It felt good to laugh, even if it was through my tears. I sank onto the bed, wiping my cheeks. “I think parents need the kicking even more than their son.”
She nodded. “I can’t imagine saying those kinds of things to your son.”
I buried my face in my hands and took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have stormed out like that.”
“No, probably not.” Isabel was quiet for a second. “Why did you?”
My cheeks puffed out on a hard exhale. “I swear, my body moved before my brain knew what I was doing. I just wanted … out. I didn’t want to face how little I knew about him, and them, and the kind of family this baby is being born into.”
She hummed, rubbing a hand down my back as she sat next to me.
“The stuff that was good between us, Isabel, it’s so good. The parts that are just me and him. I was falling in love with him before I even knew it was happening.” She sat next to me, and I lowered my head to her shoulder. “I think that’s what made it so easy to ignore all the things that were … I don’t know, separate from us. It sounds so immature when I say it like that. A hot guy made my head spin, so I forgot to talk about what would happen when our child was born.”
“You didn’t forget, Lia. You’re barely into your second trimester.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “Go easy on yourself. You’re in a different country, away from family, and he made you happy. Right?”
I nodded.
“Did he ever mention the future?” she asked.
“Not really. I mean, he mentioned the fact that he’d be done with the season and could travel to Seattle for the birth, so we both knew that I’d be home. But I think he counted on my understanding the demands of his career, you know? It’s not like he can just … press pause on the season and come hang out in America and watch me get puffy ankles.”
“No,” she said cautiously, “he can’t. He must have thought about it, though.”
“I think he did.” I stood, snagging my water bottle off the nightstand to take a long sip. Emotional outbursts made my throat all scratchy. “I remember he asked me something odd, when we were watching the Wolves game a couple of weeks ago. He asked me what it was like to see my family doing what they did.”
Isabel hummed. “That was it?”
“It’s like … it’s like he never had true support, so he doesn’t understand the family as a unit, you know? And aren’t we our own little team? The Wards?”
She snorted. “The Wards are like their own gang. We’ll defend each other to the death, and once you’re in,” she said ominously, “you can never get out.”
I missed them. Our team. With the exhaustion of the day settling in like an iron cloak around my shoulders, all I wished for was the power to blink and find myself back home. Find myself surrounded by all the people who knew me best. Normally, I lived life wanting to see and do and go. But all of this, the newness and novelty, it made me crave home.
For the first time in my life, I craved the routine I had there and the sameness that I’d left.
Even though whenever I went back home, whether it was with Isabel or a couple of weeks later, I wasn’t returning to the same life.
Everything, my entire life, would be different. And I couldn’t ignore the parts that were hard, the parts that scared me anymore.
“What’s that look on your face?” Isabel asked quietly.
“I think it’s what Claire would call self-realization, or whatever the counselor speak is.” I sighed heavily. “I have to talk to Jude.”
She rubbed my back. “What are you going to say?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “I figure it’ll, I don’t know, magically appear in my head when I see him.”
Reaching for my purse, I dug out my phone, and there was his name, in a series of texts.
Jude: I’m sorry about my parents. They’re raging arseholes.
Jude: Your sister asked me to give you tonight, and I’ll respect that.
Jude: But I didn’t want to be across London at the hotel with the team, so I booked a room at the same hotel you’re staying at. If you want, I can come to your room in the morning, or I’m in 327 whenever you want to talk.
I shook my head. “Pushy-ass footballer, used to getting his way.”
“What?” Isabel looked over my shoulder. “Oh my gosh, he did not.”
Standing up, I risked a glance in the mirror and cringed.
“It’s not that bad,” Isabel said.
I pointed at my face.
She grimaced. “Okay, you get a little splotchy when you cry. But if you plan to talk to him now? A plus for impact, I’ll tell you that.”
Rolling my eyes, I tapped out a text to Jude telling him I was on my way to his room.
“You sure you want to go there?” Iz asked.
I nodded. “It gives me control of when I want to leave. I don’t want to have to ask him to go … if it goes badly.”
“Want me to come with you?” It was a token invite; I could see it on her face. I knew and she knew I needed to do this myself. “I can wait out in the hall, if you just … want to know I’m out there.”
I smiled, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “No, but thank you. I’ll be back soon.”
When the hotel door closed behind me, I took a moment to take a deep breath before I went down the flight of stairs that separated his room from ours. There was no magical moment when I knew what I should say to him, the first moment of reckoning between Jude and me.
Actually, I realized, that wasn’t precisely true. We’d had one before. When I told him I was pregnant, and in that split second before he could filter his reaction, the words that came out were selfish. Thoughtless.
And the words that came out of mine were angry.
Yes, I could understand his reaction, given the nature of his job. And I could understand mine because no one wanted to be called a lying ho. But as I walked down the hallway, I knew the inescapable truth. Our instincts in this, the desires that ruled our reactions, that ruled our interactions and tangible chemistry, needed work. At least if we were ever going to co-parent in a healthy way.
Co-parent. No more sleeping together. No more making out on his couch. No more holidays in the English countryside.
A few stray tears escaped the corner of my eye when I thought about all of those things, and how I’d allowed them to cloud my judgment for months, simply because we had a talent for making each other feel good. Making each other forget.
When I arrived at his door, I let out a slow breath. Before I could even raise my fist to knock, he swung it open. Jude, in just the short time since I saw him at the pub, looked wrecked.
His hair was a mess, like he’d been running his hands through it.
“Lia,” he exhaled, “I’m so bloody sorry.”
Without a word, I walked into his room but didn’t sit. He stood across from me after the door enclosed us into the space together.
“I’m sorry too,” I told him. “I shouldn’t have run like that.” I tilted my head at him. “What are you sorry for?”
He blinked. “F-for my parents. That was … well, it was awful.”
Nodding, I gave him a careful study. The words, it seemed, were there, right when I needed them. “It was. They shouldn’t speak to you that way, and I can only imagine how badly that’s hurt you over the years.”
He averted his gaze. “Doesn’t hurt me anymore. They lost that power years ago.”
Denial and shame often went hand in hand. One of the random things I remembered about helping Claire study for some of her psych classes. I was familiar with both because there were so many things I hadn’t told him either, all the ugly parts of my own past. The fears I’d confided in Isabel had still been held out of reach for this man I’d been falling in love with, and I couldn’t ignore that anymore.
“Jude, I need to know something important.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.