One More Time

by Ali Parker

  Her words didn’t leave my mind, echoing as if they’d been planted there. Was she right? Was any relationship that I even tried having just completely doomed? Clouds started rolling in over the bay, and they seemed to bring my answer. It was yes.

  As long as I lived the life I did, there was no way any relationship I even tried having was anything but doomed. As far as the world was concerned, I was living a charmed life. But they were wrong. It wasn’t charmed. It was cursed.

  Chapter 24

  Kelly

  It was time to own up to my relationship with Caleb. It’d been part of my plan since my last conversation with Alicia to let my managing editor know that I’d slept with a subject, and my plans remained the same.

  More than twenty-four hours had passed since I’d taken those little tests that would irrevocably change the course of my life, and while I was still shaken all the way to my bones, it was time to start planning. I had to take control of the situation, or as much control as I could, at least.

  That started with the dial tone humming in the emptiness of my room, waiting for me to place the call to my employer and face my fate. Mentally crossing my fingers and toes, I punched in the office line and then the private extension for the editor’s office.

  “Go for Hannah,” she barked into the phone. My heart stammered and skipped a beat or two, but then I found my voice.

  “Hannah, this is Kelly.” My voice was slightly shaky, but it was loud enough to be heard.

  “Kelly, is everything okay with the Imperial Inspection tour?” she asked in a much more relaxed tone than she’d answered with.

  “Everything’s fine with the tour,” I told her, steeling myself for the moment when I had to tell her the purpose of my call. It took every ounce of courage I didn’t even know I could muster, but I finally managed to relay the nutshell version of the story.

  Hannah was quiet for a long time after I finished, finally making an annoyed clicking sound with her tongue. “You say this has been going on for weeks?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I gulped, walking over to my hotel windows to open them for some desperately needed fresh air, only to remember that they didn’t open. Crap. I jabbed the button of the air conditioning remote instead, turning the temperature all the way down.

  “And you’re only telling me now?” Hannah snapped, clearly impatient and frustrated.

  “It didn’t seem necessary before,” I answered, not really knowing why that was relevant.

  Hannah sighed deeply. “It’s always necessary. Next time, you’re to tell me the second you find yourself in a compromising position, okay?”

  Next time? I definitely wasn’t planning on there being a next time, so my answer was really a no-brainer. “No problem. Definitely.”

  “We’ll have to make a public statement, but I think the nature of your coverage on this assignment is such that I don’t think it’ll ultimately be a very big deal this time round. Next time though, if you don’t tell me right away, it will end up costing you your job. Understood?”

  “I do. I understand.” Immense relief rolled through me that this conversation hadn’t cost me my job. I’d survived the first hurdle. It wasn’t going to make one lick of difference in how Caleb was going to handle the news, but at least it was step one.

  Telling him about my pregnancy was a problem I had yet to resolve, but I intended to get it done sooner rather than later. These kinds of secrets had a way of getting out to bite you in the ass if you didn’t deal with them correctly. I’d seen the movie and read the book too many times to think it would end any differently for me.

  No. There would be no secret pregnancy or secret baby. This baby’s daddy was going to be told, and if he flipped out, well then, so be it. I still would’ve respected him enough to have told him the truth.

  Besides, I didn’t know how Caleb felt about children, but maybe after the initial shock, it wouldn’t be so bad. With that thought in mind, I punched in the next number of my to-do list.

  Caleb answered with a quiet, gruff, “Hello?”

  “Hey. It’s me. Kelly.” Holy moly. It felt like someone had poured all the sand in the desert down my throat.

  Unfortunately, Caleb didn’t sound excited to hear from me either. Instead, he sounded flat and maybe even a little pissed. “Hey, Kelly. What’s up?”

  “Not much,” I answered hurriedly, unless you count me growing your baby at this exact moment in time—though I didn’t add that bit. “I was wondering, could I come over to your suite later?”

  Given how enthusiastically he’d tried to keep me there the other night, I wasn’t expecting the hesitant tone that I got. “Uh. Sure. Okay, what time?”

  “Couple of hours?” I suggested. Caleb agreed, again not quite as enthusiastically as I might’ve hoped, but we agreed on a time and hung up.

  When the time came for me to go to his suite, I was a puddle of sweat and nerves. I knocked softly on his door and was surprised when he opened it looking like he’d gone a few rounds with the devil himself.

  Whatever was bothering him though, he pushed it back when he saw me and wrapped me up in a warm hug. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said simply, following him into the room. I declined his offer of a drink and took a seat on one of his couches, making myself at home as he’d invited me to do. “What’s up with you? You don’t look so good.”

  “Thanks,” he scoffed, a rare, shy smile curling up the corners of his lips. “I feel okay, though it’s no thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I took your advice. I called Elizabeth.” I froze as he said it. It’d been my idea, and I’d wanted him to follow through, but I also thought I’d know when he saw her.

  I couldn’t let him see that I was suddenly plagued by uncertainty and worry about whether seeing her had made him realize that he was, in fact, still in love with her. “How’d that go?”

  Caleb smiled and raked a hand through his hair. His shoulders seemed lighter. Whatever else had happened, it had to have to been worth it to see him looking so much more carefree.

