“There’s no negotiating with matters of the heart, Griffin.” I looked over him one last time, the man I’d foolishly fallen in love with. The man who was choosing fear over everything we could have been. “When you’re ready to be a real father—not just a bank account—you know where to find me.”
On the way out, I dropped the diamond ring and earrings on the foyer table.
“Don’t go,” he begged.
I didn’t wait for him to stop me. The silence behind me was deafening, but it was mine.
“I’ll send child support—whatever you need—” he called.
The door clicked behind me.
I made it to the elevator. Made it to the lobby. A subtle wave to McD one last time. I burst outside before the tears came. Big, ugly, angry tears.
Because I couldn’t fix Griffin. All I could do was choose myself, and that’s exactly what I was doing.
A car pulled up I recognized too well. Brock got out and stepped around with his phone in his hand. He held the door open for me. “I’m to take you wherever you need to go.”
I wiped my face and inhaled a breath that tore through my lungs like ice. “Tell him I don’t need help. Thank you anyway.” I rushed past him, shaking my head, nose turned up.
“For what it’s worth, Jessa—” Brock actually used my name for once. I stopped and turned to give him my attention, wet eyes questioning. “I think you were the best thing that happened to Theo and to Griffin in a long, long time.”
Cue the tears again, and this time I couldn’t hold them back. I swiveled and let them go, sobbing down the streets of New York, and no one cared. Just another pitiful lesson in love and loss. The city probably handed out those lessons daily to people like me.
I eventually made my way to the parking garage where Griffin had stowed my original car, now fixed up thanks to him. I’ll send him a thank-you card, I snorted. Behind the wheel, I slid in, basking in the familiarity of it.
It started up, engine purring like never before, brakes without their usual squeak. By this time tomorrow, I’d be home, in the comforting arms of my family.
My hand drifted to my stomach.
This baby wasn’t a mistake, wasn’t a problem. It was my beginning.
If only I didn’t still love the man who helped bring it into the world.
Chapter Twenty-Two
BACK HOME
Jessa
By the timeI walked up the front steps of my childhood home, my mother was already opening the door. She took one look at my face and pulled me inside without a word.
Now I sat at the kitchen table with a chipped mug of ginger tea cooling between my palms, the steam curling up but never quite reaching me. The kitchen never changed—floral wallpaper peeling at the corners, humming refrigerator covered in outdated coupons, scratched wooden table I’d done homework at.
Mom sat across from me, worry creasing her forehead the same way it had when I was little and scraped my knees. Only this scrape cut deeper.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
I wrapped my hands tighter around the mug.
“He offered me a contract. An apartment in his building. Money.” The words tasted bitter. “Like an employee he could keep on salary.”
Mom’s eyes flashed. “Oh, honey.”
Tears slipped out before I could stop them. I pressed my hands to my eyes, but they kept coming.
“I’m so stupid. I thought he saw me. I thought what we had could be real.”
“It was real for you,” Mom said gently. “And that’s not stupid, Jessa. That’s brave.”
