by Katee Robert
“Not finding out? Now you’re just teasing me. What is this, 1962? I have needs, woman.”
“Do I get a say in this?” Headlights shone through the front window as a truck pulled off the road and started for the house. She moved to push the curtains aside. Daniel’s back. “I have to go, but we’re still on for coffee next time I’m in town, right?”
“Wild horses couldn’t hold me back.”
“I’m looking forward to it, too.” She hung up as Ollie came tearing into the living room, barking as loud as she could. “He’s home, girl.”
It seemed to take forever for Daniel to shut off the truck and make his way to the front door, but that might very well have been her nerves talking. She couldn’t imagine how the conversation with her parents had gone—especially since she hadn’t received a call from them since this morning. This was going to either be very, very good, or very, very bad.
One look at his face as he walked through the door and she knew it was the latter. “What happened?”
He held up a hand to stop her when she would have come to him. “We need to talk.”
No good conversation ever started like that. Hope wrapped her arms around herself. She felt like she was standing on the tracks, hearing the train coming, and not able to move out of danger. “What did they say to you?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.” He said it so softly, he might have been talking to himself.
She blinked. “What?”
“We laughed about fate, but part of me couldn’t help thinking that maybe you coming back into my life—getting pregnant with my child—was the universe’s way of balancing everything out.”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. There was only one thing he could be talking about. John. Always John. She straightened. “That was a long time ago, Daniel. I thought we were starting over.” Please let us be starting over for real.
“I was going to make things right once and for all.”
He wasn’t going to let it go—any of it. She reeled back, feeling like the entire world had shifted beneath her feet. All Hope had wanted when she found out she was pregnant was for this to finally mean that they would both just move on. That they’d finally put their past behind them and start fresh. That she wouldn’t be the high school girlfriend whose older brother Daniel blamed himself for killing. That he wouldn’t be the boyfriend she’d loved so much who had failed her so spectacularly. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it. That crash wasn’t your fault. I thought you understood that.” She hoped. God, she hoped so much it made it hard to breathe. Please prove me right. Please, Daniel. I’ll say whatever it takes to just end this circling we can’t seem to stop doing.
He laughed, but not like anything was funny. “If our baby was a boy, I thought we should name him John.”
She gripped her arms so tightly, she distantly wondered if there would be bruises tomorrow. It didn’t matter. The pain was the only thing grounding her while she tried to process the insanity coming out of his mouth. “What?” Suddenly it all made sense. She pressed her hand to her stomach, the nausea so intense, it was a wonder she didn’t throw up on the spot. “My baby is not my brother.” It came out as little more than a whisper, so she said it again. “My baby is not my brother. What the hell is wrong with you?”
He frowned at her, finally seeming to see her for the first time since he got out of the truck. “What?”
Anger unlike anything she’d ever known rose, black and thick and almost enough to choke her into silence. She wouldn’t let it. Some things needed to be said, no matter how painful. “This—all of this—was about penance. You never wanted me, not really. You wanted a way to assuage your guilt and prove to yourself that you were worth a damn.” She took a step back and then another.
“Hope, will you just listen?” Just that. Not a denial—a plea to explain himself.
He didn’t need to explain himself. She knew how this conversation was going. The guilt on his face made her want to punch something. She shook her head. “Oh my God, I’m right, aren’t I?”
“I’m no good for you. I never have been. I thought I could make everything right, but I can’t.”
Her shoulders sagged. “You know, I spent the last thirteen years fighting against what you’re saying, and believing that I was right. Now? Now I’m tired, Daniel. I am so incredibly tired. I don’t know how two and two add up to seven in your head, but I don’t care anymore. If you think me being married to a man who sees me as an albatross around his neck—who sees my child that way—is a gift, then you’re crazy. I don’t have it in me to fight anymore.”
She took a shuddering breath, half sure that he’d break and tell her that she was wrong, that that wasn’t what he meant at all, that he loved her for who she was, not for the penance she represented. But the seconds stretched into a full minute, and the full minute into three, and he didn’t do anything but look at her with that damned guilt written all over his face.
“You’re right. Fuck, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He finally moved toward the kitchen. “You can have the master bedroom tonight, but I think it’s best we go our separate ways tomorrow.”
This was it. It was really happening. Instead of telling her that he loved her, he was all but admitting that he loved his guilt more. Hope shook despite her best effort to maintain control over herself. She wasn’t the only woman who’d been dumped by her boyfriend while pregnant with his child, but she’d never thought Daniel would do something like this—especially since he’d all but clubbed her over the head and demanded she stay in Devil’s Falls and his house. He had been the one driving this from day one, overriding her concerns and her fears, and now he was going to turn around and repeat history?
Her throat tried to close, but she’d be damned before she cried another tear because of Daniel Rodriguez.
Hope pushed her shoulders back and her chin up, holding it together by the skin of her teeth. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Excuse me.” She sent a text to Jessica as she walked slowly into the spare room and packed up her seriously small number of things. She could feel Daniel’s presence in the house even if she didn’t see him as she made her way to the front of the house.
