by Ryan, Lexi
“An affair?” He flies out of his seat and starts pacing the living room. “Do you know why I moved to Florida with my mom when I was a kid?”
I nod. He’s told me this story. “Because you didn’t want her to see you as a brother.”
“Yeah. Because I was in love with her and was afraid she’d never feel the same for me if I was the dumb kid down the hall. I let my stupid fucking pride take me away from her. If I’d moved in, I would’ve seen it. I would’ve seen what she’s spent so many years hiding. I would’ve known, and I would’ve protected her, and she never would’ve had to let him . . .” He squeezes his eyes shut and makes a face. “I can’t even talk about this without feeling fucking sick.” He pushes past me and out through the sliding glass doors onto the patio.
I follow him, shutting the door behind me. “Colton, talk to me.”
He pulls a joint from his pocket and lights it. He pulls the smoke deep into his lungs and holds it for a beat before looking at me. “I always knew he liked her. I always thought it was a little creepy how much he liked her. But I’d have killed that sonofabitch before I let him touch her.”
My heart aches for him. “Can you know for sure it wasn’t consensual? Noah’s four, so she’d have been . . . what, twenty-one when she got pregnant?”
He narrows his eyes. “Since it started when she was ten, I think it’s fair to say it was a nonconsensual, fucked-up relationship from the beginning.”
I throw my hand over my mouth as nausea slams into me. She was ten. Guilt gnaws through my chest. I just suggested that the victim was a willing party. “I had no idea.”
He puts the joint in the ashtray and cups my face in his hands. He smells like pot. “I just have to get through this,” he says, scanning my face. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else since I found out the truth. He had to pay for what he did.”
“Pay?” Frowning, I shake my head. “Colton, what did you do?”
“Nothing. I scared him off. Told him what I knew. Until it was done, it was all I could think about, but now . . .” He grazes his knuckles gently across my belly. “We’ll focus on us now. I’ll get better. I need to fix this.”
“I don’t know if you can.”
“Don’t tell me I lost you already. Not just because of one stupid night when you saw us talking and thought the worst of me.”
“No, Colton. It wasn’t just because of one night. It was everything before that—the weeks of you pulling away and not touching me anymore. It was . . .” I force myself to meet his eyes. “It was the pills, and the mood swings, and the way you rarely answered me with more than a few syllables. Don’t blame what broke between us on me misunderstanding what I saw that night. My interpretation of that moment was a culmination of the weeks that came before it, and I don’t blame myself for what I thought.”
“You could have come to her door and asked.”
“And you could have told me about Noah when you got this letter. You could have explained that you were struggling—that anger about what your dad did was making you struggle to stay clean.” I wipe away my tears. We’re finally having this conversation. I don’t want him to storm away angry before we’re done, but I cannot let him believe this was all to be blamed on one freak misunderstanding.
“I fucked up.” He shakes his head. “I fucked up, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fix it.” He lowers himself to one knee and takes my hand. “Marry me, Ellie. I love you, and I want to be the father of our child in the right way. Give me that chance. Please.”
I press my hand to my mouth, but it doesn’t stop the sob from coming out. Two months ago, there was nothing I wanted more than Colton’s proposal, but everything’s changed now. Tears spill down my cheeks. I slept with Levi. It’s a confession I can’t give, though, not while Colton is pulling bottles from his pockets and tossing them onto the ground. Bottle after bottle of the pills I hate.
“I came here for these, and now I don’t want them anymore.” His hand shakes as he lifts it to his mouth. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Ellie? I thought I had to take them, but when I saw the pictures of our baby, I didn’t want to.”
There are so many pills. I thought I found them all when I got his stuff together. I should have known better. One thing about addicts is they’re professionals at hiding. Levi and I used to say Colton was bad at hiding it, but we were naïve. With time, Colton’s become better than anyone I know. Hiding his drugs, hiding his addiction, and hiding his deepest scars and ugliest thoughts.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” he says. “Nelson touching her. Holding her down.” He fists his hands then releases them, as if he’s physically trying to let it go. “I know I’ve done everything I can for Molly. Getting rid of Nelson and telling the world I’m Noah’s father—that’s all I can do. But I can’t stop feeling so goddamned much. I wanted to stop.”
Panic tilts the Earth on its axis. I’m standing at the edge of a cliff and he’s hanging over the edge. All I can do is hold on tight, but I can feel him slipping. “We’ll get you help.” The terror is right there in my words.
He nods and steps forward, leaning his head against my shoulder. “Please. I’ll fight my way through the darkness for you. For our baby.”
I love Colton, and we may never have the happily-ever-after I once imagined, but since the day he saved me from his father, I’ve wanted to save him in return. I don’t know if we’ll see forever together, but if marrying him now is going to prevent him from throwing away the rest of his life, I’m going to do it. We’ll take it one day at a time. “You get the help you need, and we’ll get married, okay? No pills. No numbness.” No giving up on life.
He clings to me, and I close my eyes and hold him. He hasn’t held me like this in months. His arms wrapped around me, his big hand flat against my belly as if even now, in this most harmless environment, he’s compelled to protect the child growing inside me.
