by Lexi Ryan
“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 fuck 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 fuck 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 fuck 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 fuck 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.”
Suddenly my heart is a twisted mess and my tongue is heavy with words I can’t find. “I’m so confused.”
“I can see that.” He drops his gaze to the magazine still in my hand and sighs heavily. “I hope he’s good to you.” Then he backs away and walks out the door, leaving me scared and confused and lonelier than I’ve ever been in my life.
I DON’T want to talk to anyone, but when I get to my apartment, William is waiting on the balcony in one of my cheap plastic deck chairs with a six-pack of beer.
“What are you doing here?” I sound as exasperated as I feel. I’m pissed and hurt and just fucking exhausted. I don’t want to have a beer with Will. I just want to open a bottle of Jack and drink until I’ve forgotten my own name. Until I’ve forgotten how good she smells and how right she feels in my arms.
“Meredith is telling everyone in town about that magazine.” He pulls a beer from the pack and hands it to me. “I figured maybe you could use a beer.”
What I could use is a fucking scouring pad to scrub my brain. Every time I close my eyes, I see Hanna half nude and draped over Nate Crane. Fuck.
“It’s over.” I take the beer and sink into the chair next to him. “I thought I could win her back, but I was wrong.”
“The wedding is off?” Will asks.
I open my beer and nod. Something clicks in my mind and I release a dark laugh. “Huh. I guess you know all about some rocker asshole stealing away the girl you want.”
Will shrugs. “Maggie meeting Asher was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. If she hadn’t, everything would have been different when Cally came to town. Cally is all that matters.”
I take a sip of my beer because it’s too dangerous to speak with this tightness in my chest.
“But Hanna’s your Cally,” Will says.
“She is,” I whisper. “And after three months of waiting for her to make a decision, watching her waste away… I thought I’d lost her. And then I get the call about her being in the hospital and I walk in and she’s wearing my ring and all doe-eyed when she looks at me and—” Again, that fucking tightness in my chest, burning behind my eyes. I’m not going to lose it here in front of Will.
“And she didn’t remember what you did to hurt her,” he supplies.
“I’d been given this second chance. She was wearing my ring.” For four weeks, those words were my mantra, and I wanted them etched into stone so I could wrap my fingers around them like a talisman, a reminder. She was wearing my ring.
“So give her some time to digest everything and have faith that she’ll choose you again.” Will clacks his beer bottle against mine. “She’s your Cally. It’ll work out.”
I wish I could be as confident as he is. But I’m in a nightmare stuck on repeat. Tonight’s argument with Hanna felt like one we’ve already had, only this time I know what she was doing with her weekends ou
t of town over the summer.
“How can I compete with Nate Crane? He could give her the world.”
“Sure,” Will says, “but you can give her the life she wants in New Hope. I think we both know which Hanna would rather have.”
“IT’S CALLED broken heart syndrome,” the cardiologist says.
Mom’s hospital room is packed this morning. Lizzy, Maggie, and Krystal are gathered around Mom’s bed, and Max and I are standing in the corner. I was surprised when he showed up at my apartment this morning, but he simply said, “Your mom needs to see us together right now,” and since I couldn’t argue with that, I followed him to his car and let him drive me to the hospital.
Now we’re all standing around, waiting to hear the results of the cardiac cath they performed on Mom this morning. Abby’s staying with Maggie while Mom’s in the hospital. She wanted to be here too, but Maggie played her big-sister card and insisted Abby go to school. In addition to four of her five daughters, Mom’s old friend, Carol Standers, is here, anxious as the rest of us to hear the news.
“Essentially, we see the same elevated enzymes that we would in a regular heart attack, but it’s brought on by stress rather than any blockages that you’d see in a traditional heart attack.”
“Broken heart syndrome,” Maggie says. “So what can we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
I gave my mom a heart attack. The doctor’s talking and I can hardly process his words with the blood rushing in my ears.
“We’re going to have her wear a monitor for a couple of months,” the doctor continues. “This way, we can monitor her heart activity and it will give her a jolt if her heart isn’t functioning properly, but of course, I need you to limit your stress as much as possible.”
Carol lifts a brow. “With her daughter’s wedding coming up?”
“I’ll be fine,” Mom insists.
“No offense,” Carol says, patting Mom’s hand, “but your daughters have a track record of bringing on the drama when their weddings are approaching.”
“Jesus!” Maggie hisses. “Seriously?”
“Don’t swear, Margaret,” Mom scolds.
“I’m just saying that with two daughters who called off their weddings at the last minute, it’s no wonder she was feeling so stressed before Hanna’s big day.”
“Don’t put this on Hanna,” Lizzy growls.
“Come on, you guys,” Krystal says. “Just let it go. Carol is just a concerned friend, but in this case, she doesn’t need to be worried. Max and Hanna are in love.”
All eyes turn to Max and me—every pair seems to be asking a different question, but the only one that matters is Mom’s.
A couple of days ago, I was confident in my ability to tell my mom that I was canceling my wedding, but now I have to tell her that I’m canceling my wedding and I’m pregnant. Oh, and guess what? I don’t know who the father is!
Max wraps his arm around my waist and squeezes. I’m not sure if the gesture is for my benefit or my mom’s.
Thankfully, the doctor quickly gets us off the subject of my upcoming wedding and the attention returns to him as he explains that Mom will need to stay in bed today and will be released to go home with her new vest tomorrow. Max keeps his arm around me, and I let myself take comfort in his warmth.
