Fall to You
Page 11
“Don’t borrow trouble. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
We pay for the tests and head back to the restrooms. Lizzy tears open the box, hands me a stick, and slips the other one in my purse.
“For emergencies,” she says with a half-smile.
I almost laugh, but it doesn’t quite make it from my lips. “Are there directions?” I ask, frowning at the test.
“It’s a pregnancy test, not rocket science. Pee on it and wait”—she looks at the box—“two minutes. One line is negative. Two lines is…”
“A problem.”
“We’re going to figure this out, Han. Okay?”
I swallow, but I can’t agree. I don’t see how this is going to be all right.
Lizzy squeezes my hand then nudges me toward the stall.
My hands are shaking as I hold the stick between my legs. I don’t look at it as I set it on the back of the toilet, just sink to a ball on the floor and wait for it to process.
I’ve been going to church all my life. I’ve never been good about saying my prayers, but in this moment, there’s nothing else I can do but pray. I draw my knees to my chest and lean my head against them. William and Cally would make great parents. They have an amazing relationship, and I know how much a baby would mean to them. Cally told me that William can’t have kids because of some football accident when he was in high school, but I know they want babies badly. Why doesn’t God give them an unexpected pregnancy? Why me?
I lift my head and stare at the stick. I should stand and look. One line or two. That simple.
But it’s not simple at all. Two lines means not knowing whose baby I’m carrying in my belly. Two lines means having to figure out whose baby this is, and one possibility is more complicated than the next.
What if it’s Nate’s? Nate, the amazing man who doesn’t want to have a family of his own because he doesn’t want his son to feel second best. If it’s his, I can’t tell him. Because he’ll believe he has to break the promise he made to himself and his son. And he’d resent me forever.
And what if it’s Max’s? Max, who wants me for all the wrong reasons but still holds my heart. Should I cancel a wedding to a man I love if I’m carrying his baby?
Two lines means telling my mother that I’m going to have a baby out of wedlock. It means disappointing her. Two lines means the end of this charade and the beginning of something terrifying and unknown.
My knees are wet with my tears when Liz knocks on the stall door. I reach up to unlock it for her, and she frowns when she sees me curled up on the floor.
“What did it say?”
“I’m supposed to be a virgin,” I whisper as if that answers her question.
I don’t have to say anything else before she’s picking up the stick.
Emotions flash over her face in quick succession. Disappointment, sadness, frustration, and finally happiness.
“So?”
A tear trickles down her cheek. “I can’t bring myself to be disappointed about having a niece or nephew.”
A sob tears from my chest, and then my whole body is shaking as she sinks to the floor and wraps me in her arms.
“Shh,” she whispers. “We’re going to figure this out. Shh.”
When Liz drops me off at my apartment, I find Max sitting in the dark, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands. “How long have you been seeing him?” he whispers. “Did it start after you broke up with me or before?”
“What?” I flip on a light and drop my keys and purse on the island. I wish he’d told me he was coming over. I wasn’t prepared for this tonight. It hurts to look at him, to have him so close when everything about the last twenty-four hours has turned my world upside down.
He lifts his head and tosses a magazine onto the coffee table. “Nate Crane? The f**king rocker?” He releases a humorless chuckle. “And here I am, this fool who thought he had a chance to win you back. I thought all I had to do was prove my love, but there was someone else all this time.”
My heart doubles its pace and every beat aches like someone pounding on a bruise. “I didn’t meet Nate until after you and I broke up.” I realize I sound defensive, and shake my head. “I don’t owe you an apology. For the last month, I’ve been walking around sick with guilt because I thought I’d betrayed you. But I didn’t cheat on you. We were broken up. And worse than that? We were broken up because you never wanted me to begin with.”
“Never wanted you? You’re f**king kidding me, right? I want you, Hanna. I want you so badly I’m consumed with it. I want you and no one but you.”
“I know you believe that.”
His jaw hardens and he drags a hand through his hair, making a mess of it. “Let me fill you in on some of the pieces you might have forgotten. Three months, I waited for you. I wanted to marry you or, at the very least, have you give us another chance. Three months, Hanna. And I would have waited even longer if that’s what it took. But to know that while I was waiting—while my ring was in your jewelry box—you were playing house with some as**ole rocker, a guy I could never compete with.”
“Compete?” I laugh, but it sounds ugly. Sick. “You never would have had to compete with him if you’d just wanted me from the start. You were the only thing I ever wanted, Max, but you ruined it when you hurt me.”
