Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Hazel Parker

  Instead, I call the cab company and instruct them to be outside my office building as soon as humanly possible.

  On the ride over to Steph’s place, the cab driver utters not a word, for which I am supremely grateful.

  “Go. Away,” she says through the speaker. She’s madder than ever, so much so that she’s chopping her sentences up into individual words.

  I am outside Steph’s apartment building, trying to get buzzed in. It does not look like I am going to succeed. Steph is refusing me access, and no one else has gone in or out for me to duck through behind. I thumb the call button and try again.

  “I don’t want to see you right now,” she says, and although it sounds tinny coming over the little speaker, it’s still acidic enough to get her point across.

  “Dammit, I’m coming in there,” I say.

  “Not unless you can use your money clip as a lockpick.”

  “Steph, we have to talk about this!”

  “I don’t know that I’m capable of talking at the moment,” she says.

  “Look, we can talk in person, or we can talk over this crappy intercom system. What’s it going to be?”

  “Neither,” she says and falls silent. I push the call button again. No response.

  In the movies, there would be a handy fire escape for me to scale up to her apartment window. This isn’t the movies. I have been roundly thwarted.

  “Hey, mister,” calls the cab driver from the curb. “You want me to wait? We going somewhere else?”

  I look up at the building’s façade, rising like an urban fortress to the sky, one I cannot breach.

  “We’re going,” I tell him, getting into the backseat of the cab. “Take me home.”

  I take out my phone. It shows the last text I sent was the one I sent to Steph, asking her how her Regatta cooking job had gone. How long ago had that been? An hour now? Usually, I’m flooded with texts, but it seems like life wants to keep reminding me of how far south this day has gone. There have been no other messages, so that last one is right there when I look at the screen.

  Back at the house, Curtis can tell right away that something is wrong, but he keeps any questions to himself, thank goodness. I make myself a drink and aimlessly pace the room, thinking. Before I know it, enough time has passed that the ice in the liquid has melted and the glass is overflowing. I set it down and return to my pacing.

  I can’t believe Steph is making such a big deal over this, the proverbial mountain out of a molehill.

  Yes, I did orchestrate some events that affected her, I will admit to that, but my intentions were only the best. I had thought I was doing a good thing.

  If it was such a good thing, my interior voice wants to know, then why didn’t you tell her about it beforehand?

  I didn’t have an answer for that one. Or rather, I had an answer but didn’t want to give it, which was that I knew she would be furious if she found out. Prophecy fulfilled, then.

  So what to do about it?

  It occurs to me that I will have to do the one thing in the world that I have the least tolerance for—I will have to wait. For now, I’ll have to tie myself to the mast and wait for the storm to pass, or at least lessen in intensity.

  I have a bad feeling that I may be in for a long wait, though.

  I rattle around the house for a while, making calls, sending emails and texts, just as I normally would on an early Saturday evening, but I’m aware that I’m coming across as vague and distracted, not like myself. I decide that the only person I can keep council with at the moment is myself and get Curtis to drive me to the office.

  Walter, the security guard, doesn’t bat an eye as I enter the lobby. He knows my habits.

  “Evening, Mr. Stone,” he says, raising a hand. “Burning the candle at both ends this week again, huh?”

  “Both ends and the middle, too,” I tell him, continuing on to the elevators.

  I sit behind my desk in my office on the top floor. It seems like nothing can really hold my attention. At this rate, I’ll be reduced to making paperclip sculptures or seeing how many pencils I can imbed in the ceiling tiles.

  I call Steph.

  To my surprise, she picks up. Maybe she didn’t notice that it was me calling.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she says by way of greeting. Maybe she did notice that it was me calling after all.

  “Steph,” I say, “I understand that you’re mad.”

  “Really? Good. I’m glad I got that point across.”

  I still took this as encouraging. At least she was talking to me.

  Then she hung up on me again.

  I was angry myself all over again. Clearly, we were at a point in our relationship where we needed some “space.”

  “Fine,” I say to the otherwise empty office. “We’ll do it your way. You want space; you’ll get it.”

  I make a few more calls, pointedly not to Steph. The last one is to the airport.

  Chapter 21 - Steph

  The next two weeks drag by as much as the previous two had flown along. I get up every morning and go in for work, the same as always. I come home late every evening, the same as always.

  I do not call Trent.

  He does not call me.

  The days pass slowly.

  If there’s fallout from my humiliation aboard the Wavebourne, I can’t tell, either because it really isn’t there or because I’m too tired and in my head to notice.

  I haven’t had a lot of experience with depression, having thought myself too busy for things like that in the past. It seems I have unconsciously decided to make time for feeling like the underside of the pavement, though.

  The days continue to pass. My houseplants slowly die from lack of watering.

  One evening, as I’m listlessly eating handfuls of cereal right from the box, I decide to call Tira. I’ve been ducking her calls, along with everyone else’s, for days now, but I think it’s time to reach out and connect with someone who’ll give me some sympathy.

  “You’re being stupid,” she declares.

  “Not exactly what I wanted to hear,” I say.

