Seconds passed in silence. Maybe a minute. She tried to breathe through the tears that came with extreme emotions but failed as she finally let herself look at him. Damn hormones.
“Tell me the truth.” Muscle and tendon flexed in his forearms as he stared at her. That tightness traveled up the length of his arms and into his neck, hollowing his cheeks and the muscle ticking in his jaw. Harvey cut his gaze to the window—like he couldn’t even bring himself to look at her—then back. “The night we slept together, you said you were on birth control. Were you lying?”
Her saliva felt more like a paste. “No.”
It was all she could manage as her lungs threatened to burst. Those days leading up to their one night together had been a jumble of emotion and stress and adapting to this new life. She’d never meant for any of this. It’d just…happened, but she wouldn’t apologize for it. She wouldn’t apologize for the life growing inside of her. And she wouldn’t regret it. Ever.
“So you admitting you’ve been waiting to get pregnant was just, what?” His gaze seemed to burn straight through her. Searching for a reason—any reason—to turn on her. “A colloquialism?”
Pain lanced through her chest. Not the kind anyone could see but just as damaging. The past three days played out in shards of memory—him bringing her back to his house to rest, making her food so she wouldn’t pass out again, ensuring she made it home safely, staying the night in her bed. The words he’d said.
You’re important to me.
I’m not going anywhere.
I’m not giving you up that easily.
Had it all been a lie? Why? Why go through that kind of effort if he’d been looking for a way out of their situation this entire time? She’d known his reasons for not wanting to be a father, but this wasn’t past trauma talking. Accusing her of getting pregnant on purpose felt personal and cruel and…final. He didn’t want her. He didn’t want this baby, and he was ensuring he burned the bridge that’d been built over the past few days between them to ashes. Along with her heart. Drennan swallowed against the dryness in her throat, suddenly aware her lower half was still exposed by her lifted shirt and unbuttoned slacks. Where she could still feel the imprint of the backs of his knuckles when he’d helped her. She moved to fix her clothing and sat up on the exam table, the scream and crackle of hygienic paper beneath her too loud in her ears. Every sense she owned seemed to be on fire, too much. “Do you really think so little of me?”
“I think that maybe you aren’t above using the same manipulation tactics that were used against you most of your life.” He diverted his attention again, fueling that knot of uncertainty in her stomach. “Who better to wield them than a woman who has a literal encyclopedia of examples on her phone?”
She sucked in a sharp breath, the sting of which tore through the last few layers of her patience. And it was breaking her heart. She hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to what a future between them might look like, but she’d wanted it. For them. For this baby. She’d wanted what she’d lost all those years ago. A family. Despite the red flags, his claims to not wanting to be a father, Harvey had shown her time and again that he cared. That there was something beneath the hard exterior that could make a different choice. And convinced her she was worth the effort. But she’d been wrong, and now she was pissed.
“Are you serious?” Drennan slid off the exam table. This was what he wanted. For her to get angry, to be the one to make the choice for him and give him a reason to leave, but she wouldn’t do that. He had to be the one to say the words. No matter how much it might hurt hearing them, she’d let him. She’d let him walk away and never look back. Because anyone willing to throw her past in her face wasn’t someone she wanted to be with. “After learning the reason why I don’t tell people about what I’ve been through—that I’m afraid of people holding it over my head—you use it against me?”
He shifted his weight to ease the tension building with every word out of his mouth, but she wasn’t the one who’d get hurt when it exploded. “You expect me to believe—”
Her laugh didn’t sound remotely light or natural, and he had the audacity to flinch as thoughshe’dstruckhim. But he’d started this. She would make damn sure he put the final nail in the coffin of their future together. That cold numbness she’dlearned to don over the years descended. “Expect you to believe? I didn’t have any expectations of you, Harvey. I have never asked anything of you. I didn’t ask for you to drive me to the clinic after I passed out or for your offer to financially support this baby. I didn’t ask you to come after me in those woods when I was abducted. You made your position about this baby clear, and I respected that. You made those choices. Not me. You. And I am grateful for them, really, I am, but not enough to let you treat me like this.”
