by Amy Pine
“I’ve barely seen you this week,” her mom said. “I guess I just assumed you were driving with Ethan.”
Gabi winced. “I’m not sure I’m ready to be stuck in a car with his parents after the whole almost-killing-his-dad thing, so I decided to go with you. Is that—okay?”
Her mom scoffed dramatically. “What? Sure! Of course. Your dad has room for both of us.”
“And the cake,” Gabi reminded her.
“Yep. The cake. The reason why your dad is here,” Alissa said. “Okay. Well, Matt, how about you wait in the living room while I change.”
Her dad nodded. “Or I could help our daughter with her map—if she doesn’t mind.”
Gabi grinned. “Come on in. Except…Dad?” Her smile fell.
“What?” he asked.
“I know it’s your parents’ house we’re going to and you don’t really need to impress, but your fly is down.” Gabi snorted, and her dad’s cheeks turned pink.
Her mom, who normally would have snorted right along with Gabi, especially if it was at her father’s expense, spun on her heel and disappeared.
“What’s gotten into her?” Gabi asked. “Why are you two so chummy? Is something up with you guys?”
“Up? No. What do you mean up?” Her dad remedied the zipper situation then gave her a noncommittal shrug. “My zipper’s up. But nothing else is up.”
“Methinks the father doth protest too much.” Gabi stared at him for a long moment. Usually, when her parents were chummy, it meant they were hiding an argument that revolved around Gabi, much like the broken-arm incident in Myrtle Beach. “Is Mom pissed at you for something?”
“No idea. I mean…maybe I was a few minutes late to pick her up?”
“Because of the cake.” Gabi still wasn’t sure what to make of that. But her mom was a stickler for punctuality. You couldn’t run a bakery otherwise. “Okay,” she added, satisfied for now. “I guess that tracks.”
“Good!” Her father clapped his hands together. “Now…Show me everywhere you’ve been and spare no details—unless it has anything to do with you and Ethan and things I don’t need to know about my daughter and her fiancé and I’m just going to shut up now.”
Gabi laughed and tossed a throw pillow at him, which he caught easily.
“Did you know that Miriam’s not a virgin anymore?” she asked, and her dad’s eyes widened. “You said nothing about discussing other people’s sex lives.”
He blew out a breath and grabbed a pushpin from her container. “So this is our relationship now, huh? We just talk like we’re both adults?” He smiled nervously.
Gabi winked. “At least one of us is.”
He chucked the pillow right back at her, and she laughed. Maybe tonight wasn’t going to be a hat trick after all. Maybe it was the start of everything finally going according to plan.
Chapter Thirteen
Alissa laughed as she climbed into Matthew’s 2005 Honda Pilot.
“You know, for someone whose livelihood is taking care of the environment, I cannot believe you are still driving this thing.”
Matthew buckled his seat belt and then reached behind him to pat Gabi on the knee.
“I’ll have you know that thanks to my frequent travels and not needing a car, this beauty still has less than a hundred thousand miles on it. And it passes the emissions test every year with flying colors.”
Alissa rolled her eyes. “All cars either pass or don’t pass. It’s not like it was valedictorian or anything.”
Matthew put the key in the ignition, and the car—true to its reputation—purred to life.
“No. That was all you, Freckles.” He cleared his throat. “I mean Liss. No, Alissa.”
Jeez, Alissa wanted to say. If you with your fly down wasn’t suspicious enough…
“Why’d you park around the corner, Dad?” Gabi asked.
Alissa’s breath caught in her throat, and Matthew’s eyes widened—thankfully unbeknownst to his daughter.
“I wasn’t sure your mom would take me up on the ride or if you’d be taking her car to get Ethan.” The lie fell so easily off his tongue. “Didn’t want to block anyone in…Just in case.”
He wasn’t stammering over Alissa’s nicknames anymore, at least, but Alissa still couldn’t get over how much his tone evened out the more he embellished his untruth.