The best thing I can do for my baby is to get Colton healthy, and if it’s in my power to make that happen, I’m going to do it.
Levi
Thursday, August 30th
I jump down from the pull-up bar and put my hands on my knees as I try to catch my breath. I’ve been trying to work off this anxious energy for the last hour and a half. Trying to remind myself that if I give Ellie space, she’ll come to me. Trying to remind myself I had no right to touch her to begin with.
She’s having Colton’s baby.
“Levi?”
I straighten at the sound of her voice. She’s all I’ve been thinking about, and now she’s in front of me. She’s still in work clothes—today in a black wrap dress that clings to her curves and finishes mid-thigh, showing off her long, toned legs, and a pair of red fuck-me heels I’m dying to obey.
“Hey,” I say, trying to smile, trying not to immediately ask why she’s been ignoring my calls for the last four days. “Here to work out?”
She shakes her head. “I was hoping we could talk for a minute?”
I arch a brow. “Here? You wanna go get dinner or something instead?”
Another head shake. “No. I think it’s better if we . . .” She looks around the gym, and her message is clear. Better if we stay here. Better if we aren’t seen together in any context that might be considered romantic.
I grab my towel and wipe the sweat from the back of my neck, ignoring the dread tying knots in my stomach. “Okay. What’s up?”
She clears her throat and cuts her eyes away from me. “Colton didn’t sleep with Molly. They’re friends, nothing more. They really were just talking.”
I actually laugh. That sounds like a lie—the kind of ridiculous lie the asshole in the movie would feed his girlfriend. The kind Ellie would get pissed at the character for buying. “Really? That’s convenient.”
She shrugs. “I believe him.” She holds out a hand, and I see her ring. A diamond solitaire glitters in the overhead light and mocks me. My heart plummets right through my stomach and into the floor. Then
I’m falling too. My heart. My soul. My fucking everything just sinks into nothing. “He and I are going to get married. I’m going to help him clean up, and we’re going to make this work.”
I swallow hard. “It’s not your job to help him get clean.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it our job to help the people we love? To lift them up when they can’t lift themselves?”
“This is what you want? To marry him? Despite everything he’s put you through the last couple of months? Despite the way he makes you feel? You’re going to tie yourself to a man who’s let drugs ruin your life?”
“He’s your best friend. How can you talk about him like that?”
“Because I’m sick of his bullshit. I’m sick of his lies and his omissions.” Because I care about you more than I’ll ever care about him. “Just think this through, Ellie. Please.”
She wraps her arms around herself. “I have. This is what I need to do.”
I want to say, What about us? I want to ask her if she felt nothing when we were together. Instead, I swallow back my questions, grab my water bottle, and take a long drink.
“It’s for the best,” she says. “You’ll understand that eventually. And you and I? We were just . . .”
I pull the bottle from my lips, meet her eyes, and wait for her to finish that sentence. “Just what?”
“Lonely,” she whispers. “We were just lonely.”
I grip the bottle so tightly that the plastic crackles under my fingers. I make myself exhale slowly, releasing some of my aggravation. “I wasn’t just lonely. With you, I was anything but lonely. I’m sorry it wasn’t the same for you.”
She looks at the floor. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, and please don’t tell Colton about our . . . our mistake.”
“But don’t you get it? This shouldn’t be hard at all. When you marry someone, there shouldn’t be anything hard about your decision.”
“Maybe for some people.” She shrugs. “But that’s not the hand I was dealt. I have to try to make this work. For the baby, for me, and for Colton.”
“I love you.” The words are whispered but feel like they’re being ripped from my chest.
She gives me a sad smile. “I consider myself luckier than you can imagine to have felt that love.” She swallows hard. “But right now, I have to put more important things first.”
“What’s more important than love?”
“Life,” she says. Turning, she walks away.
“Ellie!”
She shakes her head but doesn’t look back. Doesn’t say another word.
I watch her push through the glass door and onto the sidewalk. She walks away from me. Away from us. Away from everything I believed we could be.
I hurl my water at the mirrored wall, and the bottle cracks, water spilling all over the floor and streaking down the glass.
Ellie
When I get home, Colton’s truck is in the driveway. That old spark of joy I used to feel at his proximity flickers and is immediately snuffed out by the ache I feel every time I think about Levi’s face.
“I love you.”
As if it should be that simple. As if love is something we feel for one person at a time, and not a complex collection of emotion we experience in infinite different ways for countless people at once.
When I walk in the front door, Colton’s waiting for me with a big grin on his face, and a rich, savory aroma drifts out from the kitchen.
“It smells amazing,” I say. “What is that?”
He flashes a glance over his shoulder toward the kitchen before looking back at me. “It’s a roast. You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
“Not since breakfast.” And that was just a dry piece of toast. I don’t remember the last time Colton cooked for me. Maybe he did so early on when he was still trying to win me over. He’s not a bad cook. He just tends to prefer to use his time for other things.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
“Why?”
He takes my face in his hands and presses a kiss to my mouth. “Because I have a surprise. Because you’re my fiancée, and I love you.”
