by Lexi Ryan
Nix nods. “If there was ejaculate that made its way to her vaginal opening, there’s a chance it could happen. Not a good chance, mind you, but a chance.”
Liz cocks her head. “Ejaculate and vaginal opening. That’s some sexy talk there, Phoenix. You pull those ten-dollar words out in bed too?”
I laugh. I can’t help myself. Nix’s cheeks flush pink, and it’s just a relief to think about something other than my broken heart and baby-daddy drama.
“What words should I use?” Nix asks.
“Come?” Cally offers.
“Pussy,” Maggie adds.
Liz bites back a laugh. “Spooge?”
At that, we all burst out in laugher, and Nix’s cheeks flare to a darker red. “Oh my God, you guys,” she whispers. “Someone’s going to hear.”
We’re all giggling like schoolgirls when Max walks up to the table.
HER SMILE is so beautiful, but the moment she sees me, it falls away.
“Hey,” she says softly.
“Hi.” I nod to the other girls, but the fucking magazine with Hanna’s picture is right there in the middle of the table, and my stomach twists painfully with the reminder of how the woman I love spent her weekend.
They all wave awkwardly, and Hanna steps out of the booth and follows me to another, more private booth at the back of the bar, right by the space we use as a dance floor when we’ve had too much to drink.
“Thanks for coming this morning,” she says softly. “I just can’t disrupt my mom’s world with the truth right now.”
“And the truth is,” I say carefully, “you aren’t going to marry me.”
“Right.” She traces a gouge in the wooden table again and again and avoids meeting my eyes.
I take a deep breath. “Is this because of him? Is he offering you a future? Does he love you like I do?”
“He’s not offering me anything. It’s over between Nate and me. This isn’t about him.”
We’re both quiet for a long time before I speak. “The Friday night of your accident, I was training someone at the club, and you left me a voicemail. You said you’d made some decisions and wanted to talk. I was about to call you back when Lizzy called and told me you were unconscious at the hospital. When I got there, you were wearing my ring and your memory was gone.”
“Convenient,” she whispers. The word cuts me.
“Convenient? You’re kidding me, right? You think I was happy you had brain damage?”
“You got a second chance,” she whispers. “I didn’t remember how you hurt me.”
I wish she could understand why I handled everything like I did, but I’m in my own fucking head and even I think I screwed up. “You also didn’t remember deciding to put on my ring.”
“I didn’t. I still don’t, and Nix says I probably never will remember the day of the accident. You should have told me the truth.”
Of course I should have. And I meant to. I planned to. But how do you find a good time to break the heart of a woman you’d do anything to protect?
“You know what you said to me that night I brought you home from the hospital? You said, ‘You’re not going to hurt me.’ Those words killed me. You didn’t remember anything from the last year—not a single kiss or date or touch—but you had so much faith in me. I should have told you the truth, but how would you have felt if I had? How would you have felt if I’d sat there and explained how we started dating and why? If I’d shown you those texts? You’d been through that once. We had been through that once. Telling you when you couldn’t remember would have meant sending you through that pain all over again. I couldn’t do that. Not intentionally.”
“Were you just going to let me marry you? Without telling me?”
“No.” Fuck. When did everything get so screwed up? “I guess I hoped that when you remembered the bad parts, you’d remember the good parts too. You were wearing my ring. Don’t you see that? You’d spent months putting off making a decision. Whatever happened that day you fell down the stairs, you’d put on my ring first—before you lost your memory.”
“I wasn’t seeing clearly,” she whispers, and I feel like I’m slowly bleeding out. “Meredith helped me understand something.”
I don’t know where she’s going with this, but if it involves Meredith, it can’t be good.
“What’s that?” I ask, despite myself.
She’s quiet for too long, studying that gouge in the wood again, and I know before she speaks that I’m not going to like it. “She made me see how marrying me would solve every single one of your financial problems.”