She might have thought a lot of things about Matthew Bloom over the years, but she never took him for an out-and-out liar. A stretcher of the truth, maybe. That verdict came with experience—with hearing so many promises that never actually came true, which didn’t make it any easier to believe what he’d said to her since the day Gabi came back from Europe.
I’m home for good this time.
I want us to have this baby together.
Why was now any different from all the other times before?
“Sounds like you thought of everything, Dad. Is it because you’re nervous about having the future in-laws over at Gigi and Gramps’s house?” Gabi laughed. Of course she’d bought it. It was hard not to trust words dripping with Matthew Bloom’s charm. But Alissa noticed the tension in her daughter’s voice and quickly forgot about her own worries.
“Are you, Gabs?” she asked as Matthew pulled out of his parking spot and onto the street.
Gabi sighed, and Alissa pivoted in her seat while Matthew glanced back at their daughter through the rearview mirror.
“Do you two believe in signs?” Gabi asked, which was not exactly what Alissa was expecting.
“Signs?” Matthew’s tone was confused. “Like that M. Night Shyamalan movie with aliens and crop circles.”
Alissa backhanded him on the upper arm.
“What?” he asked. “It was a logical enough follow-up question.”
Alissa and Gabi shared a look and, along with it, the unspoken Men, right?
“No,” Gabi amended. “Like a sign from the universe of whether or not something is—I don’t know—meant to be? Like—a relationship?” She winced.
Alissa narrowed her eyes. “Who are you, and what have you done with my daughter.”
Gabi groaned. “I know.”
“This isn’t like you,” Alissa added.
“I know,” Gabi said again, the two words becoming a refrain.
“I don’t know,” Matthew chimed in from the driver’s seat. “Can someone translate your secret mother/daughter code into clueless dad for me?”
Alissa turned her attention to Matthew, trying to ignore the silver-flecked stubble on his jawline or the fine lines at the corner of his eye that somehow made him even sexier.
Back off, hormones. This is neither the time nor the place!
It wasn’t Gabi’s fault that Alissa and Matthew had cut their pre-dinner rendezvous short on account of her surprise arrival.
“Shit!” Alissa had hissed when she heard Gabi yelling Hello from the living room. She knocked her knees together and whisper-shouted at Matthew, “Get up! Button your pants. Can you fit out the window? No, wait. Maybe I can sneak you out the back door!”
Matthew had been kneeling at her feet, her panties at her ankles, and he was about to do something Alissa hadn’t had done to her in years.
Years.
He’d scrambled to his feet as she shimmied her underwear back into place.
“This obviously doesn’t count as our last time,” she’d said in haste. “I mean, we didn’t actually do anything, right?”
Even in their frenzy he’d grinned at her, and it was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling and sending her crashing to the floor.
“You know I can’t say no to you, Freckles,” he’d said. “Especially when I get to—”
“Shh! This house isn’t big, and the walls are paper-thin. She might hear us.”
Only when they’d heard the music start blaring from Gabi’s room did they both breathe a collective sigh of relief. They could pretend Matthew had just showed up.
“Mom?” Gabi said, and Alissa could tell it wasn’t
the first time her daughter had tried to break her from her trance.
“What? Sorry. Right. The universe thing.” Alissa cleared her throat. “Signs. Gabi doesn’t think they exist. She doesn’t believe anything exists if she can’t size it up through a camera lens.”
Matthew scoffed, and the car rolled to a stop at a red light.
“What about the fairy door we nailed to the tree in back of my parents’ house, huh? You said it was the door to Pixie Hollow.” He stared at his daughter in the mirror, his gaze so intent Alissa might have thought he was joking had it not been for the tight muscle in his jaw, the way it pulsed as he exhaled.
Gabi snorted. “I was six, Dad. I wasn’t smart enough to know magic wasn’t real.”
The light turned green, and Matthew’s eyes fell back on the road, but Alissa could see his clenched teeth.
