by Maisey Yates
Selena slipped out the back of the ballroom and wrapped her arms around her midsection as she walked through the lobby. She felt so awful. So tired she thought she might fall asleep where she stood.
And though it could be stress and fatigue.
Or something a lot scarier.
There was only one way to find out whether or not she was carrying Knox’s baby.
Maybe the timing sucked, and she should just go to bed. But now that she started thinking about the possibility again, she couldn’t wait. Not another minute, and certainly not until tomorrow morning.
She stopped walking, pausing for a moment in front of the concierge desk. Then she took a tentative step forward.
“Is there a pharmacy close by?”
Eleven
Knox felt guilty about letting Selena leave the party without him. But he was engaged in a pretty intense conversation with a local business mogul about donations and ways to raise awareness, and he felt...like he was able to do something. Like he could be something other than helpless.
Tonight, Cassandra made much more sense to him. She had thrown herself into this. At first, her drive had been difficult for him. Because every reminder of Eleanor was a painful one. But now, after participating in the fundraiser, he understood.
Looking around at all of this, he couldn’t help but understand. She was doing the only thing she could. Her mother’s heart compelled her to let their daughter live on somehow, while Knox had been consumed in the grief.
He hadn’t had it in him to take that kind of generous approach. To make sure what had happened to his daughter didn’t happen to anyone else. But he had found it tonight. He had found something that he had thought long gone—hope. Like there was a future in this world that was worth being part of.
And that made him feel...like a little piece of himself had been recovered. A piece he had thought he might never access again. A piece that allowed him to be a part of the world, that allowed him to enjoy being alive. To enjoy the taste of food. The touch of a woman. The desire to accomplish something. Anything.
And, yes, the fundraiser had made a difference, but the catalyst for this change was all Selena.
As the night wore on, the crowds began to thin out, and finally, he was left with Cassandra, who sat up on the stage. She looked exhausted, and she looked sad.
“You did a good thing,” he said, walking over and taking a spot next to her.
“Thank you,” she said, treating him to a tired smile. “But I know.”
“Isn’t this exhausting?” he asked.
“What?” she asked. “Charity events?”
“Reliving this all the time,” he said.
“I do anyway,” she said. “So why not make something of it? This charity helps me feel like I’m moving on. Even though it all...stems from her, losing her. I don’t know how to explain it, really. Like I’m taking the tragedy and making something positive with it.”
He looked across the room and saw Cassandra’s fiancé, who was helping with cleanup. He seemed like a good man. A great man. One who had jumped into all of this without having known Ellie at all, but who supported the charity just because it meant so much to Cassandra.
It occurred to Knox then that the truth of the matter was that Cassandra was a hell of a lot more moved on than he was.
And he didn’t know what to feel about that. He didn’t know how to reconcile it. He didn’t know if he wanted to move on.
And yet moving on was what he had just been thinking about. That experience of beginning to enjoy life again.
Was that what she had now? Could she be thankful to be alive? Was she able to love this man? And not be afraid of loss?
Part of him still wanted to hold on to the past. Wanted to fight against blurry images, fading pain and the normalcy he was starting to feel on some days. Wanted to fight against the past slipping away. He wanted to go back out front and stare at that portrait of his daughter lying in a field of flowers. To memorize her face.
He just didn’t want to forget.
He didn’t want to come out the other side of this grief.
Suddenly, he felt like he was sliding down into a dark pit, and he had no idea what in hell to do about it. If he wanted to do anything about it at all. He had no idea what to do with any of these feelings. Had no idea what had happened to the good feelings from a few moments before, and even less of an idea about why he resented having those good feelings now.
Grief didn’t make sense. All of the guides talked about stages and moving on. For him, it wasn’t stages. It was waves, coming and going, drowning him. The memory of his child acting like a life raft in his mind.
How the hell could he move on from his own life raft?
Cassandra had said earlier that he was the only person who had been through what she had been through. And that was true. But now he was sitting here alone with these feelings. She had moved on. And there was no one. No one at all.
It scared him.
What would happen if they both went on with their lives like Ellie hadn’t existed? If she became only this monument to a greater cause, instead of the child they loved so much.
And suddenly, he needed to get out of there. Suddenly, he needed to find Selena.
He knew she was asleep, but he needed her.
“I’m going up to bed,” he said, and if his departure seemed sudden, he didn’t much care. He walked out of the ballroom and headed through the lobby, getting into the elevator and checking the key in his wallet to see which room he and Selena were in. Then he pushed the appropriate button and headed up to their floor.
He got to the room and pushed the key card into the door, opening it slowly. When he got inside, Selena was not asleep as he’d expected.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her head bent down. She looked up, her face streaked with makeup and tears and a horrific sense of regret.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “I thought you were going to sleep.”