  “It went well. I’m glad I did it. It made me feel much better about the whole thing.” The truth was in his eyes when he spoke the words, and it was a beautiful sight to see. Caleb was finally free of Elizabeth and all the messed up, lingering emotions that’d been festering for so long.

  I wished that I didn’t have to drop a fresh bomb on him, that he could’ve had just one day of peace. But the truth had to come out, and I knew that despite my personal feelings on the timing, sooner was always better than later.

  The words wouldn’t come to me as I stood there watching him, the way he moved so much freer now. Should I just blurt it out? How the hell did I tell him?

  Just as I was about to launch into the conversation, things took a turn for the worse. The much, much worse.

  “Seeing her and speaking to her about what happened back then, it made me think a lot. It made me realize some things about the life I’d chosen when I chose Destitute over her.”

  “It did?” My voice was small now as I waited for him to finish his thought process. A part of me already knew what was coming though. By instinct or powers of deduction, I didn’t know. I just did.

  “Yeah. For example, she made me realize that I’d make a terrible damn father right now. Kids were always part of her plan, you know? She was never shy about it, and I accepted it. I always thought that we’d somehow have been able to make it work. Now I know that could never have happened. I’m never around. At the very least until Destitute stops touring one day, I wouldn’t have been able to have any kids.”

  “You wouldn’t?” I squeaked, wondering how the hell it’d happened that we were having this conversation after his baby was already in the room with us. Tiny and unbeknownst to him, but it was still there.

  “No, it would’ve been crazy. And it also made me realize that I don’t want any kids for a long, long time. Liz made it all seem so damn real, and there was no way I would’ve
been able to handle it right now.” Caleb paused, chuckling. “Besides, I think I just need to learn how to be with a woman first before I could even begin to think about a kid.”

  Something shattered inside me when Caleb blew out a relieved breath, looking like he firmly believed he’d dodged a bullet. Glass shattered inside me, and it was all I could do not to cave in on myself. My knees went numb, and my stomach rolled, though this time I was sure it wasn’t from morning sickness.

  Thinking about it, I realized that it wasn’t glass that had shattered. It was my heart. I’d been holding out hope, albeit only a faint glimmer, that Caleb was going to sweep me up into his arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay.

  Clearly, that wasn’t to be the case. As those last shreds of hope flew from my body and evaporated like mist under the morning sun, the answer of what I had to do came to me with as much clarity. I wasn’t going to force Caleb into this parenthood thing with me.

  He was living his dream, and maybe now he’d finally be able to enjoy it. I wasn’t going to be the one who took that away from him. I’d fought to give his dream back to him. That was why I encouraged him to see her in the first place.

  I’d be damned if I was now responsible for the next event that would keep him from living every moment to the fullest. I realized that he bore half the responsibility for having conceived this baby, and eventually, I would tell him. Maybe when that one day hit when he was ready to have children.

  I had a lot to figure out, and undoubtedly, there would be a lot more lies before the truth came out, but I just couldn’t grab this one happy moment and replace it with yet another life-altering event. I just couldn’t. The man had been through enough. He deserved to enjoy the fruits of his labor for once.

  I cleared my throat to rid myself of the lump that had lodged there and turned away from him for a second to regain my composure.

  “That’s great, Caleb. Seriously. I’m happy that seeing her put things into perspective for you. On that note, I wanted to talk to you about something.” I tucked my shaking hands into my pockets before he noticed them.

  Caleb’s dark eyes met mine and bored into them. “Yeah, I figured as much when you called. What’s up?”

  “We’re still friends, right?”

  “Sure,” he answered easily, looking a little puzzled. “Why?”

  “Good. It’s good that we are.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm the full-body shaking that was trying to take over. “Because while we are, I think that it’s for the best if we just end things now.”

  “What?” Caleb’s brow crinkled, and confusion clouded his eyes. He took two steps back, surprised. “Why? We’re just having fun, aren’t we? That shouldn’t ruin our friendship. Why wouldn’t we continue just enjoying ourselves?”

  Because I stopped enjoying myself? I wanted to scream at him, but I kept a lid on it. It wasn’t true anyway. Every moment spent with Caleb was fun. It’d just turned into so much more than that for me. And our little jelly bean growing inside me? It was evidence of how much more.

  “I don’t want things with us to end on a bad note. We’re on a high note right now. Better to end here, isn’t it?”

  His eyes widened in surprise, his shoulders hunching down. “Is that really what you want?”

  “It is,” I said firmly. If there was so much as a hint of uncertainty in my voice, I would land in his bed in no time.

  Caleb dragged a hand through his hair, pinching his neck as he stared at me, nodding absently. “Okay. Okay then. If that’s what you want. Let’s end it on a high note, shall we? Pal?”

  Chapter 25

  Caleb

  My head wasn’t in practice that day. Memories of my conversations with Kelly and Elizabeth earlier in the week kept swimming around my head, but luckily, I could pretty much play the set list in my sleep by this point, so I got through practice without anyone picking up on my mood or my lack of concentration.

