by Lauren Wood
“Whatever Jada had to say was based on stuff she found when we were kids,” she defended, jumping to her feet to square off with me. “Everything else was speculation. Like what I thought I saw in Victoria’s eyes when she heard the news. There’s only one way to know for sure, Lucas. You have to talk to her.”
“If it was that easy, I would have done it by now,” I huffed.
She reached out and rested her hand on my arm. “I didn’t say it would be easy, Lucas. But it’s necessary. You can’t move forward with this wedding or anything else until you two talk and make sure you’re on the same page. Someone’s going to get hurt otherwise. And with a baby coming into the mix, you can’t afford to take that risk.”
She withdrew her hand and left in silence. I had to give it to her: if Camille was more worried about our personal lives than the company, then this really was imperative. I knew that, of course, but talking about it—out loud—cast a whole new sense of dread over everything.
I had already decided the time had come once, and I guessed this was my price to pay for not manning up then. Now time had run out.
My sisters knew I was going to be a father, and if Victoria didn’t already have some idea about how I really felt about her before...she sure did now. The biggest question was...how did she feel about it? Happy? Relieved? Disgusted?
I fired off a text, short and simple: We need to talk. There was no backing down now, and I figured there was no use in trying to act like I didn’t know she was pregnant. Without waiting for a reply, I headed out of the office for her apartment, stopping on the way for chocolates and flowers. Every talk with a woman goes better if you show up with chocolates and flowers. I knew that much, at least.
Victoria answered her door in a huff. Black makeup was smudged under her eyes and it looked like she had been crying; her face was pale with blotchy cheeks.
“You feeling okay?” I asked, offering up my peace tokens.
“Fine,” she snipped, slamming the door behind me. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Camille told me.” My eyes lit up at her. I wanted to skip all the other stuff and just be happy about the pregnancy for a moment. “This is wonderful, Vic. You’re going to have our baby.”
“I should have known she’d tell you,” she said spitefully, shaking her head. “Half of you can’t keep your mouths shut, the other half neglect to mention the most important things.”
“I wish you had told me before her.”
She glared back at me incredulously. “Oh, you’re one to talk! So then why did I have to hear all that from Jada?!”
I played dumb. “Hear what from Jada?”
“Enough, Lucas!” She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Are you...are you in...do you have feelings for me? Like, real feelings?”
I exhaled. “Yes.”
“For how long?”
“From the moment I first saw you.”
There it was. Out in the open—just hanging there in the air where it could never be taken back again. If I was going to let that much spill out, I figured I might as well come out with all of it.
“Victoria Sloan, I love you. And I have loved you since we first met. For twenty years. The truth is...I wasn’t seeing someone who was jealous, like I told you before. I made that up because I was ashamed. I was too scared to tell you how I felt, but...never being able to have you as anything more than a friend was starting to feel like more than I could bear. So I pulled back. That’s why we hadn’t seen much of each other before all of this.”
Forcing myself to stop, I stood there and waited—searching her face for some sign, some glimpse of how she was feeling. My chest heaved up and down as we hung suspended in the moment. Everything would be different now...for better or for worse.
19
Victoria
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Had I wondered, and maybe even hoped, that there was more to Lucas and me than just friendship and pragmatic baby making? Of course. I hadn’t chosen to question it, but I did.
But realizing he might like me more than he intended to after he’d already embarked on this whole facade was one thing. Loving me all these years and never saying a word? That was something else entirely.
I had been a nervous wreck ever since Jada blurted out her brother’s secret. And now here he was...standing in front of me, vulnerable in a way I had never seen in him before—terrified and hopeful all at once.
“You should have said something, Lucas.”
“I know. Trust me, I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” I barked. “You manipulated me. You were too much of a coward to tell me how you felt, so you tricked me into sleeping with you. Into being engaged to you. What is wrong with you!?”
He chewed his bottom lip for a moment and looked away. Finally, he rolled his shoulders and said, “Love makes you do stupid things, I guess.”
“Then do stupid things that fuck up your own life!” I shrieked. “Not mine! Jesus, what if Jada hadn’t said anything!? Would you have kept this a secret your whole life!?”
“I hoped I wouldn’t have to,” he tried to explain. “I was planning on telling you, Vic. I was waiting for the right time. I was going to tell you at dinner the other night, but...I don’t know. I chickened out. Again. I don’t like any of this. I feel ashamed for not being a better man for you.”
I cut my eyes away, feeling a nagging guilt inside. It seemed we’d both had a secret we intended to reveal that night and neither of us had the guts to follow through. Maybe I didn’t have the right to be so angry with him for not telling me when I hadn’t been able to tell him about the baby at first either. But what kind of relationship could we even have if we couldn’t just talk to each other?
