“Are you ready to go in?” Levi asks.
“Sure. Yeah, let’s get this over with. Just like ripping off a Band-Aid, right?” I walk up to the door with hands that are shaking so hard I can’t get the key in the lock.
Levi takes the key from me, unlocks the door, and pushes it open. The dark interior fills with the staccato beeping of an alarm, and he swings into the house to press the glowing buttons on the panel. After the beeping stops, he flips on the lights, illuminating the living room. “We assumed you’d be coming home and wanted to make sure you’d be safe here.”
“Oh.” Goose bumps prickle to life down my arms, and I try to rub them away. “Thanks.” I step into the house and stare at the panel.
“To disarm it or arm it, just press the star twice and then the code, 102469, followed by the star.” He laughs. “And I guess I could have told you that at the bar. It’s not exactly technical.”
“No, but I’m glad you came.” I look around the living room. “It’s weird to be back here. I’m not sure I’d have had the courage to walk in the door without you.”
He clears his throat. “Directions on how to work it are on the coffee table, and you can change the code with the security company if you don’t want to use the one I set.” He meets my eyes for a long beat. “Just promise me you’ll use it, okay?”
“I promise.”
“Ava and I have been over a few times to check on things, and the neighbors keep an eye out too. Your nosy neighbor across the street is probably the reason you’re alive. The night you were hospitalized, she heard shouting and called the police.”
I wonder what kind of shouting she heard. Was I arguing with someone or simply crying for help? “I guess I’ll write her a thank-you note. The old prude proved useful after all.”
He grunts. “You do remember.”
“She isn’t a fan of PDA, and Colton never had a problem with it. He’d kiss me out front or grab my ass, and she’d flip out.”
He shrugs, clearly not interested in talking about my escapades in PDA with Colton. “Do you remember this place too then?”
I nod. “I do. I bought it not long after I left the gallery.”
He cocks his head to the side. “You never told me. Why did you leave the gallery?”
My instinct is to give him an honest answer, but if I tell him the truth, he might ask why I didn’t call the cops to report the stolen paintings. Even though I trust Levi on a gut level I can’t explain, I don’t know enough about him to know if I should. “Nelson and I didn’t see eye to eye. It was time for me to move on.”
He lets it go with that. “So, I don’t need to show you where the bathroom is or to explain that you need to push and turn the knob on the kitchen sink to keep it from leaking?”
“I think I’m good.”
His broad chest expands, and he points a thumb toward the front door. “Then I guess I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Would you stay for a minute?” I blurt before he can move. “I know I have the alarm and everything, but I’d rather not be alone until I’ve walked through the whole house.”
“Sure.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks around. “The place was a little bit of a mess after the police searched it, but Ava and I cleaned it up.”
“You didn’t have to do any of this.” A sharp stab of guilt hits me center mass. My friends were cleaning up my house and installing an alarm system, and I was planning to spend the rest of my life pretending they didn’t exist.
“Of course we did. That’s what friends do.”
That ache again. For friendships I don’t remember well enough to understand. For a life so different than the one I believed I needed to hide from.
Levi leads the way through the house, flipping on the lights in each room and quietly letting me look around before moving to the next space. When we get to the bathroom, he pulls back the shower curtain and grins at me. “Always have to check behind the curtain.”
I relax a little and move the rest of the way down the hall. I hit the lights to my bedroom but freeze when I catch a glimpse of the other bedroom from the corner of my eye.
I walk into it slowly. The crib. The cartoon animals on the walls.
I feel as if I’ve been hollowed out.
I grip the front of the crib, my knuckles turning white as I hold on tight to something I’ve already lost.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” I shake my head. “This is the hardest part. There was a baby growing inside me, and I failed to protect it.”
“That’s not true.” His words are rough, almost angry. “None of this was your fault.”
Slowly, I turn and meet his eyes. “Do you know that for sure?”
“You would’ve done anything for your child.”
“The doctor in Dyer said there’s a chance I’d have miscarried anyway, that there’s no way of knowing the assault caused the miscarriage.” I stroke the fluffy yellow blanket draped over the side of the crib. “But here we are.”
“I’m so sorry, Ellie.” His eyes flick around the room—to the crib, the walls, the little clothes hanging in the closet. “So sorry.”
I was only sixteen weeks along the night of the assault. Only sixteen weeks when I lost the baby. I’m surprised we already decorated the nursery and bought clothes. Were we just that excited? Did we decorate before or after the breakup? Before or after I slept with Levi?
I turn to him and meet his sad eyes. “I know I was sixteen weeks pregnant, but I don’t even remember enough to know if it was Colton’s baby.” I swallow hard. “Or yours.”
He draws in a ragged breath. “It wasn’t mine.” He holds my gaze, tenderness in his eyes. “You were already pregnant when we . . .”
So why did I sleep with you? “Was I happy to be pregnant?”
His jaw works for a beat, and I can tell he doesn’t want to answer.
“The truth,” I say.
“You were scared to do it alone. It wasn’t in your plans, and you weren’t sure you were ready.”
I press my free hand to my stomach and scan the room. “I think I was trying to do the right thing.”
“Of course,” he says. He steps forward and takes my hand off the crib, squeezing it. “You were scared and not ready, but you were going to be a great mom.”
I look down at our joined hands. Mine looks so small in his. This touch feels so good that I want to curl into him and feel the security of his embrace.
I close my eyes and pull my hand away. I’m sorry, Colton.
I leave the nursery, and Levi follows me into the hall without a word. I shut the lights off and pull the door closed. It clicks, and I bite back a gasp of pain. The sound feels like punctuation at the end of a chapter I never got to experience.
“Christ,” he murmurs, pulling me against him.
I press my face into his chest, hiding the hot tears on my cheeks. I give myself the count to ten to let my grief own me. To let him comfort me. Because there are baby clothes in the closet and animals on the walls. Because Colton is missing and so are all the answers I need. Because I’ll never get to wake up in the middle of the night and scoop a warm little bundle from that crib and into my arms.
“Crap.” I step back, gently pushing him away. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re allowed to cry.” He lifts his hand to my face and drops it before touching me. “You’re allowed to grieve.”
“I know.” I nod, but I don’t really believe it. On some level, I’m responsible for all of this. The Discovery collection. My art. Nelson McKinley. The pieces are tied together, and while everyone is busy either blaming Colton for hurting me or for bringing trouble to my door, the opposite is true. “Thanks for coming over.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t have any plans. Do you want me to stay?”
Too much. I lift my eyes to meet his and shake my head. I lead the way to the front door and open it for him. “I’ll set the alarm after you go. I promise.”
“Good. It was . . . nice to see you tonight, Ellie,” he says.
“You too.” I wish it were simply a polite lie. Having him close again is like coming in from the cold and standing in front of the fireplace. And I don’t know what to do with that.
He heads through the door.