“Maybe you should get off your feet?” Jase asked. “I can take your tables.”
Marlee gave him a total what-are-you-talking-about look.
“Mar?” Eli used his calm voice even though his blood pressure was up to the ceiling. “Can we talk?”
Her expression was odd, which made sense given that they were in the middle of his big job and he wanted to pull her aside for a chat.
“What’s going…” Her expression changed. She glanced to Jase, Brek, and Dean. Then she got it. They hadn’t been together long, but he knew. And she knew. She swallowed. “You know about the baby.”
“Fuck.” That was Brek.
And that was precisely the word Eli wanted to use in that moment. The clattering of the plates, the voices from the dining room, all the noise zipped to the pinprick of a stop. There was no feeling anywhere in his body. The thing was a shell.
“You’re pregnant?” He heard himself ask. He must’ve asked, because it was his voice. His lips were moving. He just didn’t seem to be in control of them. Somewhere deep inside, he needed confirmation.
Marlee’s gaze darted between the boys again.
Sadie moved behind Marlee, ready to refill her own tray. “Eli, don’t do this here.”
“We’ll handle everything.” Brek took her tray. Tried to take her tray. Marlee wasn’t letting it go.
“Brek.” Velma said her husband’s name but slid her gaze to Eli. “We need to finish the job first.”
“Who all knows?” Eli asked. The words came out harsher than he’d intended, but why did everyone else seem to be in the know? Given that he shared her bed, maybe he should’ve been clued in when she found out?
Marlee focused on him and he felt that gaze cut straight to his spine. “The girls know. They were there when I found out last night.”
The ballroom floor seemed to fall open. He was in a freefall.
“Not Sadie,” Marlee continued. “She wasn’t there.”
“But she’s here because you told her.” He couldn’t seem to process anything that was happening after the words left his mouth.
They’d never even had a real shot.
Scotty would find out. He’d want her back. Marlee might’ve been pissed at him, but she couldn’t spend a decade with a guy and not have any feelings for him. Marlee felt everything. How could Eli even compete with that?
He studied Marlee’s face, steeling himself for what was to come. Letting her go would be the hardest fucking thing he ever had to do.
“Eli?” his head server asked. “We need to keep dessert moving.”
Given the tone of her voice, she’d heard the whole thing. Everyone within ten feet had. Eli still hadn’t taken his eyes from Marlee. Memorizing her face was all he’d be left with.
He’d finally decided a chance with Marlee was worth the risk, and the opportunity was being swiped away.
The one time he finally opened himself up? She was going to break him in two anyway.
The thickness in his throat nearly choked him. He wished beyond anything that he could hold on to the numbness for a bit more, but feeling was already starting to return.
He fought against it, knowing it was a fight he wouldn’t win.
“Go,” Brek said. “You two need to talk.”
The committee chairwoman tapped a glass at the microphone. The room went silent just as—
“Marlee’s pregnant. What are we supposed to talk about?” Eli asked louder than he’d intended, zeroing in on his wife.
Shit.
The ballroom’s attention shifted to him.
“Marlee?” An older version of Marlee stood from a table, the man in a tux on her right standing as well. Eli recognized him as Jackson Medford from the media box on Altitude Sports Network.
“You’re pregnant?” Jackson asked, his face drained of color.
“Seriously?” Scotty asked from beside Jackson.
The whole family came out to play.
“Maybe we should take this to the kitchen?” Eli’s dad slid his gaze to the doors leading to the kitchen.
Marlee’s jaw dropped. She took in her family. The ballroom. The silence.
“Is it mine?” Scotty asked in front of God, Eli’s parents, her parents, and the upper crust of Denver’s elite.
That’s when Eli’s freefall ended and reality smacked him right in the face.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Shit. Shit. Shit.
This was not how Marlee had wanted Eli to find out. She’d hoped to tell him gently after she’d had time to think of the best way to break the news.
She shoved the swinging doors into the kitchen, Eli following behind. Everyone else on staff shuffled in behind him. Her parents and Scotty and Brittney brought up the rear.
“Scotty’ll never let you go now,” he said, his volume higher than normal.
“Why would Scotty have any say in this?” she asked, ignoring the fact that Scotty was right there. “And he already let me go.”
“I didn’t know you were pregnant, Leelee.” Scotty pushed through the small crowd, placing his hand on her shoulder.
Eli looked like he was about to cut it off with a butcher knife.
“Scotty.” Brittney’s tone was ice.
“It’s Marlee. Not Leelee.” Marlee kept her focus on Eli while she addressed Scotty, shaking his hand from her shoulder. He could take his stupid nickname and shove it right alongside the unused thank-you cards for their wedding gifts.
“Maybe you two should talk this out.” Eli pulled the bandana from his skull.
“Why would you think I want to talk to Scotty about this?” None of this made any sense. Unless…
Seriously?
Eli thought the baby was Scotty’s? He thought she wanted Scotty? “Eli, I haven’t been with Scotty in forever. Not like that. I’ve been with you.”
Eli didn’t say anything. Gah. He didn’t get it.