  “Well, you’ll hear it anyway. So Trent overstepped your boundaries with some grand gesture. Guys like him only know grand gestures. They never do anything small.”

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  I can hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. “Because I’ve dated some guys with money before. The operative word being ‘dated.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, you’ve got almost no experience to put this in context. How many other guys have you gone out with in the last five years?”

  We both know the answer to that one. “Not that many,” I admit.

  “Hmm?” Tira prods.

  “Okay, hardly any.”

  “Better. A little self-honesty is going to go a long way towards resolving this.”

  “And what is it that I’m supposed to be honest with myself about?”

  “That you’ve been on your own for so long, you’re used to doing everything yourself. What you call ‘interference’ other people might look at as ‘help.’”

  I look at the cereal box and decide against it. I’m not going to be a on-the-phone-eater on top of feeling sorry for myself.

  “But I didn’t ask for his help,” I insist.

  “And likely you never would,” Tira fires right back. “And before you say it, I know you didn’t need his help, either. But what you have to bear in mind is that he wasn’t manipulating you with some kind of evil scheme. He was legitimately trying to do something nice for you, something that would be a benefit to a huge, important part of your life. And you completely overreacted.”

  “It didn’t feel that way at the time,” I protest.

  “Overreacting never does,” she replies. “You can chalk it up to being hurt or being mad, but it doesn’t change the fact that you flew off the handle, plain and simple.”

  I think this over for a few moments. “So what do I do
?”

  “You’ve got to deal with this. Otherwise, you’re going to be a zombie at work and spend your off hours schlepping around your apartment in your bathrobe.”

  I close and belt my bathrobe.

  “So, how do I deal with it?” I want to know.

  She sighs, the sigh of one who is communicating something childishly simple.

  “Two words. Call. Him.”

  I shake my head. “No, no, no…why can’t he be the one to call me? I’m the wronged party here.”

  “And as long as you keep thinking of yourself that way, he’s not going to call you, either. He’ll assume, rightly, that you’re still pissed at him and that you won’t want to talk to him. I’m telling you, he’s waiting for you to break the radio silence here.”

  “T., you don’t understand,” I say. “I can’t call him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just…can’t.”

  “Sound reasoning there. Look, we could just go round and round on this, or you could suck it up and call him. Text him. Leave him a voice mail. Something!”

  “I’ll think about it,” I tell her and hang up.

  I look around my apartment, which seems oddly gray and still. It’s hard to remember how much like a sunset it had looked, strewn about with sunflowers the way it had been weeks ago. Any feeling of warmth, that glowing quality, seems to have departed. Now all the colors are muted, and the air feels dusty.

  I wash my face and put on clean clothes. I’m intending to take myself for a walk, although where to I have no idea, but as I’m tying my shoes, another wave of fatigue washes over me. Maybe I’ll see if I do, in fact, still have Hulu.

  Stretched out on my couch, I look briefly at my phone.

  I reach for the television remote instead.

  I’m dreaming now.

  I can tell because my eyes don’t feel puffy, my hair doesn’t feel greasy, and my stomach doesn’t hurt. I feel normal. No, better than normal. I feel great.

  I’m back aboard the Wavebourne, coming up from below decks into the sunshine. Monroe is there, and he introduces me. Instead of laughing behind their hands, the assembled crowd breaks into applause.

  There are cheers of “bravo!” and, bizarrely, “encore!” This standing ovation goes on and on.

  I notice Jamie Wells standing in the crowd. Her body language declares that she is several shades less than thrilled. She claps along with the others, but jerkily and without enthusiasm. Her pretty face is knotted up into a disapproving scowl. That makes me feel all the better.

  Monroe’s phone chirps, and he retrieves it from his inside coat pocket. After listening briefly, he holds it out to me.

  “Call for you, Ms. White,” he beams.

  I take the phone, but before I can look at the screen, someone else’s phone goes off, then another, then another. Soon, everyone’s phone is either ringing or vibrating. Their owners answer them, listen, and offer them to me. All of the calls are for me, and all of them are from the same person.

  “Hello?” I say into Monroe’s phone.

  “Hello,” Trent’s voice replies from the other end. “I had to call.”

  “That’s good,” I say. “I’ve wanted to talk to you.”

  “I’m glad. But wouldn’t you rather talk in person? I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

  A wind has started blowing, and my hair, which is down, is tickling my cheeks.

  “Where are you?” I ask.

  “Oh, around,” he says carelessly. “Around and about. Had some business to take care of, but that’s all done. Why don’t you come to me and we can talk?”

  “But I don’t know where you are.”

  “It’s all right,” he replies. “I’ll send my driver for you. She should be there any minute now.”

  Then he’s gone, the connection broken. The wind is higher now, and a rhythmic thumping has begun and is growing in volume as well. A dark shape appears over the water, a helicopter, its rotors blurring the water beneath it like rippled glass.

  The helicopter draws closer to the ship, and I can see it’s Tira in the cockpit, wearing a flight helmet and aviator sunglasses. She smiles and tips me a wave with her free hand. I wave back, realizing that my chef’s uniform has been replaced by a flowing, jade-colored dress that stirs wildly in the growing downdraft.