“I realize I may be too late to impart important life lessons to you, sweetheart. But just remember this. Your mom saying yes when I asked her to homecoming freshman year? That was magic. You growing inside her and turning out as amazing as you did when we had no idea what we were doing? Also magic. And the fact that we somehow made it to this point, right here and now, about to introduce the guy you’re going to mar…” He shook his head. “The guy you’re going to maarr…” He blew out a breath.
Alissa bit back a grin. “You can do it, Matt,” she teased. “I believe in you.”
He groaned. “You’re about to introduce the guy you’re going to marry to the rest of the family. A guy you met thousands of miles away who just so happens to live a stone’s throw from where you grew up and who seems to love you—not that anyone could possibly love you enough—tells me that all signs point to yes, darlin’.”
The car stopped again, and this time Matthew put it in park because they were here, in the driveway of his childhood home, and Matthew had just referred to Alissa as magic.
Gabi leaned forward and cupped her father’s shoulder. “So you’re saying you believe in signs, Dad?” she asked, a hint of teasing in her tone, but Alissa didn’t miss the pinch of earnestness as well.
He put his hand on hers and squeezed. “Just because I’m a scientist doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes have my head in the clouds,” he said softly. “And I know your art is important to you, but if you truly don’t see beyond what’s visible in the photo, you’re missing most of what’s there.”
Gabi flinched at this—ever so slightly. Matthew couldn’t see it, but Alissa could.
“There’s Ethan and his family. I should catch up with them before Gigi does,” Gabi joked, but Alissa knew. Something Matt said had gotten under her skin. “See you both inside.” She hopped out of the vehicle.
Matt’s left hand was still on the wheel, his gaze focused on something beyond the windshield. Or maybe it wasn’t focused on anything at all.
“What was that?” Alissa asked. “You never said any of that to me before—about us being…”
“Magic? Just because I never said—and admittedly I should have but I was young and stupid and didn’t have a damned clue about being in love and staying in it—it doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it.” He shrugged and turned to face her. “I know I made mistakes, Liss. But does that negate the magic that used to be between us? Maybe Gabi never got to see it, but it was there. And it could be again.”
Alissa’s mouth fell open, but her words wouldn’t come.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” His eyes were dark with hurt.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “You never said any of those things to me before—about us being magic. Saying it now…What if it gives Gabi this grand notion that love conquers all when we know—when I know—it can’t.” She sighed. “Believing you means my heart gets clobbered, Matt. And I don’t want to get clobbered again.”
There. She said it. This—them—if she let it go any further, it would only end badly. She knew it. They both knew it.
Matthew scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “I know I lost you years ago. But how long are you going to punish me? What can I do to fix the past?”
Alissa swore she heard a catch in his voice on that last word, but how could she trust that this time was different? Just because they still had feelings for each other and were good in bed—okay, great in bed—didn’t mean they could fix what happened twenty years ago. The past was the past. They couldn’t go back. They couldn’t change what had already been done. And Alissa didn’t know how to let it go and start from scratch when there was so much already between them.
“Nothing,” she said, then she picked the cake box up from where she’d been holding it in place between her feet. “It’s hot out. I don’t want the ganache to melt. I should get this inside and into the fridge.”
She opened her door and slid out, nudging it shut with her shoulder once she was situated on the ground.
Alissa followed Gabi and Ethan’s family up the porch steps and around toward the backyard. But she stopped before getting a chance to catch up and introduce herself as a wave of nausea rolled over her without any warning.
She set the cake precariously on the porch railing—it was either that or drop it outright—and braced her hands against the same railing. She heaved, but luckily, nothing came up. Unluckily, upon said heaving, the sudden movement sent the boxed cake tilting off the railing’s edge.
“No, no, no, no, no!” she cried, diving after it, only for Matthew to materialize the couple of feet below and catch it before Alissa ruined the night before it had even begun.
He raised his brows. “You need me, Freckles.”
