“But we both know he’s not, don’t we? That’s why you’ve been dragging your feet with the DNA test.”
Her face turned red, and she was shaking her head. “He should have been yours, Reed.”
“Do you hear yourself? You sound insane. In-fucking-sane, Nicole. I told Meela the truth.”
“She doesn’t believe you.”
“Do you hear yourself? You sound insane. In-fucking-sane, Nicole. I told Meela the truth.”
“She doesn’t believe you.”
“Did you think I would want you after this? I can barely stand to look at you. Meela lost the baby, and it’s all your fucking fault. It’s taking every bit of strength I have not to strangle you right now.”
She started crying. “She lost the baby?” she whispered. “Oh, god.” She pressed her hand to her stomach, and I turned away. “I’m so sorry, Reed. I … I didn’t … I wasn’t.” She was a blubbering mess.
“How the hell did you even find Meela?”
“I saw her that night at the club. I watched you leave with her. It was just a coincidence that we used the same doctor. When I saw her there, I knew who she was immediately. I knew you were the father.”
I was speechless. Before Nicole had left me for my brother, I had been in love with her. I had planned to marry her, start a family with her. Now, I had no fucking clue who the hell this person was standing in front of me. She disgusted me, and I hated her for the pain she caused Meela.
“You need help, Nicole. Professional fucking help. You stay away from me, and you stay away from Meela or so help me god.”
“Reed,” she begged, taking a step toward me. “I love you, Reed.”
“Get out of my way, Nicole. I can’t even stomach looking at you a second longer.”
“Please,” she pleaded. She was crying so hard I could barely make out what she said.
“Now, Nicole,” I barked.
She jumped but moved aside. I moved past her, careful not to even touch her.
As I drove home, I thought about everything Nicole had said. There was a huge part of me that wanted to continue to hate her, but I knew I had to let everything that happened five years ago, go. Holding on to my hate was destroying me and I had let her destroy what I had with Meela. Not anymore. Finding out that Jason wasn’t mine, it was the last thing tying me to Nicole.
I felt free. Free of my past, free of Nicole, and it felt so fucking good.
L U S T
She was gone.
I stood in the doorway to the empty room. A room that forty-eight hours ago had been filled with Meela’s existence. Now it was bare, dark, and void of her.
The room looked the way I felt.
Meela was gone, and she’d left not a single bit of proof that she’d ever lived in this house.
Yesterday, I’d gotten a text from Carrie with a day and time that they’d be by to pick up Meela’s things, and a reminder that I not be here when they were. I was tempted to ignore the request and be here anyway, but I knew if I had any hope of convincing Meela to talk to me—despite what she’d said the last time I saw her—defying her wishes wasn’t going to be the way.
Pushing away from the doorframe, I moved one door down and twisted the knob, pushing the door open. I took a step inside, and I immediately felt deprived of all oxygen. It was painful, seeing what would never be now. What Meela and I almost had.
I moved toward the crib and lifted a pink stuffed giraffe off the frilly, pink bedding. Turning, my eyes swept from one end of the room to the other. In the past few weeks, Meela had been the one to finish the decorating touches. She’d become obsessed with making everything perfect.
Holding on to the side of the crib, I slid down until I was sitting on the floor, my knees pulled to my chest, holding the giraffe between my legs. I spent the next few hours sitting there wondering how I’d managed to fuck things up so badly.
The next few weeks were the shittiest weeks of my entire life, and I tried to get through them feeling as numb as possible. Taking a leave from the practice, I drank away the hours until I would black out. Whether from the pain or the drinking, I didn’t know.
Meela refused to see me, and after tracking down her best friend, I found out she’d gone back to her hometown for good. Every fucking day, I had to talk myself out of going to see her. She needed her space, I needed to let her heal, and then when she did, I would move heaven and earth to make her realize I was madly fucking in love with her, and I had been the world’s biggest fucking idiot for not telling her sooner.
And then I got the divorce papers.
I was out of fucking time.
Thirty Six
Meela
“Well, you’re officially unpacked,” Kaylee cheered, breaking down the last box. “How does it feel to be back in your old room again?”
I sat on the edge of my old bed and shrugged. I had to be able to feel anything to answer that question. I felt completely numb to everything, but I didn’t tell Kaylee that.
“Surreal.” I looked around, shifting from one wall to the next. “Thanks for helping me unpack.” I smiled at her, but it was for show.
“Of course.” She returned my sad smile. “Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you something to eat?”
I knew she was feeling helpless. She needed something to keep herself busy, and I knew the feeling, but I didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie in bed for the foreseeable future.
“Sure,” I told her. “How about some of your famous mac ’n’ cheese?”
She beamed, her hands going to her hips. “I’m going to make you the best damn Kraft mac ’n’ cheese you’ve ever had.”
I laughed, and she turned on her feet, moving toward the door. She stopped before she crossed the frame, and my brows pulled as I watched her debate. Finally, she turned and rushed toward me, throwing her arms around my shoulders and pinning my arms to my side.