My stomach heaves and thrusts my breath from my lungs. “You believe I want to marry you for your trust fund?”
She looks sad but firm. “I believe my trust fund may be making you misinterpret your feelings for me. Consciously or not.”
I push out of the booth. I love this woman. I would give her everything I have, and she thinks I want her for her money.
“Think about it,” she whispers to my back. “Wouldn’t you have spent more time with me these last few weeks if you really wanted me? I was yours, but you were barely around.”
I turn slowly because I need to look her in the eye when I say this. “I never wanted your money, Hanna. I just wanted you. That’s always going to be true, whether you believe it or not.”
TENSION RADIATES off him in hard waves that would knock me over if I weren’t sitting. I ball my hands into fists to keep myself from touching his cheek and his two-day growth of beard. I have to remind myself to breathe. In and out. In and out. Because giving voice to my suspicions hurt a thousand times worse than letting them simmer in some dark corner of my brain. But I had to do it. I had to explain why I can’t marry him.
He turns on his heel and walks away.
Breathe in. Breathe out. It takes all of my courage to stand behind my words when I just want to chase after him and take back anything that might have hurt him.
William arrived sometime while we were talking, and he stops Max at the bar. Max is nodding, listening, occasionally eyeing the door, but not sparing me a single glance.
Shit. I need to tell him about the pregnancy. I push out of the booth to make sure I stop him before he goes.
Lizzy spots me heading toward the bar and hops out of the booth to join me. “How’d it go?” she whispers.
Brady grins at me and pours a shot of tequila blanco. “I heard about your mom,” he says, nudging it toward me. “That one’s on the house.”
I catch the scent of the tequila, and it jiggles a memory loose. I pick it up, intending to take another whiff and see if I can break the memory free, and Lizzy says, “Hanna, the baby!”
She realizes her mistake at the same moment that her words register in my mind. Both of us turn our eyes to Max, who’s gone statue still next to William.
The air seems to dance in the tension between us. I wait for him to take a breath, for some evidence that he didn’t understand what she said or that he thinks it’s a joke. But he’s frozen for so long that my heart is stuck on a never-ending free fall into the infinite depths of my stomach.
Finally, Max slowly lowers his glass to the counter, turns, and walks out of the bar without a word to any of us.
“I’m so sorry,” Lizzy whispers. “It just came out. I didn’t realize you hadn’t told him yet. I suck and I’m the worst.”
The door swings closed behind him as he leaves in no apparent rush and with no apparent destination. I can’t even imagine what he’s feeling.
“I hadn’t gotten to that part yet.”
“Well, I know it must be a shock, but I’m a little pissed. Could be he’s going to be a dad, and unexpected or not, he doesn’t have to be a dick. Men. I swear.”
“It’s not his baby,” I whisper. Because I remember now.
Five days before my accident. At Nate’s house. It was a memory I thought I’d recovered, but I was missing so much of it. The second half. The part that changes everything.
“What do
you mean? How do you know?”
“I never slept with Max, but I’m not a virgin.” Something clenches, tight and painful, in my chest.
“The baby is Nate’s?” All the horror I’ve felt in the last few seconds flashes across Lizzy’s face, but I can’t stand here and talk about this with her. I need to go after Max.
I rush out of the bar and spot him on the sidewalk less than a block away. I jog until I catch up.
Sensing me, he stops and turns to me when I’m still a few steps away. “Is it true?” he asks, his eyes dipping to my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
When he lifts his icy-blue eyes to mine, they’re hard. “When did you find out?”
“While I was in LA.”
His jaw ticks. “Were you planning to tell me?”
“Yes. Of course. I just—” I have no excuse, so I go with the truth. “I didn’t know how.”
He steps off the sidewalk into the grass and sinks to his haunches. “It’s his?” He pauses a beat and shakes his head. “Of course it is. Who am I kidding?”