“I haven’t had”—she nearly said sex in front of her parents—“relations”—there, much better—“with Scotty since weeks before the wedding. He claimed that he wanted the night to be special, so we took a break.”
“Perhaps you should take this someplace more private?” Sadie suggested.
Marlee glanced behind her. Sure enough, her parents stood wide-eyed next to Scotty.
“The kid’s mine?” Eli asked. The apparent shock kind of pissed her off and hit her like a right hook to the jaw.
For a smart guy, he was being really stupid.
“Who else’s could it be?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“Even when we weren’t careful, we were careful,” he said, the expression on his face one of genuine confusion.
“I guess that doesn’t always matter.” She lifted her shoulder even as her stomach plummeted. She needed to get out of there.
She pushed passed the group, her heels clicking against the kitchen floor toward the heavy brown door under the green EXIT sign.
The door slammed shut behind her. She took a gulp of air, her eyes getting warm with tears that she refused to let fall.
“Mar.” Eli jogged to catch up with her.
She paused in the alley, a security lamp on the building spilling fluorescent light on them. The air was chilled, but she crossed her arms around herself and ignored it.
“You didn’t tell me.” He was clearly hurt.
“I was going to tell you. You said not to tell you if it was going to piss you off.” She tossed her hands to the side. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“Why wouldn’t I do anything?”
“You don’t want kids.”
“Who said I didn’t want kids?”
“You did. Last night when you thought Jase and Heather were pregnant. You said, ‘Glad it’s not me, but good for them.’” She did her very best impression of his deep voice.
He reeled like she was the one tossing out right hooks. “I didn’t know the baby was mine.”
“Exactly.” He had been more honest because he didn
’t know. He couldn’t change that.
He stepped forward like she was a scared Lothario and he had to be cautious. “You don’t keep something as important as this to yourself.”
Now, she was just getting mad. “Yes, Eli. The time to tell someone he’s going to be a dad is directly after his declaration that he is so relieved that it’s not his kid.”
“No, that’s the time to have sex instead,” he clipped.
Her fingertips pressed against her lips.
He was lashing out. Yes, she should’ve figured out how to tell him. How was she supposed to do that when she knew it’d ruin everything they were building? “That’s not what it felt like, Eli. It didn’t feel like just sex. It felt to me like the start of maybe you wanting me. It felt like you were trying to tell me something when you couldn’t find the words. And I thought maybe if you wanted me, you’d want our baby, too.”
She had to finish. This wasn’t the time, but it was what they had. So she’d see it through.
“I mean, you’ve barely started to want me,” she continued. “I didn’t want to scare you away with the rest of it.”
“Barely want you?” His expression got dark. Heavy. He closed his eyes and he dropped against the wall, his head falling back so it hit the plaster.
“I get it, Eli. You’re scared that you’re going to care for people and those people might need you. You’re terrified that you’ll have to take care of everyone like you did when you were a kid. You’re scared beyond reason that you’ll have to give up your restaurant dream.” Marlee stepped closer, reached for his jaw, stroked the little bit of stubble there. “And I get you. Which is why I wanted to give you some time to get used to us before I added in a complication.”
He turned his chin to the inside of her wrist.
“Fuck.” Eli pressed his hand against his forehead.
“You don’t have to do anything for me. For the baby. I’ve got a job with benefits. The baby will be well taken care of, and you can be as involved or uninvolved as you want.” She took in a deep breath of cold air, letting it fill her lungs, wishing it would freeze the pain of this conversation. “You can go do whatever you want to do. You don’t have to worry about us.”
This wasn’t exactly how Marlee had planned on getting her life in order, but it’s all she had to work with.
“Fuck,” he said again.
Marlee’s breaths came out shaky, but she’d get through this night. Then she’d get on with her life. He always wanted to start over, go back, and try again. On that thought, she asked, “If you could rewind time, not go to Vegas, not marry me, not find out we’re pregnant, what would you feel? Deep down.”
He didn’t respond. Glanced away. Apparently, the little pebbles along the edge of the asphalt were suddenly intriguing.
His not saying anything? It said everything.
A tear slipped from her eyelid. “You’d feel relieved. That’s the emotion.”
“Yeah,” he said, short. A quick dagger straight through her heart.
That? That acknowledgement? That right there killed her. Murdered any hope that she’d had that they could make this work.
“I’m going to take off.” She started toward the parking lot. Toward her car. Away from Eli.
He hurried to catch up with her. “Mar, this has been a lot. It’s a lot to process. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t need some time to process it.”
Sometimes, taking the time to figure out how something would affect you costs the future. Because sometimes, there was no going back. No do-overs.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” she asked.
Because she hadn’t. Not before the morning they woke up together in Vegas. Maybe she hadn’t known that’s what she was feeling, but she understood now.
“That’s how it is with you,” she continued, “but not the first time we met. Not when I was in high school. For me, it was the morning we woke up married. It felt right. Like it was always supposed to be. I’d seen you a million times, but that morning? That morning was love at first sight.”
His gaze sliced to her. Settled there, exposing her. “You were lonely. You don’t know how to do alone. And I was there.”
Ouch.
“That’s really what you think?” she asked.
