Hot Shot (North Ridge Book 3)

by Karina Halle

  And there I have it.

  The truth.

  And now I have no choice but to share mine.

  “Because I’m in love with you, Fox,” I tell him. My words tremble and shake as they leave my lips, my blood pounding in my head. “I’ve loved you since the day I first met you, when I moved next door. I loved you and I continued to love you and somehow I’m even more in love with you now than I was at the start, even after all this.”

  I always imagined the day I told Fox I loved him would be like standing before him, opening my chest, letting a million doves fly free into the sky. But now, with the way he’s looking at me, like he’s been slapped, like my very words have driven fear into his heart, it feels like he’s taking a gun and shooting down every last dove. Dead.

  He’s speechless, like he can’t process it.

  I close my eyes, trying to pretend he’s not here.

  “I’m sorry if you didn’t know,” I go on, a few tears spilling from the corners of my eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but there was never a good time. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I know I mean a lot to you and you’ve meant all that and more to me. But I need…I need you to love me like I love you. I need it more than anything in this world. And I know it’s selfish of me to want it. I know that I should accept your proposal because it’s the right thing for the baby but I’m sorry.” My eyes open and I can barely see him through the tears. “I can’t marry you.”

  He shakes his head, his jaw tense. He looks away, his eyes absently scanning the mountains. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I know,” I tell him. “I know, and it’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” he says sharply, looking back at me with fiery eyes. “You’re not even giving me a chance!”

  “Fox, I can’t marry you just because you asked.”

  “But in time, things change. Love grows. It happens. I’m just…I’m too fucked up right now to make sense of anything in life but this can change me. It will change me.”

  “No. This won’t change you. A baby won’t change you until you change yourself first. You won’t love me until you love yourself first.”

  “That’s not what’s going on.”

  “Maybe it’s not then,” I say angrily, fed up, tired, everything coming to a head. “Maybe you just always saw me as a sister and maybe that turned into a girl you loved to fuck and maybe that’s how it stays. Maybe you’ll never love me in the way I need to be loved because you just don’t feel that way about me. But sometimes I think, no, I know, that you don’t even know what love is. You wouldn’t know it if it hit you in the face. You wouldn’t know it unless you were open to it and you’re not. You never were. You’re closed off. You’re happy in your anger and your sorrow and you shun everything good.”

  “That’s not true!” he roars at me, spit flying. “I want what’s good! You’re what’s good, you and this baby. Del, you mean the fucking world to me and I’m trying to offer you my world and you won’t even take it.”

  “I don’t want the world. I want your heart!” I sob. “I gave you my heart!”

  “And I never fucking asked for it!”

  Whoa.

  I am dead on my feet, my heart burning away inside, burning away all hope for us, for the future.

  “I want you to take me home,” I manage to say after a few heavy moments, a passage of time that stretches on, opening the wounds in front of him with each minute. “Please,” I say, my voice breaking.

  Fox is breathing hard, his nostrils flaring, a wild look in his eyes.

  I’m so afraid that this is it.

  That this is the end of us.

  That for all his wildness and brashness and boldness, that it’s become too much for me and not enough at the same time.

  His heart. I just want his heart.

  I know he has one.

  Something red and big and beautiful buried beneath layers of darkened ash.

  A heart that I won’t uncover, no matter how hard I try.

  “Okay,” he says quietly, walking around to his side of the Jeep.

  The drive back to my place isn’t just awkward, it’s painful.

  I keep thinking over what I said.

  What he said.

  I keep thinking about how this is it.

  That he proposed and I said no and I should say yes.

  I keep thinking about how I finally told him how I felt and all my worst fears came to light.

  I keep thinking that later, when the baby is born, she or he might wonder why they don’t have a father and I’ll have to explain that there had been a chance. That I ruined it. That I chose my heart over theirs.

  I keep thinking that I just lost the love of my life.

  I just lost my best friend.

  I’ve lost almost everything that gave me joy.

  He pulls up alongside my house and I look at him and I feel so much sorrow, so much love for him, that I have nothing to say. There are no words to express how I’m feeling and even tears don’t seem to be enough.

  He glances at me and I see that I’m not the only one who is hurting inside. He’s hurting too. I just humiliated him. I just ruined something that he had faith in to fix everything.

  “I’m sorry,” he says to me roughly. “I just wanted to do the right thing.”

  I nod, my jaw clenching. “I know. I’m trying to do the right thing too.”

  “Well,” he says. He clears his throat. “You know where I am if you need me. If both of you do. I’ll be a part of your life as much as you’ll let me.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper and for a moment I think I might lean over and kiss him on the cheek but then I couldn’t handle touching him for one more second. I’d dissolve in front of him.

  I love you. My intentions like a prayer sent up high.

  Then I get out of his truck and he drives off and that’s how that ends.

  WINTER

  18

  Delilah

  “Delilah! Your squirrel is trying to drink my tea!” my mom hollers from the living room.

  I sigh, too tired to yell back. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and realize I don’t only feel tired but I look tired. I look like a truck backed onto my face, repeatedly. When people tell you expectant mothers are beautiful, they’re lying. Either that or I just happen to be the exception.

