“Hurt?” She gave a harsh, cold laugh. “It destroyed me. It annihilated me. It made me realize I will never trust another man and I’m better off without one and I never, ever,everwant to cry that hard again. My father, of all unlikely people, picked up the pieces.”
And every word Marcel had said made total and complete sense.
“But before all that, Jonah?” She put her hand on his arm. “He said every single word you did. ‘I don’t care. I love you. I have you. We’ll figure it out. Babies aren’t the thing.’ He meant it. That’s the part you need to hear. Hemeantit.”
How was he supposed to fight that?
“Pepper, I’m not him,” he said. “You can’t base your judgment of every man on him.”
“I know. You’re very different. And you do have a son. But once you’ve been through something like that, you just don’t…you can’t…well, I can’t ever take a chance like that again.”
“You have to.”
She turned and looked directly at him. “No, I don’t. And, frankly, I won’t.”
The chewing stopped and Jonah looked down to see Atlas had conked out, eyes closed, tiny lips open.
He tried again. “Pepper. I’m not Owen.”
“I know you’re not. Not now, anyway. But what about in four years, when Atlas wants a sibling, and you’re a successful chef and you want to grow your family? What if we were married and all you could think about was what I cannot give you? What if you suddenly decide it’s Atlas I love and not you? ’Cause that’s what my dad thinks.”
“That’s crazy, Pepper!” he insisted, and meant it. “Everything you’re saying is speculation and not based in any fact.”
“You think that now, but I know…Iknow.”
Her hurt was audible, and if he could punch Owen the absolutely perfect cellist in the throat, he would.
She wiped the corner of her eye, fast, like a person who was not allowing herself to cry.
“And I will not do it again. I will not even start. I would rather end it here in this driveway tonight than wake up in five years next to a good, kind man who is grieving children he won’t ever have.”
He sat very still.
“So. I am going to…leave.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m going back New Orleans and I am going to teach my classes, and you are going to find another nanny and you will become the chef Isobel Vega wants you to be, and we are going to be two people who knew each other one stormy summer in Florida. I will remember you for the rest of my life as the sweetest thing that ever happened to me, and you will be free to find a woman whose body works and have as many children as you want.”
She stopped, out of breath.
“Pepper.No.” He wanted to hold her so much his arms hurt, but moving would wake up Atlas and then she’d use that as an excuse to take off with the echo of her horrible run-on speech haunting him all night.
“I’m sorry, Jonah, this is my call to make. I am the one who has lived it. You have not lived it yet. I am not going to let you live it.”
He searched for the words to change her mind. “Listen to me, you are not—this is not love speaking. This is fear. And, not that I want to one-up you, but the woman I thought I was going to marry got in a car one night when we had a three-week-old newborn and never came home. You think I don’t know hurt or fear? You could not make it back to Crestview tonight and don’t think I won’t worry, because I do. Every time you leave here.”
She closed her eyes.
“You may be right,” she said softly. “But it doesn’t change what I am going to do. And that is never love you, Jonah. Or Atlas, although it might be too late for that.”
He drew back. “Youcouldlove me, though.”
“I don’t love you now and I just don’t…think…I ever will.” She spoke haltingly enough that he knew she was done with herbackstory script about her medical issues and ex-boyfriend pain. Now it was new territory, and she was making it up as she went along.
“I won’t,” she added, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. “I’m not capable of it, and you’re…not…” She swallowed and looked hard at him. “You’re not the right man for me.”
He almost laughed at how insincere she sounded.
