The One You Fight For

by Loren, Roni

  Music drifted from somewhere in the distance, the melodic chords of a guitar wrapping into the crashing waves. He recognized the song as one his parents used to claim as “their song” when they still loved each other—“Danny’s Song.” Something about having a son and not having money and being so in love with you, honey.

  A wash of loneliness went through him, the strumming making him think of that first night he’d met Taryn. It’d been a completely different place and atmosphere, but the mood felt similar. He’d gone into the bar that night to drink in the dark and forget who he was for a few minutes. Then she’d appeared onstage and flipped all his plans upside down—a light beaming right in his face and daring him to blink and miss it.

  Tonight, though, it was just him, and he couldn’t even have a drink because he planned to drive all night. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he groaned. The reporter he’d sent the confession to had emailed to say she needed verbal confirmation and wanted to call. Shaw had agreed, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he needed to get it over with. One more call and he’d be done with this mess.

  He shifted the bags to one arm and pulled out his phone. “Hello.”

  “Mr. Miller? This is Angelica Lopez,” said a young, eager voice.

  “Yes. Hi,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “I appreciate you taking my call,” she said, rushing on. “First, I wanted to thank you for reaching out to me. I’m really pleased you chose me to tell the story.”

  He sniffed. He’d picked her because her approach had been the least annoying. Not a hard contest to win based on his phone messages. “Ms. Lopez, I’m sorry, but I only have a minute. What do you need from me to run the story?”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, some of the bounce in her voice flattening out. “I can’t run the story.”

  He stopped walking. “What? Why?”

  She cleared her throat. “Well, because Dr. Landry has made a statement, and it’s contradictory. She said she knew who you were and was a willing participant in your relationship.”

  Shaw dropped the bags with a thunk. “She did what?”

  “Yes, sir. She said that you’re a good man who’s been terrorized by the media and that the press needs to quote ‘leave him the hell alone and let him live his life because he’s a victim in all this, too.’”

  “Shit.” He looked up to the dark blanket of night sky, some weird combination of frustration and amazement washing over him. She’d told the truth. Taryn had stood up for him. She’d told the truth and made herself a target. Risked her friends’ and family’s trust. He let out a rough breath. Dammit, professor.

  Why would she do that? Why would she put herself through that? He’d lined everything up to save her that pain. The wind off the ocean whipped around him, tugging his hair out of the rubber band he’d pulled it back with, blocking his view of the sky.

  “So I was hoping you’d give me a statement?” Angelica asked, her voice rising at the end. “Confirm or deny?”

  He pushed his hair out of his face, grabbed his bags, his fingers numb, and picked up speed to get back to the RV. He needed to see what kind of fallout Taryn was facing. Maybe he could still undo this. He could say he’d put her up to the statement or… God, he didn’t know. Something. There had to be a way to undo it. “I can’t make one right now.”

  “Mr. Miller—”

  Shaw ended the call and caught sight of his RV. The music grew louder, and the smell of roasted hot dogs drifted on the air, but his stomach was churning. He’d set everything up for Taryn to be okay. He needed to figure out how to fix this.

  But when he rushed around the rear corner of his RV to get to the door, he stopped cold. Sitting on a rock under the light of the moon was a girl with a guitar, her hair dancing in the ocean breeze like a wild thing and his parents’ song drifting from her fingertips. His heart fell to his feet.

  Taryn looked up from her guitar, and his breath froze in his chest. He was afraid to move, as if she were a butterfly who’d easily startle and flit off if he so much as breathed. She gave him a tentative smile, her fingers stilling against the strings. “Hey.”

  Her eyes looked puffy from crying, and there was a somberness to her, but he’d never seen anyone look more beautiful—the guitar cradled in her arms, a long, flowery skirt swirling around her legs, moonlight kissing her smooth skin. He set his bags down slowly, afraid he was having some kind of mental episode and hallucinating her presence. “Taryn.”

  She draped her arm over the top of her guitar, an unsure look on her face. “Surprised?”

  And the winner of the Understatement of the Year Award goes to…

  “What are you doing here?” He glanced around as if he expected the answer to pop up from behind the sand dunes. “How are you here?”

  “How?” She smirked. “You do realize I’m a researcher, right? Stalking is in my wheelhouse. Your phone’s on Rivers’s account. He tracked your location.”

  He stared at her. “But why?”

  “You weren’t taking my calls, and I needed to talk to you.” She wet her lips. “Because you can’t tell a woman you think you probably love her in a voicemail and then disappear into the night. That is a chickenshit thing to do, Miller.”

  “A—” His lips parted, but he was having trouble finding words.

  “I thought we should talk,” she said finally. “You know, before you go.”

  He shook his head, still not believing she was right there in front of him. He’d thought he’d never see her again, and his head was spinning, but then the phone call he’d just received set in. “You told a reporter the truth. You weren’t supposed to do that.”

  “Yeah.” She looked down and ran her fingers over the strings. “I’m not real good at following orders.”