I close my eyes against the onslaught of emotions I’m feeling. Pain—for him, for me. Guilt. Regret over how I’ve handled this from the beginning. And frustration that there’s still too much I don’t know and don’t remember.
His jaw goes hard and he pushes to standing. “You deserve better than to get knocked up and abandoned.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then how is it? You just told me it was over between you two.”
“It’s complicated.” Even more so now with my latest memories clicking into place.
“No shit.” His body deflates a bit, the fight draining out of him. “What is it about me? Why could you give him…”
I know what he’s asking. Why could I have sex with Nate when I couldn’t even let Max see me naked? I understand the question, but I don’t say anything because I don’t know the answer.
He shakes his head and drags a hand through his hair. “Never mind. I have to get out of here, Han. I can’t… I just can’t.”
WHEN I return to the bar, the whole place is quiet but for the sound of an anchorman on the TV hanging above the bar. At first, I think they all know about my pregnancy and the drama between Max and me, but then I realize all my friends are standing too, their eyes glued to the television.
I follow their gaze and watch the “Breaking News” banner run across the bottom of the screen.
Someone turns up the volume, but I can’t hear a thing over the rushing of blood through my ears and the shattering of my heart.
Tragedy in the Middle East: Helicopter carrying musician Nate Crane and others shot down in Afghanistan.
I catch snippets. Crane and three other musicians were in military transport to a performance. Authorities haven’t released any further information at this point. Waiting for military to report if there are any survivors. Then they have some military weapons expert explaining the precision of surface-to-air missiles.
I don’t know when I collapsed. I don’t remember sitting or falling. But suddenly Lizzy is behind me, putting a glass of ice water to my lips. “Drink, Hanna.”
I part my lips instinctively, taking the smallest sip past my lips, but I shake my head when she offers it up again.
“We need to get her out of here.” Nix’s voice.
Then hands lifting me, leading me. My feet are working. Moving. But I feel disconnected from my body. Above it and beside it all at once.
Time passes in still frames. Lizzy helping me off the floor. Maggie’s tear-soaked face as she helps me into her car. Lizzy brushing my hair behind my ears, tears in her eyes as I look up at her from her lap.
There’s a bed and blankets, and I don’t understand why they’re bundling me up, but then I realize I’m shivering. Violent, body-racking shivers that are so exaggerated it almost seems like I must be faking it—no one shivers like this—but I can’t stop.
Then Lizzy climbs in bed behind me, pulling me into her arms, whispering reassurances in my ear.
Time passes and freezes. Minutes slide by without notice and hang suspended in the air, punishing me with their brutal stillness. Someone offers me a pill, and I shake me head.
“Nix said it was okay. The baby needs you to sleep.” Lizzy’s voice. And Maggie is next to her, holding a glass of water.
I swallow it down, and later—minutes, hours, seconds, it doesn’t matter—sleep comes and releases me from the torment of consciousness.
Ten Weeks Before Hanna’s Accident
THE BOX is wrapped in ribbon and was delivered by courier. A freaking courier delivery in New Hope. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
Inside, I find a black slip and panties in the finest black lace nestled under a thin envelope.
“Courier deliveries of expensive panties?” Liz says, startling me. She comes and stands next to me in the dining room, and I shove the envelope into my pocket before she can see it. “Did you finally let Max get to third base and just not tell me? Damn. I want a man who will send me expensive lingerie.” She picks up the slip and fingers the whisper-soft lace. “Lucky bitch.”
I force a smile and shrug.
She frowns at me. “What’s up with you lately? You’re acting weird.”
“Nothing. I’m just busy.” I’ve been keeping my distance from Liz since I found out that it was her idea for Max to ask me out. I can’t let her know about the breakup anyway. I can’t risk that information getting back to my mom.
“Well, next time I see Max, I’ll tell him he needs to hook me up with a friend who has as good of taste in lingerie as he does. Because damn.”
