“Sure,” Betty mumbled. “I’ll get right on that.”
Bobbi tossed her mug in the dishwasher and glanced out the window. “Holy shit!”
“What?”
Betty was beside in her in instant and the two girls stared out onto the stone pathway that led to the back garden. It looked as if a carrot tree had exploded everywhere. The path was literally covered in small, rounded, peeled carrots.
“Shit,” Bobbi murmured. “I needed those for the turnip.”
Movement caught her eyes and she grabbed Betty, pointing toward the far end of the path, right where it met the garden. A garden that was bare, brown and muddy, with parts along the edges covered in the stubborn snow that hadn’t yet melted.
A small, brown rabbit was edging closer to the carrots, its nose twitching nervously as it hopped closer and paused, still as a soldier. When it reached its prize and hunkered down to feed, Bobbi giggled.
“I guess Dad thinks we still believe in the Easter Bunny.”
Betty nodded in agreement. “Well, that’s because last night he was talking as if it was 1998.”
“I know.” Bobbi glanced at her sister. “I hope he has a good day.”
Betty pushed off from the sink and reached for the back door. “I’ll get rid of the carrots because I’m sure he’ll obsess over them if they’re there when he wakes up. And Bobbi?”
“Yeah?”
“I hope we all have a good day. It’s been a while.”
Bobbi watched her sister walk out the door and clutched her hands tight to her chest. The ever present tears she felt at the back of her eyes were there, just waiting for the chance to fall. But she couldn’t let them.
She wouldn’t let them.
With a quick nod of her head she glanced around and made a mental listt of the things she still needed to do. It was Easter Sunday and though they might not be a religious family, the Barker’s sure loved a good meal. Logan and Billie were coming over and she’d gone ahead and invited Shane’s family. Surprisingly, James and Celia had accepted.
It was too early in the morning to think about all the different ways this day could end. Instead, she decided to focus on the now and maybe when it was time for her to face the past, she’d be ready.
Maybe, this time, she would win.
Chapter Twenty-five
By ten a.m. Shane was in a foul mood and for the tenth time in as many minutes he pulled out his cell phone and glanced down at Bobbi’s text message.
Hey. I’m tired. Gonna crash here. C U tomorrow around 4. B.
Tired? What the hell.
Bobbi was never tired. The girl had more energy than she knew what to do with. Shit, just last week he caught her organizing his tools because she had an extra ten minutes before going to work. She couldn’t spend a half an hour reading a book without fidgeting or chewing on her fingernails, or tapping her feet like she was an Irish dancer.
Bobbi Jo Barker didn’t get tired and she especially didn’t get tired on a Saturday night when she should have been home with him. In his bed. In his arms.
He thought about their conversation the day before and ran his hands through the mess of hair on his head. It was a goddamn mess because he’d slept like shit.
Pia whined and he glanced down at her. “She told me she loved me, you know.” It should be enough.
But it wasn’t. And though he refused to be that guy—the pussy-whipped asshole who couldn’t function without his woman around—he needed to find out what the hell was going on without calling Bobbi like a pathetic loser.
Absently rubbing Pia, he decided to do what any other sane adult would do.
Shane grabbed his leather jacket from the table where he’d flung the night before and pulled it on. He shoved his bare feet into his work boots and took the stairs two at a time, hitting the pavement running once he was outside.
The sun was shining, the temperature on the warm side—which was a good thing considering he was half naked. Birds chirped in the trees around him, buds were beginning to spring forward and damned if a robin didn’t fly into the huge oak tree behind the carriage house.
He ignored all of it and marched through melting snow and mud, toward Logan’s house, which was about a fifty feet straight ahead, just beyond the garage. An old home, it had been built by a rich landowner back in the eighteenth century and Logan was slowly restoring it to its former glory.
Shane hopped up onto the porch and without hesitating rang the doorbell. It chimed. Loud and clear.
He waited a few moments. He rolled his shoulders and peered into the window to his right.
He rang the doorbell again. And still he waited. This time with his jaw clenched tightly and his brows so low he looked like a fucking Neanderthal.
That heavy feeling in his gut churned and he winced, his frown deepening just as the door flew open. Billie, clad in a pair of pink track pants and a T-shirt that was not only backwards, but inside out, stared up at him in surprise. She moved an inch and glanced around him, her gaze slowly returning to his face and then down to the bottom of his boots.
Her hair was mussed, her lips swollen like they’d just been kissed, and Shane groaned inwardly. Shit.
“I’m sorry, Billie. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Really? You rang the doorbell for nearly five minutes.”
God, he felt like an idiot. He was the pathetic guy that he swore he would never be. The one who mooned over a woman. The one who all of a sudden couldn’t sleep by himself anymore. When the hell had that happened?
Shane went to shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans and…fuck, he wasn’t wearing any. Instead, his fisted hands hung stiffly at his side.
“Do you want to come in?” Billie shivered and stepped back. “Logan is putting on a pot of coffee.”
He wasn’t sure what he should do. Christ, he wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
“Or you could stand on the porch in your boxers. I don’t care.”
