He turns around, one brow raised in surprise over my bad mouth. But the moment our eyes meet, the way his eyes blaze at me—as if he’s living in the pits of hell—strikes me once more.
“I waited for two hours Saturday night! Then I fell asleep, still dressed, to wake up and see you hadn’t bothered to call. What the fuck is wrong with you? I left you like 15 messages. You could have died! You could have been kidnapped! There could have been a fire somewhere and you could have been in it,” I demand. My voice breaks, and an unnamable emotion etches across his face as my words register.
“God, I’m sorry, Bryn,” he says. He raises his hands in the air and then he pulls them back, fisting them at his sides.
“Tell me, Aaric. Please.” My voice breaks.
“Miranda’s pregnant.”
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
“What?”
I blink several times, but he still has that look on his face. The look that says he bit out the words that I just heard.
“Miranda.” He drags a hand over his face, the little muscle at the back of his jaw about to break from exertion. “She’s pregnant.”
His ex-girlfriend is pregnant.
Aaric is going to be a father.
Aaric is going to be a father of a baby that is not mine.
My eyes begin to sting. “It’s yours? I…of course it’s yours, you were dating still.”
I speak then. After a long, long moment. “She’s pregnant with your baby.”
Envy.
Jealousy.
All of those emotions that I don’t like to feel, that make me feel low and worthless, are in me now.
I clutch my stomach.
“Bit.”
“Don’t bit me. Don’t…don’t come any closer.”
Christos starts walking forward. I back away three steps and then stop. He stops two feet in front of me. “I never touched her after you came back. You’ve got to believe me,” he hisses under his breath.
I meet his gaze, my chin up at an angle that belies the way I feel. Like crumpling into a stupid goddamned ball. “You know as well as I do you’re not the asshole they say you are,” I say. “You won’t leave your child fatherless like your father did. That’s not who you are.”
He looks at me fiercely, as if he needs me to understand. “I wanted it to be you,” he whispers.
“Well, it’s not me. It won’t be, Aaric.”
I stare at his eyes and quietly beg him, please, I love you, don’t torture me anymore…
We stay there, in silence. Both of us grappling with the news. This is nothing we planned for our future, nothing we could see coming.
“You could’ve at least come and talked to me. Not give me the silence treatment as if I don’t deserve to know…” I whisper.
“I wanted to deal with it before I talked to you.” Again, that tiny muscle flexes angrily as his fingers plunge into his hair. “What am I supposed to do, huh?” He grits out as he grabs the doctor’s paper from his desk and shows me.
I think my face is wet but I don’t know, all I know is the man I want to be with is having a baby with someone else.
My heart breaks when he takes my face in his hands.
He wipes my tears with his thumb.
It’s something Aaric the boy would do.
A lover would do.
But he’s not a boy and he’s not my lover—he’s nothing of mine now.
I never got to say I love you. I wish I’d said it. I wish I could now say the words leaping in my mind. Don’t leave me, choose me, have a baby with me…
Selfish words I have no right to speak.
“Talk to me, bit,” he gruffly demands, clearly fighting his own demons.
My eyes are blurry. I can hardly see him as I press my face into his warm hands. He looks at his palm, wet from my tears, and keeps drying my tears for me.
“I meant every word I told you, Bryn,” he says, softly. Too softly.
“Stop. Please. I can’t.” I step back.
He clenches his jaw, as if I’ve just given him the hardest blow of all.
Rejection of his touch.
“There’s no other woman for me like you. I’ve always known you were the girl after my heart, Bryn Kelly. Even when you didn’t want to sleep with me. When you didn’t want to kiss me. Even when I knew I wasn’t good enough for you.” He looks at me then, gold eyes like lasers, branding me. “I meant every word I told you,” he hisses.
“I wish you hadn’t. It would be easier. I hate you…”
I drop my face to the floor.
“I hate you, Aaric.”
When he touches my chin between his thumb and index finger to force me to look at him, the touch singes a path straight to the tight little knot on the left side of my chest.
I try to breathe but I can’t.
“Don’t be tender,” I beg, my throat tight.
“I’m in hell here,” he says, eyes murdering me with love.
The confession makes my eyes prickle behind my eyelids. It takes me a second to sob out loud, then react and push back from him.
“Congratulations, Aaric,” I say softly. “Really,” I say, trying to gather my composure.
This isn’t fair to him.
This isn’t fair, period.
He grinds his jaw, visibly tortured, his eyes glazed as if he’s been sleepless, drinking, or simply…like he said. In hell.
“Maybe this was just … a little vacation from realities,” I say then.
“What?” he bites out.
“Our little entanglement. Just a vacation from our lives or destinies. I don’t know.” I shake my head, trying to make sense of all this. Unable to make sense of losing the only guy I’ve ever fallen for. “But we’re in business and we’re adults. We can at least act like it.” I take another step back, gathering my courage and my pride close to me. “I’ll be fine. I’ll get over you.”
“Come here.”
“What for…”
“I just need to—” He grabs me and then we’re forehead to forehead, my face in his big hands. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing,” he hisses, his gaze carving into me.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I agree fervently, nodding, my throat aching.
He stares at me.
My eyes keep watering.
“Don’t,” I plead.
“Don’t what?”
“You look like a guy who means to kiss me for the last time.”
I pull free and swallow, putting half of the room between us. We both try to compose ourselves.
Christos’s jaw is working nonstop.
“We’ll be okay. You’re doing the right thing,” I repeat.
He nods, his jaw still locked so tight, it’s a marvel he can speak.
“Bryn, I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head as if disappointed in himself.
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t be sorry. I want you to forget me. We need to both move on, Aaric.”
He stares at me like I just shot us both, and I smile as if I didn’t, and nod in emphasis.
“Promise me you’ll forget me.”
“No, bit. I promise you I never will.”
I swallow.
“You have to. We have to. For your child.”
“I lost my mother. I lost my daughter. And it kills me to lose you twice,” he hisses angrily.