  I just passed my 28-week mark the other day which means I’m six months pregnant. It’s been a hell of a six months and getting tougher every day. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, my blood pressure is high, my stomach sticks out like a balloon, I’m beyond irritable (probably because I don’t sleep anymore) and the baby is kicking the crap out of me from the inside.

  But it’s not all misery. I mean, there’s a lot of that for some very obvious reasons that I’m dealing with day to day, but there’s a big ball of sunshine growing inside me that I’m very much in love with.

  I don’t know how or when it happened but around the four-month mark, I’d realized that the baby I had inside me was a little person. Not something that was happening to someone else but an actual human being inside me. I don’t know why it took me so long to accept it but once I did, I started to enjoy it. It was like having a tiny best friend inside me that no one else could see, someone that I knew intimately without having to think about it.

  Then when we found out the sex of the baby, that I was having a girl, the bond between us seemed to double. Now I talk to the baby constantly, I’m rubbing my stomach all the time, I’m absolutely, head over heels in love with her, someone I haven’t even met yet but I know better than I know myself.

  I don’t have a name for her, I’m just waiting for the right one to come around. I just call her “little one.”

  But even though my little one keeps me going through all of this, I wish, desperately wish, I had Fox by my side.

  After he proposed, after I had to turn him down, he withdrew from me. He didn’t stop supporting us but he stopped being a friend and tha
t was the worst pain I’d ever felt.

  It was even worse than the admission that he didn’t love me. I know I probably did the right thing in turning him down, but I second-guess myself all the time. If I had said yes, I would have a wedding in the future, security in our relationship. But not in his heart. And I know that the most unselfish thing to do would have been to say yes to Fox for the sake of our baby but my heart is a thirsty selfish beast and it wanted it all.

  Now I have nothing. Now Fox took a job as an instructor in the ski hills of Whistler and he’s been gone since the end of November. It’s the end of February now and I still don’t know when he’ll be home.

  He’s missing so much.

  I keep him updated, I send him emails and texts every couple of days and he always responds and he always texts to ask about our little girl but…fuck.

  Fuck, it breaks my heart. It breaks it over and over again.

  He’s not here. He’s not with me.

  He should be with me.

  I should have said yes.

  But god I was in so much pain even then.

  I’m still in love with Fox though I wish I could stop and the fact that I had to turn down his marriage proposal, it kills me. It fucking kills me. It’s like I had everything I could have ever wanted in my hands—this baby, Fox, a future, a family—and I turned it all away.

  Now I’m alone.

  Again.

  Just me and the little one.

  Of course I have my mother and my friends and the rest of the Nelsons. I should say, especially the rest of the Nelsons. With Fox out of the picture for now, his family has completely stepped up. Shane and Maverick are especially invested, constantly buying the little one the cutest gifts until my house is absolutely overflowing with them, trying to be the best uncle.

  Even Hank has taken an interest in me. Hank is a hard-nosed man and a tough nut to crack but he’s calling me now at least once a week outside of the weekly dinners just to see how I am. It’s absolutely sweet.

  I splash some water on my face and then dot on some supposed anti-dark circle under-eye cream that does shit all, then I join my mother in the kitchen.

  True enough, she’s shooing away Conan.

  He’s a full-fledged adult squirrel now and as cute as can be.

  And fat, very fat. With a big pink tummy and a bushy tail.

  He actually turned out to be a wonderful pet, even though that was never Fox’s intention. It just turned out that he was with us for so long that he eventually became too tame to be returned to the wild.

  Then, when Fox said he was moving to Whistler for the winter for work, there was no point in me traveling to his place anymore to look after him, so Conan moved in with me.

  And my mom.

  She says she’s not a fan but I think she secretly is.

  Like right now, he’s trying to lick up the honey that spilled over the edge of her tea and though my mom’s hands shake, I think she spills it on purpose.

  “Come on Conan,” I say with a sigh, picking him up around his fat middle and putting him down on the couch. Several times a day we let Conan out, when we’re home to supervise him of course. He’s curious as fuck and gets into everything. Otherwise he hangs out in his giant cage that we’ve put in the living room so he can watch Wheel of Fortune with my mother, which isn’t much of a bother since he doesn’t smell at all and even when he’s running around the house, squirrel poop is small, odorless and easy to clean up.

  Not at all like a baby but I’m getting ready for that. I’m both excited that it’s only a few months now that I’ll get to meet my little one and scared to death that something is going to go wrong.

  “Still not getting enough sleep?” my mother asks me.

  I shake my head and pour myself a cup of tea. I would die for some coffee. Or a beer. But you know how that goes. The pre-natal tea I’m drinking gallons of will have to do.

  “I don’t know what it is. I just can’t seem to turn off my brain but I’m exhausted and I just want to sleep more than anything. I get so tempted to get up and start vacuuming.”

  “You know with your high blood pressure that you’re supposed to rest and take it easy, have a bath or read a book instead,” she says to me over her mug. “And sit down for goodness sake.”