I stomp across the room and snatch the magazine from the coffee table, but the indignation drains out of me when I see the two pictures on the cover. In the first, I’m in a wedding dress on Asher’s balcony, right next to Nate. It’s not terribly incriminating as far as pictures go—and the headline about Nate’s secret marriage is just ridiculous. But combined with the picture next to it—me straddling Nate in his hot tub, my arms wrapped around his neck…
“That’s what your mom was looking at when she got her chest pains. She was getting her hair done at Meredith’s salon and picked up that magazine to see her daughter on the front.” He moves to the picture window and looks out into the black night. I wait for him to turn, wait for him to look at me. He doesn’t. “Apparently she was a little shocked to discover you’d been hooking up with Nate Crane.” His voice drops. “She’s not the only one.”
I only speak when I can’t stand the silence anymore. “Didn’t you know?” I whisper.
“I suspected there was someone. You said there wasn’t.”
I wince. I lied to Max?
“Are you in love with him?”
“Yes.” I know how much that admission is going to hurt, and my voice breaks on the word. And maybe my heart.
His head bobs as he nods. “Okay. And me?” The pain’s right there in his voice, but it’s not the hot and fresh wound I expected. It’s hard and calloused. Old hurt brought to the surface.
“I love you too.” It’s the first time I’ve said it since I lost my memory, and he bows his head at the words. I whisper, “But love isn’t enough. The way you really feel about my body, about the real me. That will stand between us.” I swallow hard. “I know you believe that I’m what you want. And maybe I am. But you don’t want me the way a man should want his wife. Maybe it’s stupid that I care. But I want someone who’s going to be as crazy for my body—in all its flaws—as he is for my mind.”
He turns and drags his eyes over me. Slowly. Deliberately. “You don’t believe I’m crazy for your body?”
“She said, ‘What’s it like to f**k a fatty?’ and you said, ‘I’m not going to let it get that far.’” Hurt slices through me at the memory. “How the hell else was I supposed to take that, Max?”
His jaw hardens. “Don’t pretend that her words were my thoughts.”
“They might as well have been.” Anger bubbles into my voice, making my words pop and snap. “You have no idea what it’s like to always fall short. To be the reason your mom won’t serve full-fat anything at family functions. To be the one who never had a date to prom. You have no idea what it’s like to be so in love with the same guy since you were thirteen years old and have him look at your twin sister like she’s the sprinkles on a sundae. You have no clue what it’s like to have someone you want find you unattractive.”
“I never said I found you unattractive,” he growls.
“You said I wasn’t your type.”
“You aren’t my type, Hanna.”
The words hit me like a bucket of cold water against my anger-heated cheeks. “Exactly.” I turn to leave the room, the conversation—because f**k him—but suddenly he’s there, his body in front of mine so I’m looking at his chest.
“Ask me what my type is,” he says, but his voice isn’t gentle anymore. It’s low and foreboding, the rumble of thunder before the wild storm.
“I don’t have to ask. I know.”
“Do you?” He steps toward me, and I find myself backpedaling until I’m against the wall. He stalks closer until he’s leaning over me, a hand against the wall on either side of my head, pinning me in. “You aren’t my type.”
“I heard you the first time.” I’m trying to sound fiery, but the words come out weak. Damn it. “Why are you doing this?”
“You have never been my type.”
“Because you like blondes. Like Meredith. Like Liz.”
“Because I don’t like women who are as soft as you are.”
That’s it. I smack his chest with both hands, but he doesn’t budge. “Fuck you. There are men who like my body.”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I’m blind to the way guys look at your ass when you walk across the room? You think I don’t hear the guys at the club making comments about your tits?” He scoffs at my grimace. “No, don’t play politically correct on me now. You started this conversation, and now we’re going to finish it.” His gaze is on my mouth. Hot. Hungry. Wanting. I don’t understand, but I know what I see. “I’m well aware that men want you. Because I’m one of them.”
“You just said I’m not your type.” God. I don’t want to have this conversation. He’s not making any sense, and every reminder about my imperfections is another splinter digging into my battered heart. “You just said I’m too soft for you.”
“I wasn’t talking about your body. I was talking about your heart.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“My mom has a soft heart too, and she let my father beat her down every day because of it. He may not have used his fists, but he didn’t have to. Words are so much crueler. She took the blame for every insult he threw, swallowed every manipulation. And when he left, she believed it was because she wasn’t good enough. He nearly destroyed her. You aren’t my type because you give and give and give, and that scares the f**k out of me. Someone like Meredith could never hurt me. She’s too hardened to get close enough to hurt me. But you? You open your heart so much and get so close that I’m more vulnerable than ever.”