Shane glanced down, a half-hearted smile on his face. “I ran out of the house without, ah, getting dressed.”
“I see that,” Billie said softly. “It’s okay. I’m not complaining. That tattoos are really hot.”
“What tattoo’s? Who’s complaining?” Logan slipped his arms around Billie from behind, and looked over her head at Shane as if Shane had lost his mind. “What the hell is going on, Gallagher? And where the hell are your clothes?”
“He seems to have forgotten them,” Billie said, wriggling out of Logan’s arms. “Are you coming in or what?”
Shane glanced at Logan and shrugged. Why the hell not? It wasn’t as if he had anyone waiting for him back at his place.
He followed them inside, shucked his boots, though he kept his jacket on, and headed toward the kitchen. He had just grabbed a coffee and sat at the kitchen table, when Billie slid down across from him.
“Did you and Bobbi have a fight?”
“What?” He shook his head. “No.” He frowned. “At least I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” Logan cracked another egg into a large red bowl. “How can you not know if you’ve had a fight? Shit, I look at Billie the wrong way and I hear about it instantly.”
“Excuse me,” Billie glanced over her shoulder. “It’s my duty as the girlfriend to let you know when you’re wrong.”
Logan cracked another egg. “Babe, I’m never wrong.”
“Really,” Billie said dryly, a slight smile on her face as she stared down into her mug. “So yesterday when you said that Easter Sunday was next week and I told you that no, it was in fact today, you weren’t wrong?”
“I was wrong on purpose.”
Billie rolled her eyes. “Wrong on purpose.”
“Yep.” Logan threw some cheese into the bowl and grabbed the milk off the counter, though his eyes kept straying to the woman across from Shane. “Wrong. On. Purpose.”
Billie’s face split into a soft smile. “And why would you want to be wrong on purpose
?”
Logan began to whisk the eggs, his grin as wide as the Grand Canyon. “Why else? Make up sex is the best, don’t you think?”
Billie glanced back at Logan, and Shane looked away, his gaze on the window. On the blue sky and bright sunlight. On anything other than the two of them.
Billie hopped off her chair—he saw the reflection in the window—and crossed the kitchen until she stood behind Logan and rested her cheek against his back.
Logan continued to make their breakfast and the two of them continued to talk, their voices low and intimate.
Something so powerful stirred inside him, that Shane dropped his head into his hands and stared down into his coffee mug. What was it exactly? Want? Need? Jealousy?
He realized in that moment that he and Bobbi couldn’t go on with the way things had been over the last month or so. How could they? He loved the woman more now, than he had before, and when she decided not to come home because she was tired, it was a goddamn problem.
A problem that he needed to fix.
“So, Shane, are you going to tell us what’s going on?” Billie was still attached to Logan, her grin crazy silly as she snuggled into his back.
“Bobbi didn’t come home last night.” He said the words without thinking and grimaced when Logan laughed—a loud chuckle that he was sure half of New Waterford heard.
“Christ, are you in trouble, Gallagher,” Logan managed to get out between the loud chuckling.
“She was cleaning up the kitchen when I left so maybe she was just tired and slept over?” Billie said hopefully.
“That’s what she said.”
“Oh, okay, so you’ve talked to her.” Billie took a step toward him. “You’re not fighting.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Shane said roughly, his mood once again dark. “She sent me a text message. I hate fucking text messages. They’re for goddamn teenagers.”
“Oh,” Billie said, her hand moving to her nose.
“Damn, are you in trouble,” Logan interjected, unaware that Billie had turned ten shades of pale.
“No shit,” Shane replied, though his eyes widened in concern. Billie did not look good.
“Oh,” Billie said again. “Crap,” she giggled nervously. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Hey,” Logan whirled around and grabbed her by the waist. “Shit, Billie, you look like you’re gonna—”
He didn’t have a chance to finish. Billie pushed away from him and ran from the room leaving the two men staring after her in silence.
After a while, she returned, though her face was flush and voice tremulous. “I’m going to lay down for a bit.” She moved back when Logan would have touched. “I don’t want to spread germs.”
Logan cocked his head to the side. “Honey, we’ve been spreading all sorts of shit for months now.” He crossed over, bent, and kissed her forehead. “Go lay down.”
She nodded. “Shane?”
“Yeah.”
“Bobbi loves you. I’m sure she was just tired.”
“Yeah,” he said watching her disappear, suddenly aware that Logan was looking at him strangely.
“What?” he barked.
Logan shrugged and went back to building the biggest, baddest, omelette in the county. “Just get it over with Gallagher.”
“Get what over with?”
Logan’s chuckled once more. “You want me to make the appointment or have you got it covered?”
Okay, his buddy was losing it. “Appointment?”
“Yeah. I hear my Dad’s running a special on neutering but it’s this weekend only. Since you’re no good for anyone else so you may as well get it done.”
Shane pushed off from the table and finished his coffee. “Fuck you, Forest.”
Logan’s laughter followed Shane right out the door and he swore he heard him even when he made it back to the safety of his place. Once inside, he fed Pia and after that went down to his shop to work out with his weights. Less than an hour later he grabbed his brushes stood before the portrait he’d begun the day before and got to work.