I open my mouth to ask her not to, then close it again. First of all, asking her not to say anything to Max is practically admitting that the gift is from another man. Second, some small, shallow part of me likes the idea of Max knowing I got a gift like this from someone else. And yes, I know this makes me small and terrible, and all-around unworthy of both of these guys, but maybe after all these years living in the same town as Meredith, some of her bitchiness is rubbing off on me.
I take the slip back from Liz and return it to the box. “I think I’ll take these to my room.”
“Okay,” she mumbles behind me. Crap. I’ve hurt her, and she has no idea that she hurt me first.
After padding to my room, I close the door behind me and pull the envelope from my pocket, my nerves buzzing. I don’t need a tag to know this box isn’t from Max. And maybe it’s crazy for a girl like me to believe that a rocker I spent a wickedly sexy night with would send me a gift…but I know. I just know this is from Nate even before I open the envelope.
But even as sure as I am, when I pull out the paper inside and see a handwritten note, I gasp a little. His writing is tall and narrow, the words scratched with a black felt-tip pen.
Angel,
A pair to replace the one I ruined—I regret nothing—and the slip that goes with it because I spent five minutes in the store staring at it and imagining how it would look on you. After that, I either had to buy it dinner or send it to you.
Maybe you’re back with the ex by now, but I have a concert in Chicago this weekend, and when I imagined you waiting in my room after… Well, let’s just say I liked the idea a hell of a lot.
I’m staying at the Waldorf Astoria. They’ll have a key and concert tickets waiting for you at the front desk.
-Nate
HANNA’S ON the treadmill. Again. That’s twice today. At least a dozen times so far this week. She’s practically taken up residence on the damn thing in the weeks since we split.
I put my hand on the rail and look at her, but she’s got her earbuds in and doesn’t even notice me. The club closed fifteen minutes ago.
What’s she running from?
My stomach knots as I think of those old texts between me and Meredith. Is that what has had her working out two to three times a day?
Her ponytail bobs as she runs, and her eyes
seem vacant without her ever-present smile. That smile’s been a rare sight these last weeks.
Suddenly she realizes I’m standing next to her, and she slows the treadmill to a crawl and takes in the empty club. “You’re closed,” she says, pulling the earbuds from her ears. “I’m sorry. I’ll get out of the way.”
The treadmill beeps as she shuts it down and hops off.
She grabs her purse off the floor and starts toward the door, but I touch her arm to stop her.
“I need to show you something.”
Her gaze drops to my hand on her arm then back to my face. Tiny splinters of regret drag through my heart at her expression. Every time she looks at me, I feel like I’ve smacked her. I can’t undo the past. I want to. I would. But I can’t, so I’m left here, helpless.
“Come with me,” I whisper. I lead her into the women’s locker room and past the showers to the floor-to-ceiling mirrors at the back. The silence pulses around us like an unwelcome visitor. I turn her toward the mirror and stand behind her.
She frowns at my reflection. “Max, what are you doing?”
My heart slams in my chest as I study her. There’s nothing I want as badly as I want to kiss her again. I want to taste the tender spot at the crook of her neck. I want to hear her soft moan as I pull her bottom lip between my teeth. I want to get her naked and touch her until she’s breathless and turned on, make her beg until she understands how fucking beautiful she is.
“Look.” The word comes out harder than I intended, a brusque command.
“At what?” Her gaze skips over her reflection quickly, dismissing it.
“Look at yourself, Hanna.” When she tries to turn, I hold her shoulders and make her face her reflection. “Look at the woman you are, not the woman you think you are.”
Her breath catches and she tries to turn away, but I hold her still, make her look. “I know what I look like.”
“Do you?” I skim my knuckles over her jaw. I can’t help myself. It’s been too long since I’ve touched her, and I miss the feel of her skin under my fingers. I miss her kiss. The way she’d curl into my chest and sigh like she’d found heaven and I was some sort of a god. I miss her laugh and her smile. I miss my girlfriend. “I don’t think you have any idea how beautiful you are, Hanna.”