“I don’t make anyone vulnerable.” I’m confused. I want to believe what he’s saying, but it doesn’t fit with what I’ve spent my whole life believing about myself and how men see me.
“You do,” he says softly. “You make me vulnerable and you hurt me more than Meredith ever could. And f**k it if you’re not worth every bit of pain I feel right now.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like to feel so completely inferior to everyone around you just because of the size of your body. And to know that it was all some ruse, that you weren’t even attracted to me when you asked me on that date—”
“Does it matter when I’m attracted to you now?”
I shake my head. “I’m not the same woman I was then.” I drop my gaze down to my body, the weight creeping back on little by little every day. “And I had to starve myself to get here.”
“I loved you before you lost the weight. I asked you to marry me before you lost the weight.” His lips hover over mine, and I so badly want him to come a breath closer. My knees are weak with need, and I crave his lips on mine. Instead, he asks, “Do you remember the first time we kissed in the gallery?”
The memory flashes through my mind, sizzles. “Yes.”
“Do you know why I kissed you that night?” The blue of his irises thins as his eyes heat.
“You were trying to make me feel better about myself.”
“Not that night,” he whispers softly. “That night, I saw you laughing with the bartender and suddenly I saw you for the first time. Before that night, I hadn’t seen you as anything other than a little sister, a friend. But suddenly, something clicked and I really looked. When I dragged you upstairs that night, I wasn’t thinking about babies or the future. I sure as hell wasn’t thinking about your self-esteem. In that moment, all I wanted was to get my hands on this body, make you scream, and f**k you till you were exhausted in my arms.”
A shiver runs through me, leaving heat in its wake, and my breathing goes shallow. “But I didn’t let you do any of that.”
He flicks his tongue over my earlobe, and one hand comes to my side, his thumb skimming the underside of my breast. “I’m well aware of that.”
I arch toward his touch. “So why’d you stay with me?”
“Because it’s more than sex with us, Hanna. You’re amazing, and I fell in love with you, and I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else.”
We pay for the tests and head back to the restrooms. Lizzy tears open the box, hands me a stick, and slips the other one in my purse.
“For emergencies,” she says with a half-smile.
I almost laugh, but it doesn’t quite make it from my lips. “Are there directions?” I ask, frowning at the test.
“It’s a pregnancy test, not rocket science. Pee on it and wait”—she looks at the box—“two minutes. One line is negative. Two lines is…”
“A problem.”
“We’re going to figure this out, Han. Okay?”
I swallow, but I can’t agree. I don’t see how this is going to be all right.
Lizzy squeezes my hand then nudges me toward the stall.
My hands are shaking as I hold the stick between my legs. I don’t look at it as I set it on the back of the toilet, just sink to a ball on the floor and wait for it to process.
I’ve been going to church all my life. I’ve never been good about saying my prayers, but in this moment, there’s nothing else I can do but pray. I draw my knees to my chest and lean my head against them. William and Cally would make great parents. They have an amazing relationship, and I know how much a baby would mean to them. Cally told me that William can’t have kids because of some football accident when he was in high school, but I know they want babies badly. Why doesn’t God give them an unexpected pregnancy? Why me?
I lift my head and stare at the stick. I should stand and look. One line or two. That simple.
But it’s not simple at all. Two lines means not knowing whose baby I’m carrying in my belly. Two lines means having to figure out whose baby this is, and one possibility is more complicated than the next.
What if it’s Nate’s? Nate, the amazing man who doesn’t want to have a family of his own because he doesn’t want his son to feel second best. If it’s his, I can’t tell him. Because he’ll believe he has to break the promise he made to himself and his son. And he’d resent me forever.
And what if it’s Max’s? Max, who wants me for all the wrong reasons but still holds my heart. Should I cancel a wedding to a man I love if I’m carrying his baby?
Two lines means telling my mother that I’m going to have a baby out of wedlock. It means disappointing her. Two lines means the end of this charade and the beginning of something terrifying and unknown.
My knees are wet with my tears when Liz knocks on the stall door. I reach up to unlock it for her, and she frowns when she sees me curled up on the floor.
“What did it say?”
“I’m supposed to be a virgin,” I whisper as if that answers her question.
