by Jenna Sutton
She wasn’t exaggerating. And it wasn’t an exaggeration to say the past twenty-four hours had been the worst day of her life.
“It meant something,” she added.
He shook his head slowly, and a wave of anger washed over her. He had to be lying.
“Yes, it did,” she countered. “It meant something to me. And it meant something to you, too. I know you care about me.”
He shook his head again, and she swallowed thickly. Did he know he was destroying her?
“It wasn’t just sex for me,” she whispered. “I’m in love with you.”
His eyes widened, a mix of incredulity and disgust on his handsome face, and he dropped his hands to his sides. He backed away from her, and she closed the space between them.
Placing her hands on his chest, she looked up at him. “I don’t want to lose you.”
She hated herself for begging, but words broke free from her heart and spilled out of her mouth. “It’s okay if you don’t want to be with me—if you don’t feel the same. We can still be friends. I promise it can be like it used to be.”
She meant every word she said. She would take whatever he was willing to give her.
Shaking his head, he gripped her wrists and gently pulled her hands off his chest. “No.”
“What?” she gasped. “You don’t even want to be friends anymore?”
“No,” he repeated, releasing her hands.
She shook her head in disbelief, unwilling to accept what he had said. “But why?”
He stared into her eyes for a long moment before turning on his heel and striding from the room. Seconds later, Vanessa joined Teagan, a bottle of water in her slender hands. She handed it to her before gesturing toward the front of the condo.
“Nick asked me to show you out. He wanted me to say good-bye for him.”
* * *
“It’s going to be okay, kanya.”
Teagan looked at Bebe, who perched on the edge of the bathtub. Her vision wavered a little bit, and her best friend patted her knee.
“Breathe, Teagan.”
Teagan nodded, shifting on top of the hard lid of the toilet. She took a deep breath, trying to breathe through her mouth rather than her nose so she wouldn’t throw up again.
She placed the pregnancy test on the bathroom counter, lining it up with the other three tests that were already there. All four had big plus signs on them.
Congratulations! You’re pregnant!
She’d had no idea she was pregnant even though she had been fighting nausea off and on for weeks, along with exhaustion. She had thought it was stress-related. Her emotions had been all over the place, something she’d also attributed to stress. She’d been bitchy one moment and teary-eyed the next.
Bebe must have noticed Teagan’s moodiness because this evening after class, she’d shown up at her condo with a bottle of wine and a plastic bag printed with the name of the local drugstore. Teagan had reached for the wine, intending to open it, but Bebe handed her the bag instead, saying, “This first, and then we’ll see about the wine.”
Teagan had peeked inside the bag, expecting chocolate. She laughed incredulously when she saw the pregnancy tests inside it.
“There’s no way I’m pregnant,” she had said, supremely confident.
Bebe had raised her eyebrows at Teagan’s claim. “Go pee on a stick, kanya, and then we’ll talk,” she’d said, pointing toward the bathroom.
Turned out that Teagan wouldn’t be drinking any wine that night, or for the next nine months.
“You have to tell Nick.”
“I know,” she replied before starting to cry again.
Bebe leaned forward, wrapping her arm around Teagan and pulling her close. She rubbed her hand up and down Teagan’s arm.
“You’ve always said you wanted kids,” Bebe reminded her. “In fact, you said you wanted a lot of kids.”
“I know. But I never envisioned being a single mother. I wanted a husband, and I wanted my kids to have a father.”
“Your baby has a father.”
Yes, her baby had a father. A man who used women and threw away friends like garbage. A man whom she loved more than anything or anyone.
She hiccupped, and Bebe handed her a tissue so she could wipe her eyes. She dabbed them and looked up to meet Bebe’s golden gaze.
“You’re only seven weeks pregnant. It’s not too late to have an abortion.”
Teagan shuddered, pressing her hand against her lower stomach. She’d barely had time to wrap her mind around the fact that she was pregnant, but she already knew she wasn’t getting rid of this baby. Somehow she already loved it as much as she loved its father.
“No,” she said fiercely.
Bebe nodded, clearly unsurprised by her vehemence. She resumed her perch on the tub, tilting her head.
“You’re going to be a great mother, kanya. This baby won the mommy lotto.”
Teagan laughed huskily. What would I do without Bebe?
Her best friend had been waiting at the airport when she’d returned from San Francisco, shell-shocked and heartbroken. Teagan’s dad was sick, and her whole family was struggling to come to terms with his illness. His colon cancer was advanced, stage IIIB. The oncologist had recommended surgery to remove part of her dad’s colon, along with radiation and chemo.
Teagan couldn’t wait for school to be over so she could move back to San Francisco permanently. She was so eager to get home she wasn’t even going to go through the pomp and circumstance of graduation.
Her dad’s type of cancer had a five-year survival rate of less than fifty percent. He was fighting for his life, and she needed to be there with him.
And now she had to think about a baby—Nick’s baby.
“How did this happen?” Teagan asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
“I assume that’s a rhetorical question, since you know how babies are made,” Bebe replied, laughing lightly.