“I love you, Meme,” she whispered fiercely into the side of my hair.
“I love you, too, Kay.”
When she let go, she gave me a tearful smile before making a quick exit from the room. I sat there for a solid minute before getting up slowly and crossing the room to shut the door.
I was cloaked in darkness, and I let out a shaky breath. I stood there, waiting to see if the tears would fall, but they didn’t. I hadn’t shed a single tear after Reed walked out of the hospital room. My mind was in mourning, but I was too paralyzed to follow through with the stages of grief.
I’d lost everything only a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t seem to work up enough emotion to prove that I was human to feel something, anything but a void.
I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed, but I knew I was being watched like a hawk between Kaylee and my mom, so that wasn’t an option. Walking over to the only window in the room, I opened the blinds to let the sun in.
I changed, finding a pair of yoga pants, a shirt, and a hoodie. The house was quiet other than the sounds of Kaylee in the kitchen and my mom humming somewhere in the sunroom as she watered her plants.
I slipped out the back door and started walking. There was a lake Carrie and I used to hang out at during our junior and senior year, going to late-night bonfires and weekend barbecues. I loved being there; it calmed my nerves, and I needed that calm more than anything right now. It wasn’t far of a walk, ten minutes maybe, and I needed the therapeutic time to myself.
When I reached the falls lake, I was taken aback at how small the beach seemed now. I was no longer a carefree teenager with wide eyes and the ingenuous assumption that the world was my fucking oyster. The oyster could take back its empty promise and deceiving pearl.
I found a secluded spot, away from family picnics and high schoolers playing football. It was a bitch trying to sink into the sand, but I managed to do it, not without looking like an ass, I was sure.
I watched the waves lap up along the shore; the sound was soothing, but it didn’t drown out the thoughts circling around my head. I’d wish
there was a handle I could pull that would send them away, but there wasn’t. They just got louder, and I was going insane.
I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there, lost between the present and the past, what I wasn’t feeling and what I would probably never feel again. I heard the footsteps, I felt the sand dip around me, and then the weight of another presence.
There was no warmth from her body. Despite the chill I felt through my skin, there was no comfort from her familiarity. There was nothing but an empty shell and my broken heart.
“You scared me. I didn’t know where you went.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Carrie told me to look here. She called the house looking for you. I couldn’t find you.”
“I’m sorry. I needed to get out of that room. The walls were closing in on me.”
She wrapped her arms around me, laying her head on my shoulder. I leaned my head against hers, gripping her arm around me and willing to feel some kind of relief from her embrace.
“I think I’m dead inside, Kay.”
“Stop it. Your heart is broken, Meme. That’s all.”
“It’s more than that. He broke something inside me. I can’t feel anything.”
“You loved him.”
I scoffed. “I lusted him. There’s a huge difference.”
She plopped her chin on my shoulder. “You can lie to him, to yourself, Mom, and Carrie, but you can’t lie to me, Meme. You loved him.” She shrugged, pulling my hair behind my ear. “Maybe still do,” she whispered.
I shook my head. I wanted to deny her words; there was so much venom on my tongue, but I was afraid if I opened my mouth, something else would come out, so I didn’t.
The sun was starting to set, dusk colored the sky in dark shades of orange and pink. We’d be leaving soon; it was getting colder, and I could feel Kaylee shivering. Just a little bit longer.
“He thinks I lost the baby,” I finally whispered, running my hand over my rounded belly. I hadn’t told anyone about the last conversation I’d had with Reed until now.
She perked up, pulling back to look at the side of my head. “You told him you—”
“Of course, I didn’t tell him that. He assumed, and I just didn’t correct him.”
“Oh, Meme.” She pulled me tighter against her. “What are you going to do?”
“I have no fucking clue. I keep telling myself this is for the best. We’re two different to make this work. We tried, and for a while, I think I convinced myself it could, but it’s obvious that it was a mistake.”
“You’ll be happy again, Meme. I promise.”
I patted the side of her head, turning my head enough to kiss her temple.
“Let’s go home. You owe me some mac ’n’ cheese, little sister.”
She helped me up. It took ten minutes and way too much laughter on her part, and then we walked home hand in hand.
L U S T
“How about we go sit outside?” my mom asked from her chair. “We have some time before dinner is ready.”
My brows pulled, but I nodded. “Okay.”
She waited for me to pull myself out of my chair and then I waddled behind her outside. We sat on the front porch. We didn’t talk for a good fifteen minutes, and then she asked, “Have I ever told you that I still love your father?”
If she had slapped me, I couldn’t have been more stunned by what she had just said. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
“It’s true.”
“Why the hell do you still love him?”
“We were together for a really long time, Meela.”
“But he left us.”
“I know that better than you do, sweet girl.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just because he left doesn’t mean I stopped loving the man he’d been before he became the man he is now.”
“You can’t help who you love, Meela, no matter how much you wish you can control the emotion. Once you’ve experienced it, it remains forever. And with every breath, every heartbeat, you feel it.”
