I shake my head, then brace my hands on the bed and haul myself into a sitting position. “Xander, please, it’s not what you think.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he replies, unable to look me in the eye.
His hand lifts and he massages his jaw, briefly covering his mouth as if he’s stopping himself from saying something he shouldn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Such a weighted question.
In this moment, all my justifications and arguments with myself seem worthless.
Xander’s standing in front of me waiting for the truth, and each word I tell him will surely push him further and further away.
“I was scared,” I admit, wetting my dry lips with a swipe of my tongue. “I was realizing I liked you and then Caleb died, and then being stuck with that needle was terrifying. It was like I was staring down into this gigantic abyss waiting to learn if I wasgoing to die or if my life was going to be changed forever, and when I got the results I was so happy that I came to find you immediately, don’t you remember? And then…”
I catch my breath with a soft gasp.
“Then I was so ready to keep this new, fun thing with you until I found out I was pregnant, and when she told me, I knew it was Caleb’s. From beyond the grave, he was still trying to influence my life. I was in shock.”
“You could have told me.”
“I wasn’t thinking! I’d never thought about kids before, had no idea what or where to start, and I tried to talk to some friends but…” I shake my head, still fighting the tears. “I felt like I had no one so I was just… I was just going to ignore it.”
“Ignore it?” Xander finally looks at me. “Noelle, you can’tignorea baby.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say desperately. “I panicked, okay? I just wanted to forget about it all until after Christmas.”
“Was it really just sex?” he asks suddenly. “When I told you I wanted to be with you, to have fun and care for you, was I walking right into your honey trap?”
I gape at him and a small pulse of anger rises. “I wasn’t trying totrapyou with a baby. How could you think that?”
“What else am I supposed to think when I find out you’ve been lying to me? You sure as hell didn’t trust me enough to tell me about the baby, so were you going to wait until I was at a point of no return and then drop it on me?”
“No!”
“Did you not trust me? Was nothing I did good enough to prove that you could trust me? I was there for you when your friends abandoned you in the hospital. I was there when you confronted that maniac loan shark. I wastherefor you, offered my home for you, risked my career for you because I cared about you. Was none of that good enough for you?”
The tears come, flooding my eyes and leaking slowly down my cheeks. “I did trust you,” I say, my words wobbling. “You did so many kind things for me and you never asked for anything in turn.”
“Did you not believe me when I said I cared about you?”
“No—”
“Then what was it, Noelle?” His voice lifts once more and for a moment, there’s pain flashing across his face like an open wound. “Either you were taking me for a fool or you didn’t trust me or—” He catches himself. “Did you think I would be a bad father? Incapable of being understanding to you? Unwilling to help?”
“No, Xander, please! Don’t say things like that!”
“It’s pretty obvious to me what this is and I was foolish to think anything different. A relationship can’t be built if there’s no trust.”
“Xander, I wasscared?—”
“Of what? Me?” He looks at me with those intense, dark eyes, clutching at his hip with one strong hand. “Because that’s what it looks like. Either too scared to trust me or you think so poorly of me that it was worth overlooking for sex but not for the truth.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight! I felt so alone and when you told me about Claire, I didn’t want to be another burden to you.”
“That was your take away from my trusting you about my late wife? That she was a burden?”
“I didn’t mean it like that! Fuck, I’m sorry, okay? I was scared of losing you, Xander.”
“Iwas scared of losing you when you confronted that loan shark but I still showed up for you, Noelle. But you? Whatever this is, whatever you think about me is clearly much lower than how I think about you!”