“I’m serious! We used condoms every single time. And they were brand new. And I got my period.”
“Condoms are one of the least effective forms of birth control. They have a twenty percent failure rate, which means one out of five women will get pregnant, even with proper usage.”
“Seriously?” Teagan glared at Bebe. “You’re giving me a lecture on birth control now?”
Bebe continued, ignoring her snarky comment. “You said your period was early and really light. So it was probably spotting from the implantation of the embryo in the uterine wall.”
She stood and scooped the pregnancy tests from the bathroom counter, dropping them in the wastebasket. She beckoned Bebe from the small room with a crook of her finger, and they headed toward the living area, where she collapsed on the sofa.
As Bebe curled up in an armchair, she asked, “Are you still planning to move back to San Francisco as soon as finals are over?”
Teagan looked at Bebe in surprise. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because the father of your child is here.”
She considered Bebe’s point. She didn’t know what to expect from Nick when she told him she was pregnant. She dreaded the conversation, especially after what had happened the last time they’d talked.
She wished she could erase that horrible morning in his condo from her memory. She had humiliated herself, first by telling him she was in love with him and then by begging him to be her friend.
Nick had disappeared from her life as if he’d never existed. It was eerily familiar to when Jason had broken up with her, and she wondered why it was so easy for the men she loved to forget her.
Nick had made it clear he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. He didn’t even want to be friends with her any longer, and that hurt more than him saying their night together didn’t matter.
And now he was never going to
be free of her because she was going to be the mother of his firstborn child. Or maybe not. Maybe he had a whole passel of illegitimate children. How would she know?
“I’m scared to tell Nick about the baby.”
“I would be, too. But you still have to do it. You have to give him a chance to do the right thing.”
“And what is the right thing exactly?” Teagan asked sarcastically. “I don’t need his money. I have plenty of my own.”
“You know it’s not just about money,” Bebe countered softly. “You need to give him the opportunity to be a father. It’s up to him whether he takes it.”
Chapter 21
The concrete stairs were cold against the backs of Nick’s knees, and he shifted to find a more comfortable position. He’d been sitting in the stairwell of Teagan’s building for more than an hour, trying to work up the courage to knock on her door.
It had been three weeks since she’d stopped by his condo, and he’d had plenty of time to think about how badly he’d fucked things up. He didn’t know what to do to make them right, but he had to do something because he was a miserable bastard without Teagan. And he finally knew why: he was in love with her.
Letty was the one who’d finally made him see the truth about his feelings for Teagan. He was ashamed he hadn’t figured it out on his own, but he was grateful the older woman had opened his eyes.
The night he had spent with Teagan had scared the shit out of him. It had been unlike anything he’d ever experienced, and when he had woken up in her bed just before dawn, he’d had a meltdown to rival Chernobyl.
There was no other way to describe it. His chest had felt tight, and he’d been overwhelmed by a sense of doom. He’d been convinced he had destroyed their friendship—convinced he had destroyed everything.
On some level, he had realized the difference between sex and sex with someone you loved. And instead of trying to work through things, he’d run away.
He had needed time to adjust, just like Teagan had said. She knew him better than he knew himself, and that was one of the reasons he’d gone bat shit crazy in the first place.
In the weeks following their night together, he tried to forget the taste of her lips, the smoothness of her skin, and the look in her eyes when he was deep inside her. He tried to forget the way he felt when he was with her.
He had called Tuesday, a woman he’d been screwing on and off for months, and met her in a hotel room just like always. But her eyes hadn’t been blue enough, her hair hadn’t been dark enough, and her smile hadn’t been sweet enough, so he’d left her in the room without unzipping his pants.
He had wanted Teagan and only Teagan. But even then he hadn’t realized why. He was such a fool.
He ran a hand over his hair, wondering how he was going to explain his feelings to Teagan when he could barely squeeze out a word. The conversation they’d had at his condo was proof he turned nearly mute when he was upset. He still couldn’t believe what he’d said to her that morning. Or better yet, what he hadn’t said.
He had been so shocked to see her, and he’d been torn between wanting to kiss her and wanting to kick her out of his condo. He should have fallen to his knees and begged her to forgive him for leaving her bed without a word, and then he should have taken her to his bedroom and worshipped her body.
At the time, he hadn’t understood his feelings for her, and when she had asked him if he regretted their night together, he’d answered honestly. He had regretted it, and he had thought it had been a mistake.
But he hadn’t been honest when he had let her think it hadn’t meant anything. The opposite was true.
And he had no idea what he’d been thinking when he rejected her after she told him she loved him. He wondered how she could love him when he’d never done anything to earn her love. He had been convinced she had confused love with great sex. And holy shit, it had been more than great. It had been mind-blowing.
But he had really fucked the duck when he’d told her he didn’t want to be friends anymore. After having sex with her, he’d known he couldn’t go back to the ways things used to be. He would have been all over her every time they were together.
But he hadn’t been able to articulate that. She’d misunderstood, and he hadn’t done anything to set her straight because he figured it was for the best.