“No,” I blurted, my thoughts bleeding out into words. “I may have needed a minute before telling you about the baby, but I wouldn’t have kept it from you. You’ve kept up this lie for the entirety of our friendship and you manipulated me into being your little puppet, playing along with your fantasy. Ugh, it makes me feel sick just thinking about it!”
“Why did you need a minute to tell me about the baby?” he questioned. “And that’s not exactly a fair comparison. You couldn’t have hidden your pregnancy for long.”
“Sure, that makes it better. Point out how good you are at lying and hiding your own heart.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said sternly.
I pursed my lips, not wanting to tell him. But everything was out in the open now anyway. And soon this would all be over, I had decided. Might as well go for broke.
“I didn’t want things to change,” I murmured.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I liked things the way they were!” I shouted, flailing my arms.
“And by things, you mean...all the time we were spending together. Making love—”
“It was never supposed to be making love!” I argued. “We were only supposed to be making a baby!”
“And we did that,” he replied, stepping closer. “You said you wanted that baby more than anything. And you got it, but it still wasn’t enough to make you want to give up what we had.”
“For a moment, yeah...I wondered if maybe we could have it all,” I admitted, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. “But that was before.”
“Before what? Nothing is really so different now, Victoria.”
“Maybe not for you, but it is for me,” I scoffed. “If I had known how you felt...I never would have agreed to any of this.”
“You’re losing track of what I’m getting at here.” He took another few steps forward. Each time I moved back. “Victoria. Do you feel the same way about me? If you didn’t want us to stop…”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I insisted, wiping my eyes and turning my shoulder to him. “I want to call the whole thing off. You got over your scandal—with my help. You gave me a baby. You did your job, and I did mine. Now it’s time to stop.”
“It’s not so simple,�
� he protested softly. “And it doesn’t have to be like this. Vic, please.” He came over and placed his palms on top of my arms. “If you didn’t want things to end or change, then it means you were feeling something for me, too.”
“Is that what you were hoping? That you’d trick me into falling for you?”
“Of course not. I never wanted to hurt you or lie or trick anyone.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted more than anything to melt into his arms and hope that we could somehow drift off into a perfect fairy-tale ending. That we could make the lie we were selling come true. But I couldn’t look at him the same now.
“I would always wonder if you did all of this on purpose,” I explained, my voice cracking. It felt like my heart was being split in two. “I’d constantly be asking myself if this was your plan all along—to manipulate me into getting what you wanted.”
“All I want is you,” he promised.
“You used me.” I stiffened up, pushing his arms away and retreating to the other side of the room where it was safe. Putting distance between us was the only thing that seemed to help me think clearly.
“I’ve already planned it all out,” I told him. “I’ll hold a press conference explaining why we broke up. I’ll paint myself as a heartbreaker who got pregnant by some other man. Everyone will feel sorry for you and give you a pass on being single. And people may hate me for a while, but it will only help my reputation as a cutthroat PR agent. Maybe then people will finally stop worrying so much about my own disaster of a love life and focus on my actual work, which is all I ever really wanted.”
He hung his head, wiping his hand across his mouth...those gorgeous lips that I still longed to kiss so badly. If only they hadn’t managed to spew so many manipulative lies.
“This is what you want?” he asked finally.
I sucked in a deep breath, burying all my emotions down somewhere not even I could reach them. “This is how it has to be.” I looked him dead in the eye, letting him know just how determined and serious I was. “I think you should go.”
He looked around for a moment, like he was lost, then moved down the hallway. He stopped in front of the open doorway to the nursery and looked back at me, eyeing my stomach. I thought he might cry or beg. But he sucked it up instead, apparently burying his feelings down just as deep as I had. He was a master at that, too.
With a submissive nod, he marched for the door. Just before opening it, he paused, his hand on the knob. He lingered there for mere seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I couldn’t tell what I was hoping for more. For him to turn around and say whatever magical words it would take to chase this all way, or for him to just go...and let this whole disaster go up in the flames it was always destined to erupt into, one way or another.
His wrist turned, the door opened. And he was gone.
A big breath gushed from my chest, leaving me empty and limp. All I could do was collapse onto the couch and sob. Was I mourning the loss of my best friend? The loss of the image I had of him as this perfect, big, strong man who could do no wrong? Or...was it something else entirely? Like my inability to just let go and let it all happen? To let myself admit that I loved him, too.
All at once, the door flew back open. Lucas rushed back in, panting. I shot up from the couch and stared at him, in that moment hating him more than ever. He could have just let it be!
“I’m not going to let it end like this,” he declared. “I want to give you time to cool off, but I’ve wasted enough time already. I’m not going to waste another second! Not with you.”
“I don’t need time to cool off. I’ve made up my mind.”
“That’s not how it works,” he objected. “Take it from me—I’ve spent all this time trying to talk myself out of how I felt about you, hoping it would all just go away. I learned the hard way that you don’t get to decide how you feel about some things...about some people.”