Then he looked down at her hands. At the white stick she was clutching between her fingers.
* * *
The look on Knox’s face mirrored what she was feeling.
Terror. Sheer, unmitigated terror.
But even through the terror, she knew they could do this. They would get through it as they had every other thing life had thrown at them over the years. They would make it work together.
She trusted him, and that was the mantra she kept repeating to herself, over and over again.
She had given Knox her heart slowly over the past decade. And now he had all of it, along with her trust.
She loved him.
She always had. But sitting there looking at the test results, she knew she was in love with him. The kind of love built to withstand. The kind that could endure.
She loved him.
They could weather this. She was confident they could.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
She had fully intended to talk to him tomorrow, but then she had ended up sitting on the edge of the bed, unable to move. Completely and utterly shell-shocked by what was in front of her in pink and white.
The incontrovertible truth that she was pregnant with Knox McCoy’s baby.
She had cried, but she wasn’t sad. Not really. It was just so much to take in, especially after spending the evening at the charity event. Especially after seeing the portrait of his daughter by the door and witnessing all the small ways grief affected him. The small ways that loss took chunks out of him over the course of an evening like this.
Now he was finding out about this. It just seemed a bit much.
“You’re pregnant,” he said.
“Yes. We didn’t... We forgot a couple of times,” she said, her voice muted.
That first time, d
own at the camp.
That second night, in her room when they had talked about Eleanor and graham crackers and her heart had broken for him in ways she hadn’t thought she could recover from.
“I can’t do this,” he said, his voice rough.
“I mean...” She tried to swallow but it was like her throat was lined with the inside of a pincushion. “A baby isn’t tea. I can’t...not serve it to you. I can’t... Maybe this is our sign we have to try something real, Knox.”
The words came out weak and she despised herself for them.
“I can’t,” he said again.
Her heart thundered so hard it hurt. Felt sharp. Like it was cutting its way out of her chest.
“We can,” she said. “We can do this together, Knox. I know that it’s not...ideal.”
“Not ideal?” he asked, his words fraying around the edges. “Not ideal is a damned parking ticket, Selena. This is not acceptable.”
Anger washed through her, quick and sharp. At him. At herself. At how unfair the whole world was. They should just be able to have this. To be happy. But they couldn’t because life was hard, and it had stolen so much from him. She hurt for him; she did.
But oh, right now she hurt so much for herself.
“I’m sorry that the pregnancy is unacceptable to you, but it’s too late. I’m pregnant.”
“Selena...”
“I love you,” she said. “I didn’t want to say that right now either. I didn’t want to do it like this, but... Knox, I love you. And I know that I’ve always said I didn’t want a husband and children, but I could do it with you. If we are going to have a baby then I can do it. I want to do it.”
She straightened her shoulders as she said the words, realizing just then that she was committing to her baby. “I...I want this baby.”
He looked at her for a moment, his eyes unreadable.
“Then you’re going to have it on your own.”
She felt like she had been blasted through with a cannonball, that it had left her completely hollowed out. Nothing at all remaining.
Pain radiated from her chest, outward. Climbing up her throat and making it feel so tight she couldn’t breathe.
“You don’t want this?”
“I can’t.”
She felt for him. For his loss. She truly did. But it wasn’t just her being wounded. It was their child. A child who was losing a chance at having him for a father.
She had thought...
She had no idea how she could have misjudged this—misjudged him—so completely.
She’d thought...if she knew one person on earth well enough to trust them it should have been him.
This was her nightmare.
But it wasn’t just heartbreak over losing the man she loved, over losing the future she’d so briefly imagined for them before he walked into their suite.
No, she was losing her friend.
And bringing a child into the heartache.
“So that’s it. You don’t want to be a father again.” Dread, loss, sadness...it all poured through her in a wave. She felt like she was back in the river with him, but this time, he was pushing her under instead of holding her up. “You don’t want me.”
“Selena, I already told you. I’ve had this. I’ve had it, and I lost it, and I cannot do this again. There is no mystery left in the damned world for me. I know what it’s like to bury my child, Selena. I will not... I can never love another child like that. Ever.”
She had trusted him.
That was all she could think as she stood there, getting ripped to shreds by his words.
As a young woman, she had been convinced that the hardest thing, the most difficult thing in the world, was enduring being beaten by a man with his fists. Her father had kicked her, punched her while she was down.
But this hurt so much worse. This was a loss so deep she could scarcely fathom it. This was pain, real and unending.
She couldn’t process it.
