“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she tell me? Her mom? The police?”
“You know why she didn’t want either of you to know. She reported it to both campus security and local law enforcement. They’ve been investigating. A fat lot of good that did. They couldn’t trace the gifts he sent because he paid with cash or gift cards for everything. The pictures…well, any number of people could have taken them on campus, in town, anywhere and everywhere she went. He never relented. It never stopped. He just let her know he was out there, watching her, knowing her every move. And then he nearly killed her.”
“Start at the beginning,” Cody demanded, trying to understand how this happened.
Mindy Sue glared harder.
He fisted his hands on the table, feeling helpless. “Please.”
“Brooke came back to school early. You know that. She was upset you’d decided to marry Kristi.”
“Kristi was pregnant,” he defended himself. But there was no defense for the way he’d treated Brooke, his best friend. She’d left home, pregnant with his baby, without saying a word. For months. Did he have a right to be angry? Yes. No. How was she supposed to tell him after he chose another woman? Not once. But twice.
Fuck!
“I’m sorry for your loss.” She was the first to say that to him since Susanne held him after he confessed the loss to her. He and Kristi had kept the pregnancy mostly a secret. No one outside of Brooke and Susanne knew about it and the miscarriage.
Well, and Mindy Sue. Because Brooke told her best friend everything.
Which meant Mindy Sue knew what happened between him and Brooke and how Brooke had been feeling about everything these last many months.
It hit him all of a sudden that Kristi had simply moved on like the miscarriage never happened. He supposed it could have been because it was so early in the pregnancy, she never actually felt like it was real. The end of the pregnancy happened because nature took its course.
He still felt the weight of the loss.
Kristi never wanted to talk about it. For him, it faded into the background, then popped into his mind at odd moments. Once, he’d told Kristi that and asked if it was the same for her. She said no. It just wasn’t meant to be. She looked forward to the wedding and their life together. He supposed that was one way to cope. He wallowed in the what ifs and what could have been if only their child were here.
How did Brooke feel?
The miscarriage hurt but it was nothing compared to seeing that condolence card and knowing that his baby, six months along in Brooke’s belly, died without ever taking a breath.
Mindy Sue brought him back to the present. “Brooke listened to your message…I don’t know how many times. It killed her to know that after Kristi lost the baby, you still chose her.”
“Kristi and I… It doesn't matter now." The reality was, he’d feared that Brooke wouldn’t take him back after what happened.
That was just an excuse for not trying and risking the rejection and possibly making things worse between him and Brooke.
He’d thought things couldn’t get any worse than them not speaking anymore.
He’d been wrong.
This was so much worse.
Now that he’d decided to end things with Kristi, did this change whether or not Brooke would take him back?
No. He wouldn’t let anything stand in his way.
She loved him. He knew she did. All he had to do was convince her that he loved her and no one else.
Mindy Sue sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. “She had no reason to believe you wanted her after…”
“I asked Kristi to marry me.” He’d given up Brooke, and true love and happiness, to give his child a whole family.
“The way Brooke explained it, you didn’t ask so much as tell Kristi that’s what would happen.”
“I thought it was the right thing to do.”