I laughed resentfully. “Fake it until you make it.” My mouth turned to a bitter scowl. “This is everything I’ve always tried to avoid. It’s too hard and too complicated—it’s why I don’t bother with love and relationships. And now I don’t even have my best friend to laugh about it with anymore. I thought we were on the same page!”
“I think we are. More than you want to admit.” He pulled up the chair across from me and sat down. “I’m not going anywhere, Victoria. Not yet. Not until you hear what I have to say.”
20
Lucas
All of my worst fears were coming true. I didn’t tell Victoria I was in love with her before because I was afraid she would overreact and push me away—which was exactly what she was doing now. But I wasn’t about to give up without a fight.
I sat in the chair across from her, staring her down as she curled into a defensive coil on the couch. Her brown eyes narrowed at me, preparing all her defenses before I had even said a word. Her mind was racing a mile a minute.
I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t going down without a fight either. But that was just another reason we were such a perfect match. No one else could handle her when she was like this, and she was the only one who could do the same for me in return.
“I think you love me, too,” I started. “But you’re too controlling, and you’re afraid to let yourself fall in love. Admit it.”
“That’s not what this is about,” she insisted.
“Like hell it isn’t. You know what I think? You liked this arrangement because it gave you a chance to feel like you were in a relationship without having to deal with all the things you couldn’t predict. There were rules and boundaries...and you never had to admit how you really felt.”
“I don’t care what you want to hear, I don’t feel the same way about you,” she said adamantly.
“You didn’t want to feel the same way about me, but you did. It just took us falling into bed together for you to realize it. And you were no better at admitting it than I was. You said so yourself that you didn’t want things to stop between us.”
She flew up from the couch and across the room, trying to avoid my eyes. But I chased right after her, grabbing her by the arms. She stared back at me in defiance.
“Look at me. Just look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me, too. Then I’ll go.”
Those gleaming dark eyes of hers burned back into mine, filled with anger. She had never hated me more, but I knew she wouldn’t care so much if this wasn’t about her trying to deny her own feelings.
Our breathing grew heavy in the silence until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I crashed my mouth into hers, and we both fell back against the wall in a deep, fervent kiss. She was stiff and rigid at first, but gave into me and opened her mouth wide—inviting my tongue in to sweep across hers.
I kissed her like my life depended on it—trying to let every ounce of what I felt for her come through the rough and urgent motions of our bodies. Our lips and teeth marking and branding each other. Our hands exploring, grabbing up as much as we could. It was a delicious drug, and I hadn’t had anywhere near enough. The way she matched my determination told me everything I needed to know.
I was right. She loved me, too. Now the tables had turned and the only thing standing in our way was her own refusal to admit to her feelings.
But she was just as stubborn and defiant as ever. She bit into my bottom lip, prompting me to jump back and press into the sting with my fingers.
She was breathless and looked possessed, glaring back at me—her eyes daring me to keep going. She wanted me to ravage her, but I wasn’t going to.
“Not like this,” I told her. “That’s another thing we’ve wasted too much time doing—using sex to say everything we should be saying with words. You’re already mad at me for manipulating you. I’m not going to bed with you like this. Not until you admit how you feel.”
“You don’t think that’s manipulation? Not giving me what I want until I say what you want to hear?” she fumed.
“So you do want it?”
I smirked. “Why don’t you ask yourself why? And it’s not just what I want to hear, it’s what you need to say. Right now, you’re being a hypocrite. Admit why you want it in the first place. ‘Cause news flash, Victoria—most people don’t find it so easy to fuck their best friend unless they actually feel something more for them.”
Her hand flew back, and for a second I thought she might slap me across the face. But she stopped herself.
“You have some nerve calling me a hypocrite,” she seethed.
“And you have some nerve trying to seduce me after you just told me everything was over,” I shot back.
“You’re the one who kissed me first.”
I spun around, dragging my hands through my hair. “Jesus, Vic, do you ever stop arguing!?”
“No, and neither do you! Why don’t you just do what I asked and leave!? You said what you had to say, now go!”
I narrowed my eyes at her, wishing we could just make out again. It’d be so easy to take her right then and there, letting our bodies take everything out on one another. But I was too afraid of what might happen after, that she’d still insist there was nothing between us...and I’d walk away empty-handed. If that was going to happen, I didn’t need to torture myself with another taste of her first.
“If you ever decide to admit to yourself how you really feel, let me know,” I huffed, heading for the door again. “I’m not going to give up on this. I’m not giving up on you...on us.”
“You don’t have to.” She crossed her arms. “I’m doing that for the both of us. You know, you may have been cheaper than a sperm donor, but you sure have made me pay the price in so many other ways.”
“Well, the only person making you pay a price now is yourself.” I slammed the door behind me, stopping in the hall for just a moment to catch my breath.
But this time I wasn’t going back. At least not until I figured out how to fix this.