She pressed her hand against her stomach. “Then go,” she said, her mouth numb, her tongue thick. “Go. Because I’m not going to expose my child to your indifference. I’m not going to be my mother, Knox. I’m not going to have a man in my child’s life who doesn’t care about them.”
“Selena.”
“No. You’re the one who said it. Why couldn’t my mother love me enough to make sure I was in the best situation possible? Why didn’t she protect me? Well, now I’m the mother, the one making choices. I’m going to love this baby enough for both of us. I’m going to give it everything I never had and everything you refuse to give it. Now get the hell away from me.”
He was operating from a place of grief, and she knew it, but he was an adult. She knew full well that her duty was to protect her child, not Knox’s emotional state.
She was sick, and she was angry. And she didn’t think she would ever recover.
“I just can’t,” he reiterated, moving toward the door of the hotel room.
“Then don’t,” she said. “But I don’t believe the man who pulled himself up out of poverty, got himself into Harvard, stood by me as a good friend for all those years and came to Will’s funeral, even though it was hard—I don’t believe that man can’t do this. What I believe is that you’re very good at shutting people out. You go into yourself when it gets hard, rather than reaching out. Reach out to me, Knox. Let’s do this together. I don’t need it to be perfect or easy. We have a bunch of broken pieces between us, but let’s try to make something new with them.”
“I can’t.” He looked at her one more time with horribly flat, dark eyes, and then he turned and walked out of the hotel room, leaving her standing in a shimmering gold ball gown, ready to dissolve into a puddle of misery on the floor.
There was pain, and then there was this.
Knowing she was having her best friend’s baby. And that she would be raising that baby alone.
Twelve
He drank all the way back to Jackson Hole. He drank more in the back of the car as his driver took him back to the ranch. And he kept on drinking all the way until he got back to his house and passed out in bed. When he woke up, he had no idea what time it was, but the sun was shining through the window and his head was pounding like a son of a bitch. He was also still a little bit drunk.
Best of both worlds.
He could hardly believe what had happened earlier. It all seemed like a dream. Like maybe he had never gone to Royal and had never gone to a funeral for Will that hadn’t actually happened. Like maybe he had never slept with Selena. He had never gone to that charity event in honor of his daughter. And then Selena certainly hadn’t told him she was pregnant with his baby.
Because why the hell would she be pregnant with his baby since certainly they had never really slept together?
And they certainly hadn’t been living together like a couple. Playing house, reenacting the life that he had lost. A life he could never have again.
He got up and saw half a tumbler full of scotch sitting on the nightstand. He drained it quickly, relishing the burn as he fumbled for his phone. He checked to see if he had any missed calls and saw that he didn’t. But he did see that it was about three in the afternoon.
He frowned down at his phone for a long moment, then scrolled through his contacts. “Hello?”
“Cassandra,” he said, the words slurred.
“Knox?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am drunk.”
“I can tell.” She paused, because clearly she wasn’t going to help him with this conversation. She wasn’t going to tell him why he had called. He wished she would. He sure as hell didn’t have a clue. Didn’t know why he was reaching out to her now when he hadn’t done it during their marriage.
When he hadn’t been able to do it when it might have fixed something.
“Are you all r
ight?” she pressed.
“Fuck no,” he said. “I am not all right.”
“Okay.” Again, she gave him nothing.
“How come you’re happy?” he asked. “I’m not happy. I don’t want to be happy. What happens if both of us are happy and we forget about her? We forget how much it hurt? And how much she mattered?”
He heard her stifle a sob on the other end of the line. “We won’t. We won’t.”
“What if we do?” His heart felt like it was cracking in two. “I don’t want to replace her. I can’t.”
“You won’t,” she said. “You won’t replace her ever. Why would you think that?”
“Selena is pregnant,” he said, “and I don’t know what to do. Because it’s like I traded our life in for a new version. That’s not fair to anyone. It’s just not.”
His words didn’t make any sense, but all he knew was that everything hurt, and he couldn’t make sense of any of it.
There were no words for this particular deep well of pain inside of him.
“You’re not,” she said, her voice cracking. “You’re not.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I called to be mad at you. For being okay. For moving on. But now I’m just sorry. I should’ve been there for you. Maybe we should have been there better for each other.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I didn’t want to be.”
Silence fell between them. “I didn’t either.”
“I loved our life,” she said. “And it took me a long time to realize that I think I loved our life more than we loved each other. And when we lost Ellie... It wasn’t that life anymore. And what we’d had wasn’t enough to hold us together.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, her words making a strange kind of sense in his alcohol-soaked brain. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You need to find somebody you love no matter the circumstances. Not just someone you love because she fits a piece in your life. Because she fulfills a role. Not a wife—a partner.”
“I’m afraid,” he said, the words ripped from somewhere down deep.