Several hours passed and it was nearly three when Shane tossed his brushes aside. He’d spent the entire morning and afternoon painting, listening to The Stones, and not once had Bobbi called or even texted him.
Was he wrong to be pissed off?
Not the way he saw it. Something had changed over the last few days and he was having none of it. Not when he’d finally landed in a place that he knew was right for him. A place that was right for him and Bobbi.
He headed up to his loft and into the shower because if he didn’t get his ass in gear, he was going to be late. And Shane had no intention of being late because he was going to have a conversation with Bobbi tonight. He was going to explain fully the scope of his feelings. He was going to find out what the hell had her running scared and, and it if was the last thing he did, he was going to fix it.
End of story.
After his shower he was in the bedroom pulling on a pair of clean jeans when Pia came ripping into the bedroom, growling and tossing one of her toys into the air. He smiled and patted her head, and she jumped onto the bed and immediately went to work on her treasure.
Shane shrugged into a long sleeved blue Henley and had just shoved his wallet into the back of his jeans when Pia tossed her damn toy at his feet.
“Christ, you’re feeling good, aren’t you girl?”
He bent down to retrieve it and froze, his eyes widening in disbelief. What the hell?
As Shane reached for the white stick, the feeling of dread that had been dogging him all morning and afternoon intensified. He glanced over at Pia, who looked at him with her big eyes and wide open face, and then back down at his hand.
Down at the Early Alert stick.
Down at the Early Alert stick that indicated a positive pregnancy.
“Holy Christ,” he said hoarsely. Is this what was upsetting Bobbi? She was pregnant? He groaned and sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at a little piece of plastic that changed lives all the time. And he felt as if the past had reached up and grabbed him by the throat. How had they come to this? Again?
They weren’t goddamn kids anymore. They were adults.
His first reaction—the one that had gotten him into trouble over and over again—was to give in to his anger. To feed from it and let it fuel him until he marched over to the Barker’s and confronted Bobbi. He hated secrets and she damn well knew it.
But he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a grownup. And he was going to try like hell to act like one. But it was hard. So hard not to give in to the anger beneath his skin when the ghosts from the past echoed in his head. With a groan he closed his eyes in agony, wanting to shut it all out but unable to.
“I’m too young for a baby, Shane.”
A baby. Holy fucking shit.
He looked into Bobbi’s tearstained face and felt all the hard lines inside him shift, and crumble. “But how? How can you be pregnant? You’re on the pill.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice broke and she squeezed her eyes shut, as big tears slipped from corners to lay tracks of fear down her cheeks.
If it was possible for Shane to feel like the lowest of the low, he was there. He was beyond there.
And he was scared, so he couldn’t imagine what Bobbi was feeling.
“Babe, I’m sorry. We’ll make it work. I just don’t want…I can’t handle you crying.”
She rested her head on his chest. Her heart was beating so fast he felt it through her thin top and his leather jacket. “I can’t have a baby,’ she whispered.
“We’ll get married,” he said quickly, ignoring her, cradling her head between his hands and gazing down into the eyes he knew he would never forget.
“Married? Are you crazy? Shane, you’re going to that fancy art college and I…I’m barely twenty. I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. I can’t have a baby. God, Billie’s just played on her second Olympic hockey team and Betty is in Paris modelling and
I’m…I’m stuck in New Waterford and pregnant. I can’t be pregnant. I can’t have a baby.”
Stuck here. Stuck here with him. His face hardened. “Well, it looks like you are having a baby. My baby.”
She pulled away from him and wiped the tears from her face. “No,” she whispered, taking a step back. “No, I’m not. I don’t want to have this baby.”
“What are you saying?” He was barely able to keep his anger in check.
“Shane, you need to listen to me.” She glanced away, shaking—shivering so much that her teeth rattled. “I made an appointment at a clinic in the city.”
“You made an appointment?” He took a step toward her, not caring that fear now rested on her face. ‘How the fuck long have you known about this?”
She shook her head and said nothing.
Before he could stop himself, his hands were on her shoulders and he shook her so hard that her head snapped back and he didn’t stop until her whimpers registered through the fog in his brain. Stepping away, Shane fought hard to get control and when he did he could barely speak. “How the fuck long?”
“A few weeks,” she said eventually, her eyes sliding away from his.
“So last week when we went to that big bush party, you knew?”
She nodded.
“Last night when we went back to my place…when you snuck into my room and we fucked for hours…you knew.”
She winced, but again she nodded.
“You knew you were pregnant and you knew you weren’t going to have it.”
For the longest time there were no words and when he took a step toward her, she shook her head and gulped. “I’m not having this baby, Shane. I can’t. I need you to understand. Can you understand?”
Shane couldn’t explain the blackness inside him. It washed over everything in a palette of anger, confusion and betrayal.
“You’ve already made your decision so why the hell do need me to understand? Why the hell do you need me at all?”
“What are you saying? What do you mean?”
The blackness crushed him from the inside out and before he even knew what he was doing—or saying—he’d set his path and ruined the one good thing he had ever had.
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