  Turned now to the side, I can read stenciled across the flank of the helicopter the words “I Told You So.”

  I laugh. It’s just the thing Tira would have on the side of her vehicle, at least in a dream.

  The door is open, and I step effortlessly into the helicopter, joining Tira in the cockpit.

  She picks up the microphone from the instrument panel and says into it, “We’re on our way.” She then looks at me and holds out the mike. “Say hello,” she prompts.

  I take the microphone and press the talk button on the side. I open my mouth to speak, but suddenly no words will come out. It is as though my throat is frozen solid. I can’t even breathe.

  I try again. Nothing. The words won’t come. I can’t manage so much as a squeak.

  Tira notices this and frowns. Her eyes are hidden behind the great, flat black lenses of her sunglasses, and I can see myself reflected in them, one hand at my throat while my mouth wobbles open and shut.

  “Say something!” she urges.

  I shake my head.

  “Say anything!” Tira says.

  I can’t, I mouth to her. She huffs and returns her attention out the window of the cockpit.

  “Then send him a message,” she says, tossing me a large, laminated card. I scan it. It’s a key to the system of Morse code signals.

  Still unable to speak, unable to breathe, and becoming frightened, I use the talk button in a series of short and long clicks. I mean to tell Trent that something’s wrong, for him to come and get me, that everything will be all right if I can just see him again.

  After a minute, I realize that I’m repeating the same message, over and over in intervals—dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot.

  S.O.S.

  The sky is darkening around us, or is it my own sight dimming from lack of oxygen? The sound of the helicopter’s engine is fading as well.

  “Send him a real message!” Tira commands. “A text, a voice mail, an email, something!”

  I try to tell her to watch where we are going rather than keep her eyes on me because the nose of the helicopter is dipping downwards. My throat is still locked.

  The water, stormy with whitecaps, is rushing up to meet us. There is a thunderous thump as the helicopter impacts, the agonized scream of metal shearing away as the rotors plow into the surf. The windshield blows in, and with it comes the rush of water, cold and jarring, filling the cockpit as the entire craft begins to sink.

  I find myself strapped to my seat with an intricate system of buckles that I have no hope of figuring out.

  I look frantically over at Tira. She’s removed her sunglasses, and I can see that she has tears in her eyes.

  “I told you so,” she says sadly.

  Then the water is above her head and above mine. The helicopter is completely flooded. It groans as it sinks further below the surface of the water, the light rapidly failing. Soon, I am surrounded by cold and darkness.

  I do not sit up abruptly in bed in a cold sweat, clutching at the sheets. Instead, I come to on the couch. Daylight is not streaming dramatically in through the windows. My watch tells me that it’s just after one in the morning. My tongue feels glued to the roof of my mouth. This is the most unglamorous emergence from a nightmare that I can imagine.

  I get up and stumble into the kitchen for a glass of water. It tastes like minerals. I realize that it’s not the water; it’s the inside of my mouth. I haven’t brushed my teeth today.

  I feel a weight in the pocket of my bathrobe. It’s my phone. I check it. No messages. I check the text feature. No outgoing missives there, either.

  “Send him a real message,” Tira tells me again, echoing from
my dream. “A text, a voice mail, an email, something!”

  I can’t.

  I can’t call him, can’t hear his voice. I’m not angry anymore, but that’s not it.

  I can’t text him, either. I would have no idea what to say, how to begin.

  How do I tell him how I’m feeling?

  How do I tell him how much I miss him?

  How do I tell him I think I may be pregnant?

  Chapter 22 - Trent

  The weather in England has been one big stereotype. It has been overcast and drizzling rain since I arrived. The entire city seems to be a study in wet gray cement and pollution-smudged windows.

  That’s just fine. It suits my mood perfectly.

  I’ve been in London for the better part of two weeks now, and now I’m just staying on to torture myself, it seems. I’ve already done all the business I can do with my English associates. If I try to press myself on them anymore, I’ll probably come across as some kind of nut job.

  Maybe that’s why I chose England over any other country to sulk in. Its people are too polite to tell me to go home.

  As my cab moves slowly through London’s West End, I stare moodily out the window. Piccadilly Circus is lit up cheerily just like always, but foot traffic is down due to the rain. The only ones out voluntarily are the most die-hard—or waterproofed—of tourists.

  I tell the cab driver to take me back to my hotel. He politely tries to engage in some small talk on harmless subjects, then just as politely falls silent when I respond with monosyllables and grunts.

  Amusingly, the façade of my hotel across from Hyde Park resembles the White House, topped with France’s Arc de Triomphe. If it’s not the best hotel in London, it can’t be far off, not at four thousand dollars a night. The only downside is that it comes with a king-size bed, which is a lot of bed when you’re lonely.

  Everything about my hotel suite is spacious, though, from the size of the bed to the bathroom, which could easily accommodate a half a dozen people at once. Three could comfortably fit into the shower. The living room area sports not one but two white luxury couches.