Clara cringed. “You found out.”
“I found out.”
“Sorry. You can yell at me later. For now, I just want you out of this hospital.”
“You and me both,” I muttered.
Clara slipped into the hallway where Marty hovered. When the door closed, I sank to the edge of the bed.
Aria turned her gaze to the wall.
“I’m sorry.” I clutched her hand with both of mine. “I’m sorry, baby.”
“You should have told me about the shop.”
“Yes, I should have told you.”
She slumped deeper into the bed. “We can’t keep doing this. Having the same argument. My heart can’t take it, Brody. I think . . . maybe this was never going to work.”
“Don’t.”
“This was about the baby. You know that if I wasn’t pregnant, we never would have gotten together. I think we need to call this what it is. We’re trying to make something that isn’t meant to be.”
Aria was giving up on me.
She was giving up on us.
But there was so much to fight for. Too much to lose the battle of my lifetime.
I refused to let her give up.
“I met Heather at a party.”
That won her attention. She turned away from the wall to face me.
“It was a company Christmas party. She came as the date of one of our employees. She left with me.” Maybe that was why I hadn’t been truly shocked when she cheated with Alastair.
“Why are you telling me this?”
So she’d understand something I’d realized earlier today when she’d kicked me out of her flower shop. Something I suspected Clara had figured out a long, long time ago and was the reason she’d never objected to my gifts.
She’d known why.
“Heather and I dated for a while, then she started to hint at wanting a ring. I bought one. I gave it to her. I didn’t even ask. One day, she didn’t have a ring. The next, she did and she could tell everyone she was engaged to Brody Carmichael. That’s all she’d really wanted. Bragging rights.”
Heather had cared more for my name than she had for me. And I hadn’t really cared at all. She’d been a companion. I hadn’t had to search for dates for company functions or business meetings. She was beautiful and absent.
That was what I’d liked best about Heather. She’d left me alone to do my work. She hadn’t bulldozed her way past my guards like Aria, not that Heather would have stood a chance.
She wasn’t Aria.
“I didn’t buy her things,” I said. “Yeah, I got her birthday and Christmas gifts. I’d pay for a vacation. But otherwise, she was on her own.”
Heather had begun to resent me when I hadn’t let her move into my place. While the rest of her friends who’d landed rich fiancés had been able to quit their jobs, Heather had needed to keep working.
When Alastair came around, she must have seen him as her ticket to financial freedom.
All she’d had to do was time it so that I’d catch the two of them in bed. Heather had to have known that Alastair would want her simply because it had been another way to one-up me.
“I don’t understand,” Aria said. “You didn’t buy her things?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t love her.”
Aria’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“My parents. My grandparents. They didn’t hug me. They didn’t tell me they loved me. I watch you and Clara together and it’s . . . I never had that. When I was a kid, my birthday meant a mountain of gifts, all wrapped and purchased by my mom’s assistant. The nanny watched me open them. When I turned sixteen, my grandfather had a car sent to my school. They bought me things.”
“That’s not love, Brody.”
“Isn’t it? Because that’s the only kind of love I know.”
Aria shifted, sitting up straighter. “Not anymore.”
“No.” Not anymore. I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I love you. Damn, but I love you, woman.”
“And that’s why you buy me things.”
I nodded. “That’s why I’ll try to stop.”
She stared at me, those mesmerizing eyes glassy with tears. “I love you too.”
I closed my eyes and let the words sink past the skin and into my heart. Had anyone ever told me they loved me? I think Heather had, probably before she’d asked for something. Maybe my mother, a long, long time ago.
They’d been empty words.
From Aria, they were magic. They were the future.
I leaned down, dropping my forehead to hers. “It was never about the baby.”
“Sure it was.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I fell in love with you the moment you stole that vase of flowers.”
“They were really pretty flowers.” She let out a quiet laugh and the sound filled my chest so full I could barely breathe.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“You said that already.”
“It’s worth repeating.”
She took my face in her hands, her thumbs stroking my beard. Then she pulled my lips down to hers, kissing me with so much tenderness and promise, I knew that for the rest of my life, I’d hold on to her. Above all else, Aria was the endgame.
“Take me home,” she said against my mouth.
“I’ll go find the doctor.”
An hour later, after one last check from the doctor and a string of nurses bearing pamphlets on pregnancy—the Welcome hospital was nothing if not thorough—Aria was home. Clara had ridden to the shop with Marty to pick up the Cadillac.
“I think I’m going to lie down.” Aria yawned as I led her inside.
“Good idea. Your bed? Or mine?”
“Mine’s closer.”
“How about tomorrow we pick one and just call it ours?”
“Deal. As long as you let me pay for the entire flower shop.”
“No.” I shook my head as we walked into the bedroom. “It’s not worth that price.”
“But you paid it anyway.”
“For you? I’d buy the moon.”
“Brody, this is . . . it’s too much. You know why it bugs me.”
I led her to the bed and pulled back the covers. Then after she slid beneath the sheet, I settled in behind her, holding her close. My hands rested on her belly, hoping to feel the baby kick just to be sure he or she was okay.
A little tap. That’s all I got. But it was enough.
“I’m not going anywhere, Aria. I have all this money. What’s the point of it if that means we struggle?”
“The struggle is what affirms you’re alive. Without it, the bright moments don’t shine.”
“How about a compromise?”
She twisted to look at me. “I’m listening.”
“You’ll pay the one twenty-five for the shop. And you agree to drive the BMW. It’s safer than the Cadillac.”
“Do you actually understand what compromise means?”
I chuckled. “Shh. Listen. I’m getting to the part you’re going to like. In exchange for that, I won’t buy you anything new for six months.”