She kissed the back of his limp hand. “Do you forgive me for not telling you?”
“Of course.” He stood straighter and seemed to shake off his mood. “Talk about a revelation.”
“I know. Hell of a moving day.”
They shared a shaky laugh, and he cupped her cheek. “Something else Maya said.”
Hell.She’d hoped he hadn’t remembered that part.
“What did she mean about revenge?”
She dropped her gaze, feeling horrible for ever having thought up the plan.
“Ann?”
She moved back to gather her thoughts.
In a quiet voice, he asked, “Is that what all this is? You getting your revenge on me for the baby?”
“The baby? No. I had put that behind me. But in a way, I guess, I’d have to say yes. That’s how it started.” She wanted no more lies between them.
He looked away from her and clenched his hands. She wanted him to yell, not do his quiet thing where he seemed to accept what came at him without a stink.
“Jack, listen. I heard you were back in town, and I was angry. I admit that. But it had nothing to do with the miscarriage. A spontaneous abortion, the doctor called it.” She thought that might sound better, a less hurtful term, but he didn’t react other than to continue staring away from her.
“The girls and I had some wine and were talking smack. We learned you and Dex and Anson were back in town, three guys who’d done us wrong—or so we thought at the time. To get some closure, we decided to get back at you.”
He glanced at her, and the angry pain darkening his eyes sucked her breath away. “So this—us—was about getting back at me? What? Making me fall in love with you so you could dump me the way I once dumped you?”
“No. Don’t be—”
“But you just said—”
“We’d been drinking. It was a stupid idea. I was going to use and lose you. There. I said it.” Ann was all about truth, but for some reason, doing the right thing and coming clean didn’t seem to be helping her. “Jack, that was before I knew the real you. I told you I love you, and I meant it. The past is the past. Let it go.”
“I have. I didn’t care about you and Terry when I thought you’d been together. I just wanted you, Ann. But this whole time you’ve been plotting to date me, then break up with me?”
“No. Listen, damn it.” How had everything turned sour in a matter of minutes?
“I can’t… I have to go. I need to think.” He gave her a wide berth and slammed out of the house. She didn’t hear a car, so he had to be walking. But he’d left her. Again.
He needed time to accept what she’d told him. In his place, she supposed she’d need the same. When he settled down and remembered what they’d shared, everything they meant to each other, he’d come around. Then they could straighten out the truth from the lies and have their happily ever after.
A tear slid down her cheek.
She hoped.
Jack had never felt so lost. He didn’t know what to think or how to feel. He sure as hell didn’t want company though, so he walked away from the neighborhood. Two miles up the road toward the mountains, he turned onto a popular trail. Then another half mile he turned again, onto a barely used path he’d come across when he’d first arrived back in Bend.
A baby.
He couldn’t wrap his mind around thoughts of his and Ann’s child. The wordsmiscarriageandspontaneous abortiondidn’t compute, because he kept seeing a baby in Ann’s arms, one with his dark hair and her blue eyes.
He wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. Selena Fucking Thorpe, Chapman, the guys from the football team that he’d thought were his friends. They’d all colluded to break him and Ann up. And when she’d needed him most, he hadn’t been there.
“It wasn’t meant to be,”she’d said. He knew she had made peace with the loss, but he hadn’t yet. Yes, it had been gone before it had lived. But a baby…
He walked until his thighs burned and his calves stung. The sun started to fade. He walked some more. Every so often his cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