I don’t have to say anything else before she’s picking up the stick.
Emotions flash over her face in quick succession. Disappointment, sadness, frustration, and finally happiness.
“So?”
A tear trickles down her cheek. “I can’t bring myself to be disappointed about having a niece or nephew.”
A sob tears from my chest, and then my whole body is shaking as she sinks to the floor and wraps me in her arms.
“Shh,” she whispers. “We’re going to figure this out. Shh.”
When Liz drops me off at my apartment, I find Max sitting in the dark, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands. “How long have you been seeing him?” he whispers. “Did it start after you broke up with me or before?”
“What?” I flip on a light and drop my keys and purse on the island. I wish he’d told me he was coming over. I wasn’t prepared for this tonight. It hurts to look at him, to have him so close when everything about the last twenty-four hours has turned my world upside down.
He lifts his head and tosses a magazine onto the coffee table. “Nate Crane? The f**king rocker?” He releases a humorless chuckle. “And here I am, this fool who thought he had a chance to win you back. I thought all I had to do was prove my love, but there was someone else all this time.”
My heart doubles its pace and every beat aches like someone pounding on a bruise. “I didn’t meet Nate until after you and I broke up.” I realize I sound defensive, and shake my head. “I don’t owe you an apology. For the last month, I’ve been walking around sick with guilt because I thought I’d betrayed you. But I didn’t cheat on you. We were broken up. And worse than that? We were broken up because you never wanted me to begin with.”
“Never wanted you? You’re f**king kidding me, right? I want you, Hanna. I want you so badly I’m consumed with it. I want you and no one but you.”
“I know you believe that.”
His jaw hardens and he drags a hand through his hair, making a mess of it. “Let me fill you in on some of the pieces you might have forgotten. Three months, I waited for you. I wanted to marry you or, at the very least, have you give us another chance. Three months, Hanna. And I would have waited even longer if that’s what it took. But to know that while I was waiting—while my ring was in your jewelry box—you were playing house with some as**ole rocker, a guy I could never compete with.”
“Compete?” I laugh, but it sounds ugly. Sick. “You never would have had to compete with him if you’d just wanted me from the start. You were the only thing I ever wanted, Max, but you ruined it when you hurt me.”
I stomp across the room and snatch the magazine from the coffee table, but the indignation drains out of me when I see the two pictures on the cover. In the first, I’m in a wedding dress on Asher’s balcony, right next to Nate. It’s not terribly incriminating as far as pictures go—and the headline about Nate’s secret marriage is just ridiculous. But combined with the picture next to it—me straddling Nate in his hot tub, my arms wrapped around his neck…
“That’s what your mom was looking at when she got her chest pains. She was getting her hair done at Meredith’s salon and picked up that magazine to see her daughter on the front.” He moves to the picture window and looks out into the black night. I wait for him to turn, wait for him to look at me. He doesn’t. “Apparently she was a little shocked to discover you’d been hooking up with Nate Crane.” His voice drops. “She’s not the only one.”
I only speak when I can’t stand the silence anymore. “Didn’t you know?” I whisper.
“I suspected there was someone. You said there wasn’t.”
I wince. I lied to Max?
“Are you in love with him?”
“Yes.” I know how much that admission is going to hurt, and my voice breaks on the word. And maybe my heart.
His head bobs as he nods. “Okay. And me?” The pain’s right there in his voice, but it’s not the hot and fresh wound I expected. It’s hard and calloused. Old hurt brought to the surface.
“I love you too.” It’s the first time I’ve said it since I lost my memory, and he bows his head at the words. I whisper, “But love isn’t enough. The way you really feel about my body, about the real me. That will stand between us.” I swallow hard. “I know you believe that I’m what you want. And maybe I am. But you don’t want me the way a man should want his wife. Maybe it’s stupid that I care. But I want someone who’s going to be as crazy for my body—in all its flaws—as he is for my mind.”
He turns and drags his eyes over me. Slowly. Deliberately. “You don’t believe I’m crazy for your body?”
“She said, ‘What’s it like to f**k a fatty?’ and you said, ‘I’m not going to let it get that far.’” Hurt slices through me at the memory. “How the hell else was I supposed to take that, Max?”
His jaw hardens. “Don’t pretend that her words were my thoughts.”