  I’m about to, my hand on the back of the chair, when my lower abs squeeze together painfully, like a fist is pulling it inward.

  “Oh,” I cry out, spilling the tea as I hunch over, the water scalding my hand. “And ow, my hand.”

  “What is it?” my mother says getting to her feet.

  I close my eyes, feeling the pressure and pinch of pain as my mother takes the mug away from me and rubs my back. Then the pressure relaxes. “Oh, it’s gone,” I tell her, straightening up. “I don’t know what that was.”

  “Braxton Hicks maybe?” she says.

  “I don’t know, I thought I had those a few weeks ago but it didn’t hurt. This one was—”

  And I’m cut off as the pain comes back and now I’m doubling over. I cry out as it feels like a vice inside me has pulled my uterus and stomach and groin all together.

  “You need to drink more water,” my mother says, scrambling to get me a glass. “You’re dehydrated.”

  “It’s like bad cramps,” I cry out, clutching my stomach. “Bad, bad cramps.”

  She tries to put the glass of water in front of my face but I can’t do anything but try to breathe.

  “Drink it, that’s what it is,” she says. “Your water isn’t breaking, it’s just Braxton Hicks, you’re thirsty, tired, everything.”

  “This doesn’t feel right,” I manage to say and once the pain subsides again I drink most of the water down. “I should probably go to the hospital, just in case.”

  I give her a pleading look. I know that she’s probably right and it’s nothing but I’m just so paranoid, how can I not want to get this checked out.

  “You’re right. Let’s go,” she says, taking me by the arm.

  “Can you put Conan back in the cage?”

  Normally she hates this since Conan can easily scratch up your arms with his little claws, even though he doesn’t mean to, but now she does it without saying anything and luckily he doesn’t give her any trouble.

  Five minutes later we’re at the hospital in the waiting room and my doctor, Dr. Fielding, is there.

  He takes us both into a private room and starts running the usual series of checks. The whole time, my contractions keep coming, sharp bouts of pain but they don’t seem to be building in strength and eventually they get further apart.

  “I’m afraid it’s just Braxton Hicks,” Dr. Fielding says, examining me as I lie on the table. “Of course that’s a good thing. You’re just dehydrated.”

  “That’s what I told her,” my mother says rather triumphantly. “She’s also not sleeping well and she’s very stressed.”

  “I’m fine,” I speak up, not wanting them to worry. “Really.”

  My mother leans in closer to the doctor. “She’s still training this girl to take over her bar.”

  The doctor looks at me in surprise. “You shouldn’t be working at all at this point, especially with your high blood pressure. You should be resting. And nesting. Those are the rules.”

  “I’m almost done.” And that’s true. It took an awful long time to find someone suitable to run The Bear Trap while I’m on self-imposed maternity leave, but I managed to find Vanessa, who actually used to be on the swim team with me, though she was a few years older. Even so, I want to make sure everything is running perfectly before she completely takes over. The bar is everything I have at this point.

  “And the father?” Dr. Fielding asks. He always uses the word father like Fox is he who must not be named. I mean, he knows who Fox is, everyone does, he’s not Lord Voldemort.

  “What about him?” I ask, feeling defensive. I know Fox is getting a bad rap for going off to Whistler and leaving me here instead of finding a job locally and maybe it’s
well-deserved. But I’m still the one who turned down his proposal and pushed him away. I want to yell that sometimes when people start talking about him like he’s some deadbeat dad that wants nothing to do with me and the baby.

  “Do you know now when or if he’ll be back,” he says. “There are still some classes he can do to catch up, that’s assuming he wants to be involved.”

  “He’ll be involved,” my mother tells him, adamant.

  “Good,” the doctor says, shoving his glasses up on his nose and marking some things off on the chart. “Just want to make sure everyone involved with the baby is up to speed. Now, I’ll want to see you back at the office in two weeks for your thirty-week pre-natal exam, okay?”

  I nod absently, used to all these appointments by now.

  “Oh and one more thing,” he says, patting me on the hand as I slowly sit up. “Please make sure you take time for yourself. Stress has never done favors for anyone, especially not for pregnant women. Once you’ve got someone else running the pub, take time to relax. Start nesting if you haven’t already. If you need help, don’t be afraid to ask for it. I know you’re strong and independent Delilah but you have a whole team of people in this town who would love to help you if you let them.”

  But as I go home later and crawl into bed, preparing for another night of tossing back and forth, the doctor’s words crash through my head like rocks.

  I have a whole team of people in this town who would be there for me.

  But there’s only one person in this town, in this province, in this country, in this world, that matters to me.

  And I pushed him away.

  I pushed him away because I wanted his love and now, now I don’t have him at all.

  I have texts and emails, empty words that don’t even hint at the person leaving them. I know nothing about how Fox really is. I don’t know if he’s happy. I don’t know if he cares.

  But of course I know that. I know he cares. He just doesn’t love me.

  “Fuck,” I sob, my hands making fists into my pillow.

  Suddenly the hurt comes over me like a hammer.