“They were all there. I fainted and they were the ones who took me to the hospital.”
He turns his back on me and heads down the hallway, going from closet to closet until he pulls out a duffle bag. Then he goes into the bedroom and starts stuffing clothes in it.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you, I can’t deal with this now.”
“So you’re running away? Trevor, we wanted this.”
“If we wanted this so badly, why did you have to lie and go behind my back?”
My throat is thick. Both my nose and eyes are leaking. “The old Trevor?—”
He hurls a shirt across the room, knocking a picture frame off the dresser. “When are you going to realize I’m not him? It doesn’t matter how many letters or diaries I read, I’m still not that guy. I might never be that guy.”
“I know,” I say, through my tears. “And I’m okay with that.”
He spins. “No. You’renotokay with it. If you were, you wouldn’t have just said theoldTrevor. Iamthe old Trevor. I’m himandI’m me.Thisis me, Ava. And newsflash, I’ve just learned a hell of a lot more about theoldAva than I ever have. As in she’s a manipulative liar.”
“I’m not.” I sit on the edge of the bed, wiping my tears. “I made a mistake back then, not asking if you were okay with the loan and the embryo transfers. And I made another one by not telling you about the baby right away. But everything has been so confusing. You died, Trevor. For weeks I thought you were dead. And then, when I got you back, I didn’t really get you back. We were just starting to connect. You can’t just throw all that away.”
He stuffs underwear into the duffle then points at me. “You’re the one throwing it all away. I’ve done nothing wrong here.”
Not even zipping up the duffle bag, he hoists it over his shoulder and beelines for the front door.
“Trevor, please don’t do this.”
With his hand on the knob, he doesn’t turn around when he says, “I need a fucking minute, okay? The least you can do after all this is give me that.”
He opens the door and barrels through.
I call after him. “Don’t you want to know if it’s a boy or girl?”
“No,” he says, his harsh word echoing off the walls of the stairwell right before the door slams shut.
I turn and throw myself onto the couch, pulling a pillow under my face so I can cry into it, because I may have just lost him forever.
Then again, that might have happened long ago. The day two men in shiny shoes walked into my shop.
Chapter Thirty-One
Trevor
Carter finds me sitting in the back seat of the Charger. I could’ve gone to my parents’ house, but I really needed to be alone, and this is the one place I feel truly safe, especially now when I’m struggling to work through my shit. I’m feeling angry. Betrayed. Lost.
He leans through the window and eyes the duffle bag. “Going somewhere?”
“Yeah.”
“Is this one of those conversations that requires a drink?”
I shake my head. “I probably shouldn’t be drinking if I’m going to drive.” I pound the seat next to my leg. “I just wish she were up and running.”
Realizing I have no car, and I’m not about to ask Ava, Dawn, or Chuck to borrow theirs, I laugh. “I guess maybe I’ll take that drink after all since I don’t have a ride. I might just hop on the train.”
“And go where?”
“I have no fucking clue, man. Anywhere but here.”