She paused at the door. “My child will not be named John, by the way, regardless of gender.”
The she walked out and didn’t look back, not once.
Chapter Sixteen
“Do you want me to kill him? I can most definitely kill him.”
“You can’t kill him because I’m going to kill him.”
Calling Jessica had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now Hope was starting to doubt the intelligence of her plan. She hadn’t been thinking—she’d just been reacting. But no matter her logic, she hadn’t expected to show up at Jessica’s place and find Daniel’s cousin Jules. Jules looked ready to chew through the walls when she heard how things had fallen out with Daniel, and she paced around the large living room, coming up with one plan, discarding it, and coming up with an even wilder and more elaborate one. Jessica was right there with her, egging her on.
It just made Hope so damn tired.
She wrapped a knitted throw blanket around her shoulders and curled up on the couch. Maybe if she didn’t move too much, the women would forget she was here and wander back to their own lives. It was a crappy plan, but today had been filled with all sorts of crappy plans. She rested her chin on her knees and sighed, just a little.
I never wanted this. I never wanted to have everything I ever dreamed of dangled in front of me and then taken away just when I finally got to the point where I actually believed it was happening.
“Hope?”
She blinked and looked up to find Jules crouched in front of her. The concern written across the other woman’s face didn’t make her feel the least bit better. “Yeah?”
“Is there something we can do—aside from plan for the inevitable death of my idiot cousin? You look kind of peaky, and I can’t tell
if it’s I’ve-just-been-dumped peaky or oh-my-God-the-baby peaky.”
Hope pressed her hand to her stomach, fear beating in her throat. “I…” She forced herself to take a deep breath and think. She didn’t even have a doctor’s appointment for another month. She felt like death walking, but that was 100 percent emotional. Physically she was fine. Hungry, as always, but fine. She tried for a smile and failed miserably. “I’m okay.”
“You’re not, but that’s okay.” Jules squeezed her hand and then stood. “Why don’t you get some rest? If you keep sitting here while Jessica and I plot, you’ll be accessory to murder and my… What would this baby be? Second cousin? First cousin once removed?”
Hope blinked. “I don’t actually know.”
“Minor details.” Jules urged her to her feet and turned to Jessica. “Where are you putting her up?”
The feeling she had of her life spinning wildly out of control only got worse as the night went on. She hadn’t had time to process, which might be a blessing, but the very last thing she wanted to do was have the meltdown she could feel threatening with witnesses present. Hope carefully extracted her hand from Jules. “If it’s all the same, I’ll walk myself up to the spare bedroom.” She stood on wobbly legs, hating her weakness, and walked to the stairs with as much confidence as she could muster. She doubted the show did a damn thing to convince the women behind her that she wouldn’t cry herself to sleep, and she knew if she looked back, they’d have sympathetic expressions on their faces.
She didn’t care.
She’d spent the last thirteen years trying to keep from going under, and she’d be damned before she started now.
Except…
That thought, that deep-seated anger that she never let anyone see, had been useful when she was eighteen and had woken up to realize the world had changed in an instant. It had gotten her through the worst pain of her life, emotionally and physically, and kept her from giving in to the sorrow that made her want to curl up into a ball and cry until things went back to how they used to be. She’d been forged in the flames and come out stronger on the other side.
Except that wasn’t really the truth.
The truth was she’d never stopped hurting. She’d never stopped missing John, though the grief became manageable at some point while she wasn’t looking. She’d never stopped missing her ability to run marathons like she used to, to feel her body flagging and know that it was something to push through because she was almost there.
She’d never stopped mourning the loss of Daniel’s love.
Hope stopped at the top of the stairs, pressing a hand to her chest, the truth almost sending her to her knees. She’d told him the truth when she’d said she never stopped loving him. Even now, even knowing it would never work, that their reasons for trying to make this work were the very definition of irreconcilable differences, she loved him.
That knowledge burned her rage to ash, leaving Hope, pregnant and alone, in its wake.
She made it to the bedroom and closed the door softly behind her. Somehow she managed to get to the bed and burrow beneath covers that smelled faintly of lavender and vanilla. She curled up, placing her hands on her stomach. There was no freaking change in the last few hours, but she imagined she could feel the life growing there all the same.
He’s going to miss this. The sleepless nights. The morning cuddles. All the firsts. He’s going to miss everything.
Maybe I shouldn’t have walked away…
But all she could see was his face when he’d said they should name their baby John. Pain arrowed through her chest, and she had to press a pillow against her face to muffle the sob that escaped. This baby deserved more than to be thought of as some kind of penance. She deserved it, too. Was it too much to ask that he be with her because he loved her, rather than because he was punishing himself for John’s death?
Apparently so.
Another sob escaped, tearing itself from her throat, quickly followed by a third. A cry rose up inside her, desperate to be voiced.