“They might as well have been.” Anger bubbles into my voice, making my words pop and snap. “You have no idea what it’s like to always fall short. To be the reason your mom won’t serve full-fat anything at family functions. To be the one who never had a date to prom. You have no idea what it’s like to be so in love with the same guy since you were thirteen years old and have him look at your twin sister like she’s the sprinkles on a sundae. You have no clue what it’s like to have someone you want find you unattractive.”
“I never said I found you unattractive,” he growls.
“You said I wasn’t your type.”
“You aren’t my type, Hanna.”
The words hit me like a bucket of cold water against my anger-heated cheeks. “Exactly.” I turn to leave the room, the conversation—because f**k him—but suddenly he’s there, his body in front of mine so I’m looking at his chest.
“Ask me what my type is,” he says, but his voice isn’t gentle anymore. It’s low and foreboding, the rumble of thunder before the wild storm.
“I don’t have to ask. I know.”
“Do you?” He steps toward me, and I find myself backpedaling until I’m against the wall. He stalks closer until he’s leaning over me, a hand against the wall on either side of my head, pinning me in. “You aren’t my type.”
“I heard you the first time.” I’m trying to sound fiery, but the words come out weak. Damn it. “Why are you doing this?”
“You have never been my type.”
“Because you like blondes. Like Meredith. Like Liz.”
“Because I don’t like women who are as soft as you are.”
That’s it. I smack his chest with both hands, but he doesn’t budge. “Fuck you. There are men who like my body.”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I’m blind to the way guys look at your ass when you walk across the room? You think I don’t hear the guys at the club making comments about your tits?” He scoffs at my grimace. “No, don’t play politically correct on me now. You started this conversation, and now we’re going to finish it.” His gaze is on my mouth. Hot. Hungry. Wanting. I don’t understand, but I know what I see. “I’m well aware that men want you. Because I’m one of them.”
“You just said I’m not your type.” God. I don’t want to have this conversation. He’s not making any sense, and every reminder about my imperfections is another splinter digging into my battered heart. “You just said I’m too soft for you.”
“I wasn’t talking about your body. I was talking about your heart.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“My mom has a soft heart too, and she let my father beat her down every day because of it. He may not have used his fists, but he didn’t have to. Words are so much crueler. She took the blame for every insult he threw, swallowed every manipulation. And when he left, she believed it was because she wasn’t good enough. He nearly destroyed her. You aren’t my type because you give and give and give, and that scares the f**k out of me. Someone like Meredith could never hurt me. She’s too hardened to get close enough to hurt me. But you? You open your heart so much and get so close that I’m more vulnerable than ever.”
“I don’t make anyone vulnerable.” I’m confused. I want to believe what he’s saying, but it doesn’t fit with what I’ve spent my whole life believing about myself and how men see me.
“You do,” he says softly. “You make me vulnerable and you hurt me more than Meredith ever could. And f**k it if you’re not worth every bit of pain I feel right now.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like to feel so completely inferior to everyone around you just because of the size of your body. And to know that it was all some ruse, that you weren’t even attracted to me when you asked me on that date—”
“Does it matter when I’m attracted to you now?”
I shake my head. “I’m not the same woman I was then.” I drop my gaze down to my body, the weight creeping back on little by little every day. “And I had to starve myself to get here.”
“I loved you before you lost the weight. I asked you to marry me before you lost the weight.” His lips hover over mine, and I so badly want him to come a breath closer. My knees are weak with need, and I crave his lips on mine. Instead, he asks, “Do you remember the first time we kissed in the gallery?”
The memory flashes through my mind, sizzles. “Yes.”
“Do you know why I kissed you that night?” The blue of his irises thins as his eyes heat.
“You were trying to make me feel better about myself.”
“Not that night,” he whispers softly. “That night, I saw you laughing with the bartender and suddenly I saw you for the first time. Before that night, I hadn’t seen you as anything other than a little sister, a friend. But suddenly, something clicked and I really looked. When I dragged you upstairs that night, I wasn’t thinking about babies or the future. I sure as hell wasn’t thinking about your self-esteem. In that moment, all I wanted was to get my hands on this body, make you scream, and f**k you till you were exhausted in my arms.”
A shiver runs through me, leaving heat in its wake, and my breathing goes shallow. “But I didn’t let you do any of that.”
He flicks his tongue over my earlobe, and one hand comes to my side, his thumb skimming the underside of my breast. “I’m well aware of that.”
I arch toward his touch. “So why’d you stay with me?”
“Because it’s more than sex with us, Hanna. You’re amazing, and I fell in love with you, and I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else.”