I close my eyes and let him lead me down the hall toward our bedroom, but when we turn, it’s not to the right into the bedroom. It’s to the left into the small room that’s been acting as my closet.
“Okay, you can look now.”
When I open my eyes, I almost don’t recognize the space. My clothes have all been cleared out, and the rack I had in the middle of the room is gone. The walls are covered in stick-on decals of elephants, and giraffes, and a smiling yellow sun.
A crib sits in the corner, already made up with bedding that matches the decals on the walls. The dresser matches the crib and has a changing pad on top, and the room’s tiny closet that was once filled with my shoes is open and now has a dozen little outfits hanging in it.
“Oh, Colton.” I press my hand to my chest. Until this moment, I don’t know if I believed he really wanted to do this. I don’t know if I believed he wouldn’t run away at the first opportunity. Marriage scared him. Two months ago, he didn’t even want to plan a wedding with me, and now here he is, decorating our baby’s nursery while I’m at work.
“You like it?” He looks so nervous, and I know my answer means everything to him.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Ava helped me. She said people will get you tons of newborn outfits at the shower, so she had me get outfits for when she’s bigger—just a few so we’d have them on hand so when life gets busy, we don’t have to choose between a naked kid and a midnight run to the store.”
“I can’t believe you did this.” My eyes burn, then laughter bubbles out of me. “Where on Earth did you put all my clothes?”
He grimaces. “About that . . .”
Turning, I look into our bedroom across the hall. The rack from this room has been rolled into it, nearly blocking the door and making it so I can only barely see the boxes of shoes piled on the bed.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “Maybe we can do an addition or convert the garage or something.” He slides his arm around my waist and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Sorry I stole your closet.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” I can’t stop giggling. I think it’s hope bubbling out of me. “We’re really gonna be okay, aren’t we?”
He nods. “Yeah, babe. We’re really gonna be fine. You and me and our baby.”
I turn in his arms and lift onto my toes to nuzzle my face into his neck and breathe in the clean soap-and-water scent of him. I promise myself this is all I need. We’re going to be okay. A family. And these things I feel for Levi will go away. They have to.
“Hey.” He pulls back, dipping his head to bring himself face to face with me and wiping the tears from my cheeks. “This was supposed to make you happy, not sad.”
“I am happy. Just a little emotional.”
“Dinner should be ready. I put all the shit in the Crock-Pot like we used to do—remember that? Are you hungry?”
I nod. “I’m starving.”
I follow him into the kitchen. He’s already set the table, and he waves for me to sit while he pulls the roast from the slow cooker.
His phone rings, and he pulls it from his pocket and puts it to his ear. “Hey, what’s up?” His eyes cut to me, then back to the food before he murmurs, “How the fuck should I know?”
Seconds pass.
“I’m telling you, he’s just trying to screw with us.”
What the hell is he talking about?
“No. No, we shouldn’t . . . Jesus. I’m not going to talk about this right now. Ellie and I are about to have dinner.” His jaw hardens as he listens. “Maybe never.” He pulls the phone from his ear and taps the screen before dropping it on the counter.
“Who was that?”
“Molly. She’s worried because our father is still missing. She’s worried something has happened to him.” Anger simmers under his words.
“Aren’
t you a little worried too?” I ask.
“Not really. He’s an asshole who’d be doing us all a favor if he just disappeared.”
My stomach knots. Something feels off about all this. “What aren’t you telling me?” I want to say, What does Molly know that I don’t? But it sounds so petty, as if this is just about jealousy and not about a missing man.
“Don’t worry about it,” Colton says. He meets my eyes, and his are stony. The joy I saw there when I walked in the door tonight and when he showed me the nursery is all gone, replaced with that brooding irritation I’ve come to know too intimately.
I take a breath. On the one hand, if I want a life with Colton, I need to accept that his moods can be like this—swinging wildly from one extreme to the other. On the other hand, if he wants a life with me, he’s going to have to let me in. “I feel like you’re keeping something from me, and I don’t like it.”
“Oh, so we’re going to tell each other our secrets now? Does that mean you’re going to tell me about what you did with Levi?”
I need to tell him about Levi, but doing so when he’s in this mood is dangerous. “I don’t want to talk about it tonight.”
“Well, I do. Tell me. I deserve to know what my future wife did with my best friend.”
“I thought it was over between us. You walked out the door!”
“Okay, so I screwed up. Now do you want to talk about how easy it was for you to crawl into his bed?” His eyes blaze as he stalks toward me. “How is he? I bet you wanted him for years. God knows he wanted you. Was he worth the wait?”
“Fuck you.”
He reaches out and grabs my wrist. “Sure. Not getting enough from Levi?”
I yank my arm from his grasp and back away. “Jesus, Colton. What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m pissed. I love you and I want you and I’m willing to move past it, but if we’re going to talk about the shit I did, let’s talk about the shit you did, too.” His chest puffs with anger. “Let’s talk about you and Levi, and how you ran to him the second you had an excuse. Did you cry on his shoulder over how I’d wronged you before you banged him? Or did you skip that formality and spread your legs for my best friend at the first available opportunity?”