A hand touched her head, and she startled. She’d been so focused on keeping as quiet as possible that she hadn’t realized someone had come into the room. She looked up, shock breaking through her meltdown. “Mom.”
“Jessica called me.” Her mom sat on the edge of the bed. “I always liked that girl.”
Her mom was here. Which meant…
She knew everything.
Her mom smoothed back her hair, the move harking back to her childhood—and to her months in recovery. She looked down at Hope with dark eyes so similar to her own. “I’m sorry, honey. More sorry than you can know. You deserve better than this. You always have.”
There was no judgment in her tone, nothing but empathy and a desire to make everything right. Just like she always had. Hope’s mom was a fixer. She saw a problem and she went in with elbow grease and sheer willpower and muscled the things around her into submission. Being so helpless after the car crash had broken something in her, something she’d never quite gotten back. That didn’t stop her from trying, though.
Part of Hope wanted to blame her mom for the fight with Daniel, for exposing her weakness so thoroughly, but the truth was if Daniel had really been willing to put her first, he wouldn’t have broken at the first opportunity. He hadn’t fought for her.
Just like he hadn’t fought for her thirteen years ago.
“Why aren’t I enough for him? Why does it always have to be about John, or about what he thinks he took from me? All he can focus on is the past.” She clenched her teeth, but it only made her chest hurt worse to keep the words inside. So, for the first time in far too many years, she let it out. “He loves his guilt more than he loves me.”
“He’s not a bad man.” Her mom kept up that soothing motion, smoothing her hair back.
“You don’t like him.” It came out too accusing, but she couldn’t take the words back. “You never forgave him.”
“That’s my burden to bear. Not yours.” Her mom’s mouth tightened slightly. “It’s easier to forgive something done to you than something done to someone you love—especially a child. John wasn’t his fault. You know it. I know it. What he did to you…”
A crazy part of her couldn’t stop from defending him. “He blames himself for John.”
“He blames himself for a lot of things.”
She let out a shuddering breath. It didn’t ease the burning in her eyes one bit. “I don’t know how to do this. I just want to shake him until he sees that he’s going to miss out on the future that could have been ours because he’s so focused on whipping himself for the past.”
“You have to let it go.”
She jerked back. “What?”
Her mom’s eyes were nothing but kind. “Honey, you have this amazing ability to put your mind to something and make it into a reality. It’s an asset, though sometimes I worry about your motivations.” She held a hand up. “But that’s neither here nor there. My point is that Daniel isn’t a problem to be fixed. He’s a person. You can’t change him if he doesn’t want to be changed.”
She knew that. Of course she knew that. But it was so incredibly hard to let go of the dreams she’d allowed herself to paint for their future. Dreams where they got married, settled into that little farmhouse they’d always talked about, and had half a dozen beautiful children. “I want it—him—so badly.”
“I know, honey.” Her mom gathered her to her chest and hugged her tight. “But life rarely cares about what we want.”
Loss made her sick to her stomach. “I don’t know if I can be a single mom.”
“You can do anything you set your mind to. You’ll love your baby with everything you have, and that child will want for nothing.” Her mom kissed the top of her head. “And if Daniel decides to be in the baby’s life—”
“He will.” She might not be certain of anything else, but she was certain of that. “He might not want me, but he wants our baby.” And she wouldn’t stand in his way, no matter how his
rejection hurt. “He’ll be a good daddy.”
Her mother’s mouth tightened. “Likely, yes. But you deserve more than a man who will be with you for a baby. You deserve to be with a man who puts you first. And Daniel never will.”
No, he wouldn’t. Not when he could put his grief and guilt before all others.
Tonight. She’d give herself tonight to mourn the life she’d never have. And then, tomorrow, she’d wake up and get back to facing down the world. Dallas seemed cold after being in Devil’s Falls, so maybe she’d look into moving a bit closer—to San Antonio to be closer to her parents. Staying where she had minimal support system just to prove a point was sheer idiocy.
Hope opened her eyes, staring out the bedroom window to where the stars winked at her. “I’m going to be okay.” Every other time she’d said those words, they felt like a promise.
Right now they felt like a lie.
…
“Well, you’ve gone and fucked things up beyond repair, haven’t you?”
Daniel had never hated living in a small town as much as he did in that moment. People knew where to find him far too easily. If he was in a big city, he could blend into the crowds until no one bothered to look sideways at him. No one bothered to meddle.
He opened another beer without looking at Adam and frowned at Ollie. “Some guard dog you are.”
“This house only has room for one guard dog.”
Him. He transferred his glare to his best friend. “Bite me.”
“Wrong again.” Adam dropped into the chair next to him and snatched the beer out of his hands. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Word sure as fuck got around fast. Daniel checked his watch. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours. How the hell did you find out?”
“You know your cousin. She’s got feelers all over this town.” Adam motioned with his fingers. “Hope went to Jessica Stroup’s after your fight, and Jessica called in Jules as reinforcements.” He sent Daniel a significant look. “She also called Mrs. Moore.”