Harvey seemed to come back to himself right then. “Drennan, I—”
“No.” She maneuvered around him, grabbing for her bag before heading for the door separating them from what was most likely an entire hall of eavesdropping nurses. “You more than anyone should know I could never manipulate another human being like I was manipulated, and the fact you’re throwing that in my face only tells me one thing. You’re a coward. You had the opportunity to move on from what’s happened to you, but you’re comfortable choosing a familiar misery. And I don’t want any part of that near me or my child.”
She grabbed for the door handle as the last dregs of anger drained out of sheer exhaustion. “I didn’t get pregnant on purpose, Harvey, but there is not a single bone in my body that regrets this baby. I’m just sorry you do.”
Wrenching the door open with a little more force than she expected, Drennan cringed against the solid wood colliding into the wall behind it. But she kept moving. Because if she stopped, she might never be able to put the distance between them she desperately needed right now. She didn’t see the nurses who were most assuredly staring at her as she navigated down the corridor and through the lobby, and she didn’t know where she was going as she hit the parking lot.
Damn it. Harvey had driven her to the clinic. Her car was… She didn’t actually know. Back at her apartment? At the funeral home? She’d collected Ellender Garza’s remains in the ME-sanctioned van before passing out in the park, so yes. She’d left her car in the funeral home parking lot. She could only imagine the amount of parking citations collecting under the windshield wipers after three days, but she’d have to worry about that later. Grabbing for her phone, Drennan headed south for two blocks. She wasn’t going to wait in the clinic parking lot for Harvey to catch up to her. If she was being honest, she never wanted to see him again.
She didn’t need his money. She didn’t need his support or for him to have an interest in their baby’s life. Not for birthdays or graduations or weddings. Not for weekend custody exchanges or family vacations. Her heart rate ticked up a notch. All she’d wanted was for him to chooseher, but maybe her mother had been right. She wasn’t worth the effort.
Wait. No. She knew better than to let that voice win. What had Cassidy said? The bitch didn’t get to live rent free in her head? Ugh. She was crying again. Swiping at her face, Drennan used her rideshare app to order a car to pick her up at the corner and climbed into the back seat when it arrived. No sign of Harvey, thankfully. “Metland Mortuary in Hurricane, please.”
She didn’t remember the drive. The chaos of thoughts—of what Harvey had accused her of, of her response, of the pain clawing deeper into her heart, the grief of a future she’d never have—it’d all blurred. Until she was climbing out of the car and heading for the front door of the funeral home. It was after hours. The director would be long gone by now, and Dr. Yarrow would’ve left around five. She’d lost track of the entire day between waking up to Harvey in her bed and the anticipation of seeing the baby on the ultrasound. Drennan pulled up short. “Oh, crap.”
She’d left the sonogram photos at the clinic.
Well, they were gone now. Because she wasn’t going back, and she wasn’t going to ask Harvey if he’d picked them up. He’d most likely left them behind, and that just made her sad all over again. No. She wasn’t going to think about that right now. Maybe when she got home and into a gallon-sized roll of egg-free cookie dough later. Then she’d let all this pressure out of her chest. Her key slid into the dead bolt and granted her access inside. The dim lighting overhead told her there wasn’t anyone here tonight. While she probably should just collect the parking tickets, get in her car and go home, she couldn’t ignore the need to check in on the Ellender Garza autopsy.
Dr. Yarrow would’ve finished the actual procedure within a few hours of starting, but there was a chance some of the toxicology results had come back. She just…she just needed to do something to help. Following the stairs down in the basement, she keyed in the six-digit number on the keypad securing the morgue before and after hours. There weren’t too many times she’d had to use it, but Drennan had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case for the next couple of weeks as the tension that’d crested back at the clinic refused to release. The green light lit up, and the thick steel doors unlocked.
She pushed through.
“Hello again, Dr. Hawes.” Body heat pressed into her from behind. His mouth was beside her ear as he clamped a hand over her mouth. “I was hoping I would get to see you again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
He couldn’t force himself to move.
