“I just did,” he mutters. He glares at me. “Are you going to drive us home, or do I need to do it?”
I stare at him for a long time, and when I realize I don’t have the energy to get more from this conversation, I signal to pull back onto the road. I wipe the tears from my eyes and head home. I know without a doubt that if I weren’t pregnant, Colton wouldn’t be sleeping in my house after the way he’s ignored me the last two months, let alone after that conversation. But I am pregnant. And I’m terrified of raising this baby on my own.
“Listen, I’m sorry.” He reaches across the console and brushes my arm with his fingertips. The touch is so rare and so desperately craved that I practically melt under it. “I’m sorry. Molly and I wanted to tell you together. We were going to do it tomorrow. I just have a lot of other shit on my mind, too.”
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” I ask. He’s already pulled away, cut off the contact as soon as it began.
“Nah. You’re good.” He looks out the window again, and I can tell by the tense line of his shoulders and the set of his jaw that there is more. Plenty more. But he has no intention of sharing it with me tonight. Will he ever? Or have I become nothing more than a nosy roommate?
We go home, and I get ready for bed in the saddest silence I’ve ever experienced. It’s the kind of quiet that makes your thoughts too loud and your bones ache like a cold day. I wait until he’s done in the bathroom, then brush my teeth and change into one of his old T-shirts. The cotton is soft and smells a little like him.
Colton’s in the living room. I can hear him on the phone, but instead of the silky whispers of his more recent late-night phone calls, his low voice is angry. “You’re going to listen to what I have to say,” he growls into the phone. “Oh, you think I’m scared of you now? No. Try the other way around.”
I frown and step into the living room just as he ends the call. “Who was that?”
He mutters something under his breath before replying. “No one. Just some asshole who thinks he can screw me out of money.” He waves a hand. “Business stuff, you know.”
“Business stuff? At eleven o’clock at night?”
He folds his arms across his chest. “Like I said. An asshole.”
More secrets.
Colton has always been private. Only a very small circle of people get to know what’s really going on in his life. I’m not sure when I got pushed out of that circle, and I’m wondering if Levi’s been pushed out too. Maybe it’s just Colton and Molly against the world now. “Are you coming to bed?”
“Grant wants me to meet him for a beer,” he says.
“At this hour? Are you even sober enough to drive?”
“I’m a grown-ass man, Ellie. Quit mothering me. I’ll be home later.” He stomps out of the house, and when he slams the front door behind him, it reverberates all the way through my spine.
I close my eyes for a beat. This problem can’t and won’t be solved in one night. We can tackle it tomorrow. Together.
When I crawl into bed, I promise myself that everything will be better in the morning. The calls were about Colton’s son. The looks he was throwing Molly at the bar were about this giant new responsibility in his life. Everything is going to be okay.
The next time I wake up, it’s two in the morning and I’m still alone in bed.
I sit up and grab my phone off the bedside table to check for messages. Nothing. I text him. Where are you?
I climb out of bed and pace the bedroom. When he hasn’t replied twenty minutes later, I pull on my jeans and shoes and race to the garage.
Rain pummels my car the moment I back out, and I have to turn the wipers on high to see anything. I grip the wheel so tightly my hands hurt, but I can’t relax.
“Where are you, Colton?” I whisper into the darkness, but part of me must already know the answer, because I drive straight to the Tiffany Hotel. Colton’s truck is parked in front of the converted Victorian, and I yank the wheel, parking in the first available spot before jumping out of the car.
I’m not an idiot who believes they’re just talking in there after two a.m. He lied about where he was going. Grant wants to meet for a drink, my ass. And who does Molly McKinley think she is? Coming to town and swooping in to steal Colton right out from under me?
I storm up the stairs onto the dark porch but freeze when I see the silhouettes in the window to the right of the door.
I’d recognize those broad shoulders anywhere. Colton carries himself with the posture of a fighter. Molly stands close, and they’re talking, but I can’t make out their words or even see well enough to read their lips. But then he pulls her into his arms, and all the rage that propelled me here drains away, pushed out by fear and despair.
I didn’t want to be right.
He strokes her hair and lowers his mouth to her ear.
I back up. One foot. Then another. Then another. I tumble sideways down the steps and hit the sidewalk. My cheek stings. My elbow aches.
I close my eyes and pull my knees into my chest. The rain is cold and feels like tiny needles of ice slicing into me. My phone buzzes, and I sit up to pull it from my pocket, wiping the rain from my face so I can read the words on the screen.
Colton: Drank too much. Gonna crash at Jake’s.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I want to scream. To cry. To throw the phone and his lie right through the window. To pound on the door and tell him he can fuck himself.
But mostly, I want to go home and pretend this night never happened.
I grip the phone so hard that I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter in my hand. “Get up, Ellie. Get the fuck up.”
When I do, it’s on wobbly legs that can barely hold me. I slide my phone back into my pocket, grip my keys in my hand, and start walking.
Levi
The loud rap on the front door of Jackson Brews makes me roll my eyes. “We’re closed!” I shout.
In a quiet town like Jackson Harbor, we don’t typically have people begging to be let in after last call, but when they do, they’re always trashed, and the last thing they need is another drink.
The knock comes again. Louder this time.
I curse, drop my mop, and spin to the door. “I said we’re . . .”
Ellie’s standing in the rain with her hand pressed against the glass. She’s soaking wet. I run to the door, flip the bolt, and pull it open.
From the light of the streetlamp, I can see blood streaming down the side of her face. “What happened?” I scan the street behind her for her car or Colton or any clue as to why she might be at my brother’s bar in the middle of the night, soaked through and bloody.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re closed. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus, don’t apologize.” I take her by the wrist and pull her inside, then close and lock the door behind her. “What happened? Are you okay?” I step closer and wipe the blood from her cheek.
Her eyes go wide, and she stares at the blood on my hand. “I fell.”
“You fell?”
She nods, and I force myself to take a deep breath. I want answers and I want them now, but she’s got that deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes, and I know she needs my patience more than the protective rage rising in my chest. If Colton hurt her, I fucking swear I’ll go after him so hard he’ll never be able to do it again.
“Come on. Let’s clean you up.” I take her hand and turn toward the kitchen, but I hesitate for a beat when she threads her fingers through mine. The gesture is nothing and everything. It’s instinct, and it means she trusts me. She needs me.
I push away the pinch in my chest and lead her back to the kitchen, positioning her on a stool by the long stainless-steel counter. Here, the fluorescent lights are burning bright and I can slowly take her in, survey the damage. The blood looked worse in the low light out front, but in here, I can see it’s all coming from a small cut on her forehead. There’s an abrasion on her cheek and her elbow, and she’s shaking—probably because she’s soaked from head to toe.