When we leave the room, he steps away as if touching me cost him.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he says softly. “I’ll be at the club.” Then he tucks his hands into his pockets and leaves.
“Mom’s asking to see you,” Krystal calls to me from the doorway to Mom’s room.
Oh, shit. I knew this was coming. But luckily I called Liz last night and we came up with a plan.
I step into the room and pull the door closed behind me. “I hear you saw that ridiculous article,” I say. Because I’m more of a “rip off the Band-Aid” kind of girl.
“I did.” She’s not looking at me, just out the window. But I’ve been trained well, and after twenty-three years of her disappointment, I don’t have to see her face to sense her disapproval.
“It was stupid, wanting to be an extra in that music video, but I guess it’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.” I hold my breath, waiting.
“You were in that man’s hot tub for a music video?”
“Oh, yeah.” I’m pretty sure I’m going to burn in hell for lying to my bed-ridden mother, but that’s better than having to live with myself if my mistakes kill her. “We’ll see if they even put me in it. You know how those things go.”
She turns back to me and nods, but I can’t tell if she’s buying my story or not.
My sisters decided that the “It’s five o’clock somewhere” rule totally applies on vacations, wedding days, breakups, and weeks your mother is in the hospital for a heart attack. So they called Cally and Nix, who cleared their schedules for the rest of the day and met us at Brady’s.
Krystal already headed back to the airport, so it’s just Liz, Maggie, Cally, Nix, and me, all squeezed into a booth with three pitchers of beer. At noon, but whatever.
Cally fills the glasses, and I put a hand over mine. “Water for me.”
Maggie gawks at me as if I suddenly started speaking in tongues.
Best to just spit it out, I guess, but I lower my voice and lean over the table so curious ears don’t hear. “I’m pregnant.”
Maggie chokes on her beer and the mug clatters to the table, its contents sloshing. “Pregnant…like metaphorically, right?”
I look to Nix, who’s nodding in confirmation. “Nix called me in LA. My blood work came back and everything looks good…except that.”
Maggie blinks at me. “But you’re a virgin.”
“So they say,” Liz mutters.
“One of them must be lying, right?” Maggie says.
“Which one?” Cally asks.
Liz raises a brow. “Kind of an awkward question to ask.”
I fill them all in on the memory that had me leaving for LA and the truth about how Max and I were pretending to be together before my accident so he’d still have a good chance at getting the grant money.
Cally’s studying her beer.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I ask Cally. “You knew we’d broken up.”
She worries her lower lip between her teeth and shrugs. “Will and Max are best friends. Max needed someone to confide in when it was all going down.”
Liz gapes at her. “And you didn’t think you should’ve mentioned it to her after the accident?”
Cally shows her palms in defense. “I didn’t know until the night of the bachelorette party. Will told me then.”
“So why didn’t Will say something when Hanna woke up without her memory?” Maggie asks. “Didn’t he think she should know her relationship was pretend?”
Cally shrugs. “But it wasn’t. Not anymore. Hanna was wearing the ring. Will thought she’d finally taken Max back.”
We’re all silent for a bit. I sip my water while the girls nurse their beers.
Then Cally asks, “Have you told Max about the pregnancy?”
I shake my head. “He’s going to meet me here later, and I’m planning to tell him then. He came over last night, but we were a little busy arguing about Nate, and I never got around to telling him.”
Maggie’s eyes go wide. “Max knows about Nate?”
I pull the magazine from my purse and plop it on the middle of the table. “Apparently that’s what Mom was looking at when she started having chest pains.”
“Oh, shit,” Cally says.
“I told her I was there as an extra for a music video.”
“Good cover,” Maggie says. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I don’t know if she believed me or not,” I admit.
“I’m sure she believed you,” Liz says. “She wants to see you marry Max too badly to believe anything that doesn’t align with that goal.”
“Speaking of marrying Max,” Maggie says. “I presume that’s over now t
hat the thing with Nate’s out of the bag?”
“It’s over,” I admit. “He wants me for the wrong reasons.” Or I think he does. Our conversation last night left my mind spinning with confusion and my body hungry with wanting. “He has so many financial problems.”
“He doesn’t want you for your money,” Cally says. “If that’s what you’re thinking, you’ve got this all wrong.”
I smile at her and shrug. Max is her fiancé’s best friend. Of course she’s going to think the best of him.
“But what if Max is the baby’s father?” Liz asks.
Cally frowns. “You need to ask him again if you ever had sex. Maybe he had a reason for lying.”
“Or maybe Nate had a reason for lying,” Maggie says.
Liz turns to me with wide eyes. “What are you going to do if it’s Nate’s?”
I shrug. “Maybe I’ll pull a Meredith and tell everyone I bought sperm.” My joke falls flat and the girls just stare at me. “I’m not telling Nate. And you all have to promise me you won’t either.”
Maggie studies me, her face sad. “I don’t think that secrets are the right answer here.”
“If this baby is Nate’s,” I say, “secrets are the only answer. When we were seeing each other, it was so important to him that I understood he didn’t want commitment or a family. You have no idea how much it would screw up his world if this baby’s his and I told him.”
“Promise me you’ll tell him.” Maggie’s face is so damn serious that I can’t refuse, even if I know I can’t do that to Nate.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Damn.” Liz clunks her nearly empty beer on the table. “I just want to know who had sex with you and lied about it.”
“She could still be a virgin,” Nix interjects. “I mean, technically, you can get pregnant without penetration.”
Liz looks horrified. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Like all the consequences of sex with none of the fun,” Maggie says.