“I wish that changed things, but it doesn’t. I can’t and will never trust him.”
“He screwed up, Meela. He did, but in his defense, you wanted him to from the very beginning.”
Again, she stunned the hell out of me. “What are you talking about? I wanted him to break my heart?”
“Your dad leaving really did a number on you girls. You don’t trust men, and it’s unfair to put that on someone just because they may or may not hurt you down the line. Reed never had a chance, Meela, because you never wanted to give him one. You were waiting for this, waiting for him to make the littlest mistake so you could tell yourself I told you so.”
“I wanted Reed to lie to me for weeks about a child that could have been his?”
“I agree he made the mistake of keeping the secret from you, but I also believe he did it because he didn’t want to scare you away, to give you another reason to doubt his feelings for you.”
“A lie is a lie.” My jaw set stubbornly, and I crossed my arms.
I felt the baby kick, feeling the weight of my intrusion, or maybe she was trying to say you would know. When I looked over at my mom, guilt clung to my face, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
“Do you love him, Meela? Because if there is any part of you that does, do not be afraid of it. You cannot live your life avoiding love because it can hurt you. In the end, you’re only hurting yourself. If you love him, you need to tell him, about everything.”
Tears pooled, spilling down my cheeks. “It’s too late,” I whispered, thinking about the papers I was sure he’d been served with by now.
She stood, moved to stand in front of my chair, and bent to kiss the top of my head, whispering into my hair, “It’s never too late to tell someone you love them, Meela. It’s only too late when you don’t say anything at all.”
And then she was gone, leaving me with the weight of her words.
L U S T
Dinner was quiet.
Kaylee and Mom tried to make light conversation, but I couldn’t sit there and pretend that my mind wasn’t a million miles away with everything my mom had said to keep me there.
I pushed my food around on my plate. I was vaguely aware of their chatter, but their words were mixed up and out of order, so I didn’t try to understand what they were saying. They gave up trying to include me in their conversation, knowing it was useless. When they finally stood and began to clear the table, I snapped out of my daze.
“Let me help you clean up.”
“I’ve got it, Meme. You go rest.” I wanted to argue, but she was already walking into the kitchen.
“How about after we clean up, we all watch a movie?” Mom asked, speaking loud enough for Kaylee to hear from in the other room.
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll make cookies!”
“Are you trying to make me fatter?”
“You’re not fat, weirdo, you’re pregnant.”
“Well, I feel fat.”
When the doorbell rang, I looked at my mom, who was frowning, and Kaylee appeared from the kitchen.
“Who the hell is that?”
“Kaylee Davis, watch your mouth.” My mom scolded her, leaving the room to answer the mystery.
I shrugged at Kaylee when she looked at me for an answer. “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s not for me.”
“Meela,” my mom called from the other room. “Can you come in here please?”
“Fuck,” I whispered.
Frozen in place, I was sure my heart hadn’t beat in several seconds, and I couldn’t breathe. Kaylee, on the other hand, hadn’t lost any of her mobility and grabbed a towel to dry her hands before darting past me.
“Where are you going?” I hissed at her.
“To see who it is.”
“You can’t leave me.”
“Then come with me.”
“Meela,” my mom called again.
“Looks like y
ou don’t have a choice.”
“I can’t see him. He’ll know,” I said with panic, pointing down at my stomach.
“Meela, you’re braver than you realize. I promise.” She held out her hand toward me. “Come on.”
I took a deep breath and took her hand. Her fingers wrapped around mine, and for the first time in weeks, I actually felt her touch, her warmth. I told myself it had nothing to do with the fact that he was here.
Seeing him on the other side of the door, I was suddenly feeling more chicken shit than the brave warrior my sister had made me out to be.
I pulled my sweater tighter around me, and then moved toward the door. My mom smiled at me and then moved out of the way for me.
“We’ll just be in the kitchen. Can I get you anything, Reed?”
“No, ma’am, but thank you.”
She nodded. “Let’s go, Kaylee.”
Kaylee made a face but reluctantly followed my mom into the other room.
When I stepped in front of the door, seeing Reed standing there was like coming up for air for the first time after living underwater for the past few weeks. And I knew at that moment that I loved him. I loved him so much it hurt, but I was afraid. All we did was hurt each other, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of our lives like that. In just seconds, he was going to realize, and who knew how he was going to react.
“Meela,” he breathed, taking a step closer to me. His eyes never left mine, but when they finally did, he stopped, frozen in place. “Holy shit.” His eyes found mine. “You’re still pregnant.”
Thirty Seven
Reed
It wasn’t a question.
It was clear as fucking day. I was standing in front of Meela, staring down at her belly, and I was still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact.
She pulled her sweater around her stomach, as if that did shit, and I looked up at her, my eyes shooting accusations at her like arrows.
“What the hell, Meela? I don’t understand? How the fuck are you still pregnant?”
Lust Page 29