  When we were finished, Jared strode up to me, dodging the crew that were streaming onto the stage to complete the setup for the next session and stopping to have a quick talk with the sound guy. He clapped the man on the shoulder once he was done and kept moving across to me.

  “You ready for the next show?” he asked when he got close.

  “Always.” Turning my thumb up, I raised it to him and turned to leave. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with Jared. I had enough to think about.

  Mistaking my hurry to get away from him, Jared laughed. “Where’s the fire? Kelly’s not going anywhere, you know? She’s on tour with us for the foreseeable future.”

  “Not going to see her,” I clipped out. I would’ve loved it if I was, even if only to get answers, but she was done with me. Out of fucking nowhere.

  Jared’s laughter stopped abruptly, and he whistled low. “You’re not hanging out with Kelly tonight? Why not?”

  “We’re over,” I told him, my eyes narrowing as irritation over his interrogation started rising from my stomach. I loved my brother, but the guy really had to stop meddling.

  Surprise flashed in Jared’s eyes, and he stepped back, raising his hands in surrender. “Woah. Okay, how the hell did that happen?”

  “The usual way.”

  “Caleb.” His voice was low. This was Kelly we were talking about, his fiancée’s sister. He wasn’t letting me off that easily. I sighed and turned toward him.

  “Remember I told you she wanted me to meet with Elizabeth?”

  Jared’s hands dropped, and he jutted out his chin, tension suddenly taking hold of his shoulders and radiating from him. “Christ. Please tell me you didn’t—”

  “I didn’t fuck her,” I insisted, slightly disgusted that he’d even asked. I would’ve been pissed, but the reality was that I hadn’t exactly given him any reason to think that I wouldn’t have.

  He didn’t respond immediately, looking me up and down until he gave a slight nod. “I believe you. What happened?”

  “I called Liz up, invited her to the hotel,” I started, every detail vividly replaying in my mind’s eye as I told him what happened. “She agreed, came over. We talked. I finally got closure, just like Kelly said I would.”

  “And then?” Jared angled his head slightly to the side, folding his arms. He wasn’t going to make this any easier on me.

  “And then nothing. She asked me never to contact her again, and she left. Kelly calls me up the next day, asks if she can come over. I said yes. She shows up, we talk about Elizabeth and what happened with her, and the next thing I know, she’s telling me that she’s happy for me, but that she wants to end things with us on a positive note. Then she’s gone too.”

  “End things on a positive note?” he repeated flatly. “That sounds like bullshit. What’d you do, bro?”

  It was times like this that Jared made me want to grab him by his Imperial Inspection Tour T-shirt and shove him against a wall, and perhaps shove my foot up his ass. He stood completely still, unmoving until he plucked his sunglasses from his shirt and sucked one of its arms into his mouth, still staring at me.

  Crews were starting to give us curious glances, not used to us hanging around for so long after our practices and certainly not used to us having personal conversations while they were around. They’d all signed non-disclosure agreements, I was sure, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable having this conversation here.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I grumbled at Jared and then jerked my head to the backstage area and the privacy that lay beyond it. “Let’s walk.”

  Jared nodded and followed me down the stairs. We were both quiet as we wound our way through roadies and crew, dodged the brave few who dared approach us, and made our way out of the venue.

  Today’s practice was held at the venue we were using for the last show in San Diego, and tomorrow’s would be as well. Then it was showtime. And then we could finally leave our damn hometown behind us once again.

  Once again, I’d lost something here. Someone that I cared about. I
wasn’t looking forward to ever coming back again. It wasn’t the place’s fault. I knew that much. But I wasn’t meant to be happy, not here.

  Jared and I pushed through the doors to the cordoned-off section of the parking lot, stopping when we reached my truck. As soon as we’d stepped outside, we’d both slid our sunglasses over our eyes, and positioned as we were behind my vehicle, the few straggling members of the paparazzi hoping to get a shot as we came or went wouldn’t have a good angle.

  I’d hoped that our being outside now would deter Jared from wanting to talk and make him want to take refuge behind his tinted windows in his ridiculously fancy sports car, but he crossed his arms and turned toward me. He wasn’t going anywhere until he got answers. Great.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I repeated angrily. “We talked. I told her how things went with Elizabeth, and then bam, she’s asking me if we’re friends and telling me we should stop while we still are.”

  “Still sounds strange,” Jared mumbled, seemingly staring at something behind my shoulder before turning his head toward mine again. “It doesn’t feel like something a chick would say. Not just like that. Maybe if she had some kind of precursor. What’d you say? You must’ve said something that triggered it.”

  The irritation that had been building in me turned to anger. To fury. Red hot and coursing through me at frightening levels. Why was it that Jared always assumed I’d fucked something up? Why did I always have to be the one in the wrong?

  “I didn’t do shit, and I didn’t say shit.” He opened his mouth to reply, but I held up my hand to stop him. I was done with his stupid questions. “I was completely honest with her. For the first time in fucking forever, it felt like things were good, like they would be good. I could finally, fucking finally, really put Liz and all that shit behind me. Then the chick who got it to happen and who also happens to be the chick that I think I’m falling in love with shows up and tells me that it’s over.”