“He should have told you,” Logan corrects. “Terra, you know this wasn’t my secret to tell, and I told him not to get involved with you without telling you.”
“I can’t … I can’t believe this is happening,” I sob. I feel betrayed. I know he didn’t cheat. I know, without anyone explaining it to me, this baby is from that random hook up months ago, but I still feel deceived.
“Terra, look, he should have told you, but if it isn’t his,” Logan pauses and scrubs his face with his hand and then leans against the door. “He didn’t want to blow things up with you if there wasn’t a reason, you know?”
“How long have you known he might have … Aspen might be having his baby?" I ask. “Since that night you brought Chewie over and lectured me on the ride home?”
He nods. “I couldn’t tell you. You know it.”
“He lied to me,” I whisper and Logan immediately shakes his head.
“He didn’t lie. He just excluded this information, because it would do nothing but hurt you,” Logan argues back firmly. “Terra, how Jake handled this, keeping it quiet, isn’t any different from how the family handled my problems. No different from what I did to him. What we all did.”
“I can’t be here. I want to go home.”
“Mom and Dad’s?”
“My place. My kidney is fine. It’s my heart that’s sick now, and Mom and Dad can’t help heal that,” I reply and wipe at a tear that wants to fall. I’m not sad. I’m more frustrated and humiliated and just a whole bunch of emotions I need to sort out. “Can you drive me?”
“I have the ambulance and Lester waiting in the parking lot. It’s against procedure,” Logan explains, but he must see the desperation on my face because he nods. “Okay. Just this once.”
I walk toward the door and he opens it and follows me out. We leave through the back door and as soon as we reach the parking lot, a car is pulling into the lot. Tom’s Range Rover. Oh my God, this day can bite me. He pulls up right beside us, rolls down the passenger window, and smiles. “Hey you! So great to see you up and around. I called your mom and dad’s place a few times to check on you. Did they tell you?”
“Hawkins! We got a call!” Logan’s partner hollers with his head out the window as he starts the ambulance.
Logan’s eyes grow wide and fill with regret. “I’m sorry, Ter.”
“Don’t worry about it. Go! Be safe,” I say and turn back to Tom. “Can you give me a ride home? I don’t have my car.”
“Of course, T,” he unlocks his doors and I climb in.
As we’re driving away from the restaurant, Jake’s Jeep passes us. I turn and look the other way, but I’m sure he sees me.
22
Terra
“Hey wasn’tthat your donor guy?” Tom says and starts to hit the brakes.
“Do not stop driving. Please,” I beg and wipe another tear away. Tom’s whole face twists with confusion but he nods and does what I ask, thankfully.
Tom asks me a bunch of inane questions as we drive about my operation and my recovery, and I answer them like a robot. My eyes never leave the familiar scenery blurring by outside the passenger window. When he finally pulls into the parking lot of my building, I unbuckle my seatbelt and reach for the handle. “Thank you.”
“Wait! That’s it?” Tom asks, baffled. “Can I at least help you up the stairs? Maybe come in and talk?”
“Honestly, Tom, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.” How he seems startled by this is beyond me. “You weren’t there for me when I needed you.”
Tom's dirty blond eyebrows knit and his mouth tips downward in a frown. “Terra, I couldn’t give you a kidney but I paid your bills. Doesn’t that earn me a second chance? I still care. I always cared.”
“Not enough,” I reply and run my hands into my hair. I close my eyes.
“Tom, you never had to give me a kidney, you just had to make me feel like I wasn’t a burden. But you couldn’t do that and honestly, I shouldn’t have been settling for just that anyway.”
“Lupus is a hard disease to wrap your head around if you don’t have it,” Tom argues back defensively. “You seemed so normal, and then boom. Suddenly, you weren’t.”
“I was never normal,” I reply and sigh. “But I deserved someone who could grasp that and who never made me feel like you did. I was settling with you, and I’m not doing it again.”
“Really? So that’s it?” Tom looks genuinely hurt, and I feel a flutter of guilt but I know it’s misplaced. “You can’t cut me any slack? Your deductible was almost eight thousand bucks, Terra. You’d rather be alone than with a guy who helps you out with that?”