The thing was that Eli wasn’t being a jerk. She knew that, understood that this was Eli calling it like he thought he saw it. But still, his words cut to the bone.
He really believed that. That she’d just loved him because she couldn’t be alone.
Screw that. “Loneliness is all you know, Eli. And that’s sad. You’re so scared that people might need you that you can’t see everybody already does.”
He glanced away.
“And the craziest part?” she continued. “The craziest part is that you need us, too. You need me, and I need you. That’s our love story, Eli. It may not be the story I’d have written for myself. It may not be anything you even thought you wanted. But it’s our story.”
“Mar.” He had a look like she’d gut-punched him. “You’ve had a load of shit to deal with lately. We both have feelings for each other, but I think they’re getting all twisted in the craziness.”
How could she stay and just hope that someday he’d feel the same way about her? She started walking again. He didn’t get it. He was too wrapped up in being scared of all the baggage that came with relationships to see what he was missing and what he was going to miss. She stopped, turned one more time.
He stood next to the streetlamp over the parking lot, the halo of light flooding the asphalt around him. The image was branded in her brain—the way his eyes seemed to have more lines than before, the way his lips pressed together, the way his hands slung low on his hips.
“Do you know how scary it is to be the one who loves you more?” she whispered. “The risk is even more than I ever imagined. And I get it now. I get why Scotty held on so long. He wanted to get back to this. To the way I feel about you. To have this and then lose it? I thought I knew devastation before. I had no clue.” Another tear fell over the edge of her eyelid, making a trail down her cheek.
“Mar.” His voice was low. Warning. Jaw clenched. His posture drooped. He started to step toward her, paused, and then stood right there. Never able to truly move forward.
“You don’t need me. And I need you. And I can’t be the one who loves you more.” She hurried toward her car. This time, she didn’t look back.
Eli didn’t think she knew how to be alone, but if she were totally honest? She’d spent a good deal of the past years alone. It might not make any sense to anyone else, because technically she’d been with Scotty. Spent tons of time with him. Looking back? She’d been lonelier than she’d ever realized.
“Marlee.” This time, her name wasn’t a warning. It was a plea. But Marlee couldn’t go back. The time had come for the future. Her future. Their baby’s future. Even Eli’s.
She shook her head.
The ball was in her court. But she was done playing.
She dug the key fob from her bra and clicked it. She didn’t need to glance behind her to know that Eli would wait for her to be safe in the car before he went back inside.
Because despite everything Eli ever said—all the starts and stops, everything she knew to be true about him—deep down, he was always watching out for the ones he cared about.
Until he realized it for himself, he’d always be stuck. Always going backward.
As long as that was happening, she had no place in his life. There was only forward for Marlee.
* * *
“Sorry, dude.” Marlee gave Lothario a snuggle. “He’s got to figure out what he wants. Until then, it’s you, me, and Thumper.”
Velma had sent Marlee some magazine articles on pregnancy. One of them encouraged her to give the baby a cutesy name. The idea was that if the baby had an adorable-sounding name, then giving birth to it wouldn’t scare the crap out of her so much.
So far, it’d only worked minimall
y. Since she was still in the first hours of the experiment, she figured she’d withhold judgement on whether this actually worked or not.
Lothario stuck his nose in the air. He seemed to understand they were moving out of Eli’s apartment, and he was not happy.
Marlee had packed her bags, loaded them in the car, and now, she was waiting. Waiting for Eli. Because even if she was moving forward and he was standing still, this was his Thumper. He deserved to know where she was going to be—a long-term motel until she found a real apartment.
After she’d left the fundraiser, she’d picked up Lothario from Babushka and then texted Sadie, Velma, Heather, and Claire so they’d know she was fine. Then she’d texted Kelli and Becca, but Sadie had already filled them in.
She was as fine as she could be, given that she was pretty sure she and Eli were over. Over-ish. She held hope that he’d come around.
Someday.
Maybe.
She curled herself into a ball on the sofa, and she waited. Her eyes got heavy, her breathing steady. There was that space between being awake and being asleep, not fully conscious but not unconscious, and that’s where Marlee had settled when a knock on the door startled her awake. Her heart did the just-woke-up-not-where-I-should-be race.
Eli still wasn’t home.
Toes in the carpet, she padded to the front door where Lothario currently snuggled with one of Eli’s flip-flops. He gave her a don’t-you-dare-move-me look.
Winning his regard back after they left would take some time and probably an abundance of Pup-Peroni.
She glanced through the peephole.
Her dad.
Along with her mom.
Damn.
Still dressed in their black-tie attire—Dad in a traditional tux and Mom in her version of a little black dress. The LBD was floor length (not so little), but it had a slit up the side, which her mom totally pulled off. Marlee fully expected that they’d be angry after everything. Instead, they just looked worried.
Marlee pressed her forehead against the doorframe.
Her dad knocked louder, right next to her forehead.
Marlee opened the door.
“Hi.” She stepped back to let them through. “You two are out late.” She said this as though they hadn’t witnessed her confession of being pregnant, who the father was, and the fallout in a ballroom filled with their peers
Take It Off the Menu Page 22