  “Taryn…” His ribs cinched. “Your family. Do they—”

  “They know.” Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath, and she set the guitar aside, leaning it against the rock. “I told them before the news could get out. They…did not take it well.” She looked up at him. “But I wasn’t going to lie about you. You don’t deserve that.”

  He stepped closer, almost afraid to get within touching distance. He wanted to embrace her, to tell her he was sorry, to take away some of that hurt in her voice, but he forced his arms to stay at his sides. “You don’t deserve to have your family upset with you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Neither of us did. That’s the point.” She stood and pushed her hair away from her face, her skirt dancing like flames around her legs. “Believe me, I considered lying for the sake of my family, but shielding them from the truth meant harming you. Harming us. Long Acre has enough victims. We shouldn’t have to apologize because we…like each other. Don’t we both have the right to feel what we feel? Haven’t we earned that?”

  “Of course you have,” he said without pause. “You deserve the world, Taryn. That’s why I didn’t want you dragged into any of this.”

  She took a step forward, her arms at her sides, palms facing him. “But what if I want that world to include you?”

  His lungs compressed as if they’d forgotten how to draw air. “Taryn…”

  “Don’t leave,” she said quietly, meeting his gaze. “Not if you really meant what you said on the phone. I can take whatever people want to throw at me. I don’t need your protection or you falling on a sword for me. I’m not sure if you noticed, but I’m pretty fucking tough all on my own.”

  Tough? They’d need to come up with a stronger word than that to describe this woman.

  “My family will have to handle this in their own way,” she continued, a flash of pain in her eyes. “But my friends are in full support. Rivers supports you. We won’t be alone in this. You don’t have to be alone in this anymore. You can be you. With me. No more hiding.”

 
Not alone. Not hiding. With Taryn. The concepts seemed so foreign that he almost couldn’t grasp them and hold them in his mind. Taryn wasn’t just offering herself but her friends, her world, inviting him in, even with all the heavy baggage that came along with him. It was everything he wanted. It was too much.

  He closed the gap between them, unable to help himself. He had to touch her. He cupped her face in his palms, an ache deeper than he’d ever felt pinging through him. “Baby, I can’t tell you what that means to me, but don’t do this. You’re too big-hearted. I don’t want you to get hurt in this. You don’t need to save me.”

  She smiled then, tears making her eyes shine. “What if I’m saving myself?”

  He looked down at her, bewildered. “Taryn…”

  “I love you back, Shaw.”

  The words hit him like a blow to the head, stunning him and making him feel dizzy. He held on to her, afraid he’d fall, his heart pounding.

  “I know we didn’t get that much time together,” she continued. “But I think I knew almost right away. That night I met you outside the bar, I felt something different with you, something I’d never come close to before. Like the universe tapped me on the shoulder and said this one. I think that’s why I refused to give up even when I found out who you were.” She shook her head in his grasp. “And I’m not saying that to put pressure on you or to make you feel like you have to jump into something serious. You said you think you probably love me, but if that’s not for sure, I understand. Either way, I thought you should know how I feel, and I didn’t want you to leave without knowing and—”

  She was rambling. And she loved him. And he couldn’t take it anymore. He bent down and did what he’d been wanting to do since he’d seen her sitting on that rock. He kissed her, cutting off her words and giving himself over to the love that was coursing inside him, letting himself feel it fully for the first time. No fine print. No warning labels. He kissed her like a man who’d thought he’d never see his woman again. He poured every ounce of emotion he’d been holding inside since she’d walked out the door two weeks ago into it. And she kissed him back as if she hadn’t been able to bear it either.

  She loved him.

  She loved him.

  She loved him.

  Every part of that was a damn miracle.

  Eventually, he pulled back and brushed her tears away with his thumbs. She was so beautiful, it almost hurt to look at her. Like staring into the sun. “Baby, there is no think or probably about it. I love you. I love you so much that it’s killing me to think any of this ugliness is gonna touch you.”

  She smiled. “You are not ugliness. You are Shaw Miller, the guy I love. You are worth the trouble.”

  “Taryn,” he whispered.

  She pressed her hands to his chest, her tears still slipping out. “I needed you to know all that first. But that’s not all I’m here to say. Before we take this any further, there’s something else you should know.”

  He frowned at the flash of wariness in her eyes. He swiped at her tears. “What is it, baby?”

  * * *

  Taryn’s throat was trying to close. She’d never been so happy and terrified at the same time. She felt like there was just a pinprick of space to push words through, but she took a breath and straightened her spine. She’d spent the entire three-and-a-half-hour drive down here thinking of what she was going to say to Shaw. But now that the moment was here, she was panicking.

  Shaw looked down with concern and pushed her hair away from her face. “Tell me what’s going on. Something with the press?”

  She shook her head. Do it. Do it. She’d just given her speech about being tough, but now she felt like she was going to collapse into a pile of useless marshmallow fluff. The campers she’d passed could make a s’more out of her. No. She could do this. She took another breath and met his gaze. “So, before I drove down here, I did a thing.”

  His brows lifted. “A thing?”