She groaned. “To catch my cakes? This was a onetime thing. It’s not like I go balancing cakes on ledges at all dinner parties.”
He shook his head and let loose an exasperated sigh. “Why do you want to do this alone?” And before she could come back with a witty retort, he added, “The baby. Not the cake.”
Alissa let out a long breath, making sure the nausea had passed. The coast seemed clear.
“Why do you insist on making me think you want in on this when history proves otherwise?”
He stepped out of the mulch and rounded the corner, jogging up the porch steps so he could meet her.
“Despite the way you see history, I never once said I didn’t want Gabi—or you. As for now, doesn’t it say anything that I took the job at the botanic garden before I even knew about the baby?”
He had her there, didn’t he? But then he’d had her so many other times throughout the years. She used to get her hopes up, but after a while she’d learned. Matthew was a good guy with a good heart. But he didn’t have staying power.
He never meant to hurt anyone, yet when it came to Alissa, he always did.
“Liss,” he said softly. He brushed a thumb across her cheek, then dipped his head. “Maybe I was the one to leave at first, when I was a dumb, naive kid who thought time and distance would never be stronger than us. But all those times I tried to come back, you pushed me further away. It wasn’t as simple as me just grabbing the next opportunity that came my way. How could I justify staying if you didn’t want me? I’ve always wanted you.”
He pressed his lips to hers.
“No.” She stepped away. They were so good at solving the emotional with the physical, but that’s what got them here in the first place. And another kiss—another slip of his hand beneath her skirt—it wasn’t going to fix this. And now he was trying to confuse her by putting some of the blame on her. “If all of that’s true, then why didn’t you fight for me? I don’t trust you, Matt. And until I can be sure that you’re going to follow through with your intentions for this baby, I don’t think we should tell Gabi. Not until we have the whole story. She’s got enough on her hands with planning the wedding and making sure she doesn’t kill her in-laws before they’re even related.”
Matt blew out a long breath. “So we wait a little longer. I can do that. I don’t want to add to Gabi’s stress, and I want to be able to tell her I’m staying—for both of you. But I
need you in my corner to do that. So I’ll fight for you, Alissa. I’ll do whatever it takes to convince you that I’m for real. Put me through the wringer if you want. I deserve it. But you have to stop fighting back. You have to stop pushing me away. Otherwise we won’t get a chance to tell Gabi the truth before…” He cleared his throat. “Before you start showing.”
Alissa squared her shoulders and tried to ignore her heart hammering against her ribs. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to stop fighting back. But that meant not letting her fear take the wheel anymore, and that was the hardest habit to break. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I already had my initial checkup to make sure I’m healthy and that all parts are in working order. But I haven’t seen the baby yet. Or heard the heartbeat. I didn’t want to do that without at least offering you the chance to be there.” She blew out a breath. “Becca said that as long as I’m not spotting and I’m taking my vitamins, I don’t need to see her again until I hit twelve weeks, so I have an appointment Friday afternoon, two weeks from tomorrow. Three o’clock. You want to fight for me and this baby? Here’s your first opportunity.” He’d missed most of her appointments after the initial few with Gabi because of school. While Matthew was able to finish out his senior year, Alissa had graduated early, squeaking by with just enough credits and without having to waddle through the halls on swollen ankles and feet that barely fit inside flip-flops.
“The new job…” he started, but Alissa narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll be there,” he amended. “I’ll make it work.”
She held her hands out for the cake box, and he placed it gingerly in her care.
“What about the sex?” he asked and then had the good sense to look chagrined.
“I have my battery-powered friend,” she said haughtily. But as much as it did its job, it didn’t compare to Matt’s knowing hands and the way they navigated her body. Still, she had to be strong. For the baby’s sake. “Let’s see if you make it to the ultrasound appointment. And then we’ll talk.”
He crossed his arms, then shook his head with a laugh. “I’m going to be at that doctor’s office so often, they’ll start reserving a seat for me.”