Vanessa had obviously told her mother about Teagan’s visit because Letty gave him an ear-blistering unlike he’d ever received. She’d arrived at the condo just minutes after Teagan had left, and she’d ranted at him for nearly an hour.
She ended her lecture with a bomb. “You’re in love with Teagan!” she’d screeched.
Her words had hit him with the force of a 350-pound linebacker, and he’d immediately denied it. In response, Letty had slapped him on the side of the head as if he were a five-year-old who’d just stolen a cookie from the cookie jar.
“You’re an idiot!” she’d bellowed directly into his ear, damn near deafening him.
And she had been right. He was an idiot for not realizing long ago that he was in love with Teagan, and he hated himself for it. He knew Teagan must hate him, too—with good reason.
After Teagan’s unexpected visit to his condo and Letty’s eye-opening lecture, he had needed some time alone. He had packed a duffle bag and booked a flight to Denver, and when he arrived in Colorado, he holed up in an isolated cabin high in the Rocky Mountains with his phone turned off.
When he finally turned it back on, fifty messages were waiting for him. Most of them were from Quinn, Letty, and Elijah, but a few were from Teagan. She hadn’t said much, only asking him to call her. As soon as he’d heard her messages, he’d jumped on a flight back to Boston.
Quinn’s messages had passed along the bad news about James, and Nick knew Teagan would be devastated by her dad’s diagnosis. He’d come directly from the airport to see her, but chickened out when he reached her floor.
He shifted again. If he didn’t get up soon, his knees were going to ache like a bitch tomorrow.
The door to the sixth floor opened behind him, and he lurched to his feet. He turned and stepped up to the landing, hoping it wasn’t Teagan. He wasn’t ready to face her yet.
Shit.
It was Marshall Brants.
Marshall froze when he saw Nick, his eyes narrowed in dislike. After a tense moment, he stepped closer, and Nick realized the other man was much larger than he’d remembered. In fact, he reminded him a little bit of Quinn, except for the brown eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Marshall asked, planting his hands on his hips. “Teagan told me less than an hour ago that things were over between the two of you.”
Nick worked to keep his face impassive, but he obviously failed because Marshall smiled mockingly. “Yeah, she’s done with you. I don’t know what you did, but man, she hates your guts. You had your chance, and you fucked up. Big-time.”
Nick tried to step around Marshall. He had to see Teagan. Right now.
Marshall blocked him, and Nick battled the impulse to smash his fist into the other man’s face. He didn’t think Teagan would be very happy if he got into a fistfight in the stairwell of her building.
“Why can’t you leave her alone?”
When Nick didn’t answer, Marshall’s eyebrows rose. “You’re a real asshole, you know that? Teagan kept telling me you were a nice guy who wasn’t interested in her, but I knew something was up.”
Marshall shook his head. “We’re just friends,” he said in a high falsetto, obviously mimicking Teagan. “Really good friends, but just friends.” He made a rude noise. “I knew you wouldn’t waste your time with her unless you wanted to fuck her.”
Marshall held up his hands, palms out. “I don’t blame you, man. I’ve been trying to get in her pants for months. I wondered why she wouldn’t let me in, but now I know. You were cock blocking me.”
N
ick clenched his fists. He was fucking ecstatic Teagan hadn’t slept with Marshall, but he was this close to ramming the man’s head into the wall.
“You can get a piece of ass anywhere,” Marshall said, pushing Nick’s chest with both hands and forcing him into the wall. “Why do you have to mess with Teagan?”
As Nick stared at Marshall, he suddenly realized the other man wasn’t just jealous. He was trying to protect Teagan. That fact alone prevented Nick from taking Marshall apart with his bare hands.
“She’s too good for you. Hell, she’s too good for me.” Marshall sighed. “She’s amazing.” He poked Nick’s chest with his forefinger. “And she deserves more than a dickhead like you.”
Nick swallowed thickly. Marshall was right. Teagan was amazing, and she definitely deserved more than a dickhead like him.
“What do you have to offer other than money?” Marshall continued. “She doesn’t need that. What she really wants is a husband and kids. Are you willing to give her that?”
Nick pushed Marshall away from him, and the other man stepped back. He pointed at Nick.
“Do you really think you can make Teagan happy? I don’t. In fact, I doubt you could even be faithful to her.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath,” he muttered, starting down the stairs. “You’re just another rich, entitled athlete who treats women like shit. You’re worse than Tiger Woods. Asshole.”
Nick watched Marshall’s broad back disappear down the stairs before sinking down onto the top step. Bracing his elbows on his knees, he dropped his head into his hands and considered Marshall’s question.
What could he offer Teagan? He loved her, but he didn’t know if he’d be good at loving her.
He had never been in love before. He was an emotional virgin. And before Teagan, he didn’t think anyone had ever loved him. Maybe his mother had loved him, but there was no way for him to know.
He didn’t know how to be a boyfriend, let alone a husband, and he definitely didn’t know how to be a father. In fact, his stuttering guaranteed he would fail in all those roles. It was a death knell for relationships.