  She stepped back out of his embrace, wanting to give them both breathing room, and pulled her phone out of her skirt pocket with a shaky hand. She pulled up a photo, stared at it for a long moment, and then looked up at him. “Yeah. Turns out the first one was wrong.”

  After a steadying breath, she turned the phone to face him, and he took it from her. His eyes scanned the screen, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he examined the photo, and then all expression washed off his face, along with the color in his cheeks.

  “Two lines,” he whispered.

  Taryn’s heartbeat was louder than the ocean waves, pounding against her temples. “Yeah. Two lines. We must’ve taken the other one too early. I did two more after the one in the photo to confirm. Two lines. Two hearts. And a yes.”

  Shaw looked up, a frightened-rabbit look on his face. “Oh God, Taryn. I’m…” He stepped past her and collapsed onto the rock where she’d been sitting. “I’m so sorry. This is…”

  Her stomach dropped, his reaction not what she’d been hoping for. She could hear the unspoken words in the empty space. This is…awful, terrible, bad news. “Shaw.”

  He set her phone down and put his head in his hands, his hair hiding his face from her. “Jesus, no wonder you tracked me down. I’ll help with whatever you need. I’ll go with you.”

  “Go with me?”

  He looked up, grief on his face. “To take care of it.”

  Her chest constricted, and she stepped forward, lowering herself to her knees in front of him. “Shaw, there is no taking care of it. I know this wasn’t the plan. At all. But…I’m not ending this pregnancy. You can be part of that or not, but I’m keeping the baby.”

  Shaw’s eyes rounded. “Keeping…but it’s… My family… Why would you want…”

  She couldn’t bear the heartbreak in his eyes. She put her hands on his knees. “I’m not worried about your family. This baby was created from you and me. We are two amazing people, and though this wasn’t planned, it was created out of love. This baby is going to kick ass.”

  Tears glittered in his eyes. “You want to have my baby?”

  The hope in his voice nearly cracked her right open. She smiled through her own tears. “Yes. Have you seen how hot we are? This baby is going to be gorgeous.”

  A choked sound escaped him, some combo of a laugh and a sob.

  “But if you’re not ready to be a dad, I’m not going to force it on you. This is a huge, unexpected, life-altering thing. It’s your choice to get involved or not,” she said, trying to be mature but also freaking out on the inside. She could do this on her own. She could. But she didn’t want to. She wanted Shaw in her life, not just as her baby’s father, but as her guy. “I’m not going to stop you from leaving.”

  “Leaving?” he said in disbelief. “You think I would leave now?”

  She looked away. “I don’t want guilt or obligation to be the only thing that keeps you here.”

  “Taryn. This isn’t—” Shaw slid down onto his knees, a look of wonder on his face. “Of course I’m not leaving. I wasn’t leaving the minute you showed up here and told me you loved me back. This is…everything. I’ve never been so happy as the days I’ve spent with you. I felt it that first night, too. That this-is-special thing.” He kissed her gently. “I love you. I wanted to be with you before this, but now…” He looked down at her belly, putting his hand there with a whisper-soft touch. “Now, you’re never getting rid of me. I hope you realize that. You’re stuck with me, songbird.”

  She grinned and swiped at her nose, on the edge of going into the ugly cry. “I think I can probably live with that.”

  “Think you can probably?” he teased.

  She laughed. “I definitely can.”

  He cradled her face and shook his head in awe. “A baby. Our baby. Holy crap.”

  The words still made anxiety shimmer through her. This was all so much so fast. It was all so new. But another par
t of her felt the rightness of it all, the perfect combination sliding into the lock and opening a door she’d never thought she’d walk through. “Pretty crazy, huh? I think the universe had a plan.”

  He arched a brow. “An expired condom plan?”

  “It works in mysterious ways.”

  “Yeah, it does.” He kissed her again, a little more urgently this time. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good. Excited,” she confessed, meaning it. “And completely freaking terrified because…holy shit, a baby.”

  He laughed. “Glad we’re on the same page. Because I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  She touched her forehead to his and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You think I do? How about we figure it out together? We’ll climb the wall as a team.”

  “Together.” He closed his eyes and held her. “That sounds perfect.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “It kinda does, doesn’t it?”

  He lifted his head and looked at her, tenderness there. “Everyone is going to think we’re batshit crazy.”

  “Let ’em. I’m really, really tired of worrying about what other people think.”

  He cocked his head. “And I’m going to need to sell this ridiculous RV.”

  She snorted and glanced over at the giant vehicle before looking back to him. “I don’t know. It looks kinda cool. Maybe we can take family vacations in it.”

  “Family vacations.” The look that crossed his face undid her completely. In that look, she saw everything she needed to know. All of her doubts and worries faded. He wanted this. All of it. Her. And this baby. A family.

  They were going to be a family.

  She didn’t expect it to be easy. This was all new and scary and sudden. The world was going to have its opinions. Their child would one day learn about the past. Taryn’s family may never forgive her. But for once, all that mattered was how she felt in this moment. She was happy. This was right. They loved each other.