My gaze snapped to hers.
She tilted her chin toward the phone clutched in my hand. “I came to see if you were okay. Things are going crazy inside my head too. And I heard you. That’s not how you talk to any of your guy friends. Who are you going to see?”
There were so many things I wanted to say, so many things I wanted to do. I’d thought I had so much more time to work through it all, but I didn’t. Feeling cornered with my mind on fire and thrown into chaos, I did the only thing I could.
With nothing more than my phone in my hand I turned and walked down the hallway to the door of the suite within a suite.
Holden and Emily were having their early morning meeting with schedules laid out on the table.
Their eyes widened. “Hey, Keyton. Did Bay need something? We can get it if you like.”
I didn’t stop. What excuses could I make? What explanations could I give?
And then I was out the suite door. It closed silently behind me with a soft hiss and click of the lock, and then I was off running.
The hallway was deserted and the plush carpet covered my thundering footsteps.
I ran straight for the stairs, my bare feet slamming into the concrete and metal steps, nearly jumping from landing to landing down twenty flights. I hit the bottom covered in a sheen of sweat.
I burst out the front of the hotel.
Paparazzi were stationed outside and caught off guard, giving me just enough time to dive for one of the hotel town cars.
“You okay?”
My heart jackhammered like it was seconds from splitting right through my sternum.
“Is something wrong?” The driver swung around with his arm behind the seat in front of me.
“Yeah, me.” I stared at him dazed, numb, and in need of a brown paper bag. “I need to go to the airport. Now.”
His eyes darted to the crowd gathering around the car with cameras flashing and back to me. With a grim look, he nodded.
I slammed the door and dropped my head between my knees.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shot up. “Does it look like I want to fucking talk about it?” My glare just as blistering as my voice. And my face fell. I buried my head in my hands and yanked at my roots, trying to rip them out. The patch job I’d thought I’d done on myself was supposed to hold. I’d done everything I could to be the guy Bay deserved, and in a matter of hours I’d proven just how wrong I was.
“I’m sorry, man. I…I just need to get to Charlotte.”
Gwen met me at the airport with clothes, shoes, my passport, a spare credit card and a profound look of concern. Not wanting to snap at her, I took the bundle and left without another word. The flight to Charlotte I felt like my brain was trying to lift out of my skull, like my skin was being peeled back from my flesh.
After the wheels touched down, I was in a cab and racing into the non-descript five story building I’d been into many times before. The shiny name plate beside her door matched all the others on this floor. When I pounded on the fifth-floor office door until Monica opened it, my shirt was soaked and it felt like I’d run all the way here from Philly.
“Now will you tell me what’s going on?” She held open the door. The fifty-something woman with a no-nonsense bob and a nose for not wasting her time stared back at me with eyes filled with the concerned understanding she’d perfected.
Rushing inside, I glanced around the room wishing to god there was a bar. Those old habits were ready to rear their head. My stomach roiled and churned. But there was no bar. The office looked exactly as it had the last time I’d been there. The sameness had always helped center me, but nothing could do that right now.
Instead, I sank to the couch, rocking back and forth with my head in my hands. Panic smothered me and cold dread swamped my senses. My heart pounding in my ears threatened to drown everything else out.
She sat beside me and held onto my shoulder. “You’re shaking, Keyton.”
My head snapped up. “She’s pregnant.” Even without a test, I felt it was true. This was the one bit of kryptonite left in our relationship and it launched like a spear straight into my chest. A fear I’d thought I’d have more time to confront and deal with. Of course the universe would throw its head back and laugh, pushing straight into the giant open wound I hadn’t yet gathered the strength to try and heal.
My eyelids felt like they were lined with glass. “And I don’t know what to do.”
“Bay is pregnant?” Monica’s eyes widened behind her glasses and she dropped her hand from my shoulder.
I nodded, looking to her for that sage balm to fix this and help me off the ledge.
She shifted on the couch, turning to face me with one leg bent. “When did you find out?”
“A few hours before I called you.” Standing in the middle of her hotel room feeling like my whole world had been shoved off its axis.
“Okay.” Her head tilted. “Why did you call me?”
My head jerked back. “Why wouldn’t I call you? A baby? I’m going to be a father. You don’t see what the hell is wrong with that?”
“Let’s take this step by step.” Her lips tightened before smoothing back out. She got up and poured me a glass of water. Holding it out, she waited for me to take it.
My hand shook, but I grabbed it, downed it in three gulps and sat it on the table in front of me.
She sat in her chair. “Do you want to have a child with Bay?”
I shot up from my seat and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows, scrubbing my hands down my face. “Of course I do. I want to have a family with her. I love her. I’ve always loved her.” I turned and stared at Monica, hoping she’d have a book for me to read or a podcast suggestion. A magic spell. A potion. Anything.
I braced my hands on either side of my neck and squeezed my eyes shut.
“So what’s the problem?”
“How can you ask me that?” My eyes snapped open. Breathing was a challenge. I was winded like I’d run halfway across the country in a sprint. “You know what the problem is.”
She crossed her legs and folded her hands over her knees. Her degrees hung on her walls, and books she’d penned sat on the shelves. Those meant she should have better questions than ‘what’s the problem?’
“I won’t know until you tell me.”
“Isn’t that your job?”
“How long have we been doing this?”
“Three years. Four? Since Vegas.”
“Exactly.”
I sat on the couch like I was teetering on the edge of a cliff. “I can’t do what my dad did to me to a kid. A baby. Bay’s baby. Our baby.”
“And why do you think you would?”
“I feel out of control. When she told me, I got all panicky and hot. I was searching for the exits, not because I wanted to get away, but because I wanted to protect her from me.”
“Why do you revert to those old feelings? Why do you think you’d be capable of hurting her now?”
“I’ve done it before. I’ve hurt her more than anyone, and I love her.”
“And she’s hurt you.”
My gaze skipped to hers and I nodded.
“But you both still found your way back to one another.”