“For what? Did you miss your flight?”
“No.” The shakiness in his voice makes my heart race. He’s crying.
My blood turns to ice. “What’s wrong?”
He takes in a sorrowful breath before smashing my heart into a million pieces. “Natalie had a baby. It’s mine.”
The words take a moment to sink in. A cold, creeping reality takes over my body inch by inch until it freezes my lungs, stealing my breath.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” he says again.
The sound of his tears shakes away the numbness in my chest, only to replace it with pain. He rarely needs to speak for me to know what’s going on in his mind. He understands how much this hurts, but there is no other option. The past will always repeat itself in the cruelest of ways.
“You’re going there instead, aren’t you?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“I have to see for myself if this is real.”
“You don’t know for sure?”
He sniffles. “Her mom called and told me. I haven’t talked to Natalie yet.”
“You have a kid. With someone else.” I say the words aloud as if it will help me understand how this could have happened to me not once but twice.
“Bri, I don’t know what else to do. If it’s true, I have to stay, right?” The sound of tears in his voice shatters me. “How can you still love me if I abandon a child? After everything we’ve been through with our own families.”
“I know.”
“I have to stay here and figure this out. Can I call you tomorrow?”
Words don’t form in my head or on my tongue. Everything I thought I had just slipped through my fingers in a single call.
“Bri?”
“I have to go.”
“Please don’t hate me. I love you so much. You know I—”
“I have to go.”
I end the call before he can say another word. I should have seen this coming. My life, yet again, has taken everything good from me in a cruel twist of fate.
Thirty-nine
Liem
Standing outside Natalie’s apartment fills me with as much anxiety as it did the last time I was here. Wanting to go in and find out things are different while dreading going in to find things are exactly how they’ve been. The same stoop that felt like the death of my dreams is now the rebirth of my nightmares.
Natalie’s mom lets me in. The worried exhaustion hanging on her face says more than words could. “Thank you for coming. She really needs help.”
My body turns to ice when Natalie comes from the next room in a robe. She doesn’t look like I remember her. The confidence in her posture is gone; the glow she used to let off hides behind a gray shadow. Her hair looks unwashed, her eyes heavy and down. Her mom wasn’t lying.
When she sees me, she stares for a moment, a myriad of emotions crossing her expression until it settles into an angry scowl. “Why are you here?”
“Your mom called.”
She crosses her arms with a huff. “I told her not to.”
“But is it true?”
