrong. I lost you a long time ago. Didn’t I?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t want to know.” His voice cracked like a whip. “This goes much deeper, much further back than the baby. You never wanted to know, never wanted to trust me enough.”
“I was trying to protect you,” she said again.
“Bullshit! You were trying to protect you!” He turned then, his face distorted by pain and rage and what looked an awful lot like hate. He started to say something, then stopped himself at the last second. “Maybe I can believe you were trying to protect me by keeping that part of yourself away from me. But, Kara, that’s not what relationships are about. I’ve leaned on you whenever I’ve needed to through the years, but you have never given me that same courtesy.”
“Because you already had too much responsibility. Your mother, your sisters, the clinic. You always dumped women who got too demanding, who needed too much from you.”
“None of them stuck around seventeen years, did they? I wasn’t in love with any of them, was I? I didn’t want to build a life with any of them, did I? I didn’t seek them out every chance I got just because I wanted to be near them. That was for you, Kara. That was just for you. I would never resent helping you carry whatever burden you couldn’t handle. How could you be my closest friend for seventeen years and not know that about me?”
“Lucas.” Her voice broke and she blinked, tried to clear the tears out of her eyes that were making him look blurry. But there was nothing there. That’s when she realized—she wasn’t the one crying. Lucas was.
She ran to him then, threw her arms around him and held on tight. “Don’t do this, please. I was trying to protect you. I swear. Do you know what it’s like to go in there for these tests, to see the baby on ultrasound and realize I’ll probably never get to hold him in my arms?”
“Him? It’s a boy?”
“We won’t know until the results come back on Tuesday. But look at you. Look at your face. Don’t you get it? We’re probably going to lose this baby. No matter what I do, no matter what you do, we’re probably going to lose him. Do you know how much that hurts me? Why would I want you to suffer the same pain I’m suffering? Why wouldn’t I want to protect you from all this if I can?”
“Because it’s not your job to protect me!” he shouted.
“But it’s yours to protect me?”
He didn’t have an answer, so they just stood there glaring at each other as the sudden silence echoed around them.
He started to walk away, but she wrapped her arms around him, tried to hold him in place. He started to move her gently away from him. But she clung, holding on to him as tightly as she could. And eventually, he gave up fighting and just held her for long, terror-stricken seconds. Because even though he was right there, his arms tight around her, she knew that a part of him had already gone.
“When’s your next doctor’s appointment?” he finally asked.
“Next Tuesday.”
He nodded, stepped away. “At Beaumont’s office?”
“Yeah.”
“I want to be there.”
“Of course. My appointment’s at nine-thirty.”
“Text me the details. I’ll meet you there.”
He crossed to the kitchen then, picked up his keys from the bowl he usually threw them in. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”
She stared at him stupidly as she tried to make sense of his words. “Just like that? The discussion’s over and you’re kicking me out?”
“I’m not kicking you out.”
“Oh, really? So I can stay?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. We both need some space right now.”
“Don’t put that off on me. What you mean is you need some space.”
“Okay, fine. I need some space and I’d like you to leave now.”
It was the final straw, the crushing blow that mixed fear and sorrow and anger into a Molotov cocktail inside of her. Any more and she was going to catch fire. Explode.
“Fine.” She marched through to the dining room, scooped her shoes up from beneath the table and then grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter where she’d left it. “But you don’t need to give me a ride. I drove my car over here, remember?”
With that parting shot, she stormed out of the house and down the driveway, her head held high. She climbed in her car, started it up and began the half-hour drive to her house, the pain locked down deep inside beneath layers of icy anger. He had kicked her out. After all that talk of being there for her, he had kicked her out at the first sign of trouble. Who the hell did he think he was?
The righteous anger lasted until she was halfway home, when she glanced in her rearview mirror and realized Lucas was right behind her. Following her to make sure she got home safely. That’s when the pain broke through the layers of ice she’d buried it beneath and cracked her heart in two.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE NEXT FOUR DAYS PASSED in a haze of misery for Kara. After getting home from Lucas’s that Thursday night from hell, she’d cr
awled—fully clothed—into her bed and pulled the covers over her head. And she hadn’t come out until late the next morning when the nausea reared its ugly head, forcing her to make a dash for the bathroom.
After that, she’d tried to eat, for the baby’s sake. Had done some gentle exercising, again for the baby’s
sake. Had sat on the couch and gotten plenty of rest, for the baby’s sake. And had died a little more with each minute that the phone stayed silent. Without Lucas calling to tell her he understood why she’d said what she’d did.
She’d started to call him twice, but both times ended up putting the phone down before she’d finished punching in his number. He was the one who had kicked her out, who asked for space. If he changed his mind and wanted to talk to her, he knew where to find her.
On Monday morning, she texted him the address for Dr. Beaumont and had waited for hours for a reply. When she didn’t get one, she texted again to make sure it had gone through. He replied with a three-word message, Got it. Thanks.
That was it. Seventeen years reduced to three lousy words. She didn’t even know how to start trying to assimilate that.
She didn’t sleep at all Monday night, sick with nausea and grief and fear over what the amniocentesis results were going to show. She wanted to call Lucas, to see if he was as frightened as she was, but after his text message there was no way she could do it. She was on her own.
Which was funny, in a sad way. She’d spent almost her entire life thinking she was on her own. From the moment her father left and her mother fell apart, she had made her own way in the world. And when her mother died and she realized her father didn’t actually give a damn about her, she had thought she was completely alone. Maybe, to an extent, that was true. But what she hadn’t realized, what she hadn’t figured out until it was too late, was that she had never really been alone. That the reason she had never been lonely, the reason her solitude had never bothered her before, was because Lucas had been there all along.