With shaky hands, I remove the ring from my finger, and it’s like I’m stripping off a mask that I was a fool to think I could wear in the first place. I set it on the bathroom counter and move to stand in front of him, bag on my shoulder, chin raised high. “Josh, I was willing to marry you because I thought there was potential here. I thought you could grow to love me, and crazy enough, I assumed you’d love this baby. But I realize now that you’re not going to change because you can’t let go of your past. I’ve been delusional in thinking you could because all I’ve ever been…all this baby has ever been…is an obligation to you, not a new beginning. And we deserve better.”
“Fuck that,” Josh says, pulling his hand off the doorway long enough to rear back and punch the wall beside it. He steps forward and gently cradles my face, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, his lips trembling as he says, “I fucking care about you, Lynsey. I care about this baby. I’ve told you that countless times.”
“What you’re giving me is not enough.” I clutch my belly protectively, feeling like I need to hold this baby as I do this. “And it’s cruel to pretend it is.”
“I won’t let you go,” he growls, his jaw taut with barely contained emotion as his guard drops to reveal the broken, ruined man who hides inside. He releases my face and crosses his arms over his chest, blocking the door. His face is hard and raw and difficult to look at.
“You will let me go…what you won’t let go of is the past.” I inhale sharply through my nose, knowing that I have to hurt him to get him to see. I have to hurt him the way he’s hurt me. “If you actually care about me and this baby, you will let me leave because forcing me into a loveless life with you is just as bad as what happened to Julian.”
His face falls, and his eyes spill over with tears. “No.”
I push him aside easily, his face stricken with horror as I move past him, out the door and out of this fucked-up arrangement that I never should have agreed to in the first place.
Away from his pain.
Away from my pain.
“I need another,” I state, clunking my hurricane glass on top of Kate’s kitchen table. Or Miles’s kitchen table. Well, I suppose since they’re engaged now, it’s her kitchen table too.
I was engaged once—wasn’t that fun.
Dean cuts me a look from across the table. “I think you’ve had enough, Lyns.”
I scoff. “They’re nonalcoholic beverages!”
“Still, these mocktails are full of sugar,” Kate agrees with her sympathetic eyes on me. “You’re going to pop any day now, and you don’t want the baby coming out with a goiter on its neck or something.”
My eyes widen. “Can that really happen?”
Kate shrugs. “Hell if I know.”
“Well, don’t say scary medical things just willy-nilly like that. My mind is anxious enough!” I exclaim and then sulk because if Josh were here, I could ask him if sugar goiters are a thing.
“I’ll get you some water.” Dean heads to the refrigerator.
“Remember when Dr. Dick turned my Birds and Bees cocktail order into a water that night at the bar?” I turn to Dean while he brings me a bottle of water “Oh, my God, I was drinking Birds and Bees cocktails that night. No wonder I got knocked up. My parents never sat me down to tell me about the birds and the bees. They just always said Jesus was watching.”
“Jesus should have taken the wheel when you gave Dr. Dick one of my old-ass swag condoms,” Kate murmurs under her breath.
I jut my chin and shake my head. “Jesus should have taken the wheel when Dean let me get in an Uber with Josh that night.”
Dean exhales heavily and hands me the water. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that about fourteen thousand times? I was such a dick that night for letting you leave with that…dick.”
“I have way too much dick in my life.” Of course…I don’t have any dick in my life now. That thought stings because, dammit, I miss him.
Kate’s voice cuts into my moping. “But you said yourself, Lyns, that this baby is not a mistake.”
“She’s not,” I rub my belly protectively, wondering why I feel drunk when I haven’t had a sip of alcohol. “Did I mention I think it’s a girl?”
“What makes you think that?” Kate asks, her eyes wide and hopeful.
“I had a dream,” I reply with a sigh. “It involved Josh delivering our little girl in the back of a minivan while he was dressed as a pirate. I have no idea why he was dressed up or where the minivan came from, but it was like a scene straight out of a rom-com.”
“A girl would be nice,” Kate says with a smile.
“A girl will be screwed,” I snap. “Because men suck. No offense, Dean.”
“No offense taken.” He shrugs.
“Although you suck too. You only love women who are safe for you to love. Friends who won’t threaten your singleness. If you tried to love that baker you’re obsessed with, then you would surely show your suckage spots well.”
“Why are we talking about me?” Dean straightens his glasses. “You’re the one who’s pregnant and just left your fiancé doctor yesterday.”
My head sags into my hands. “Because I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.” Kate takes my hand from across the table. “You deserve epic love. And if he can’t give that to you, it was smart for you to leave.”
“Except that epic love isn’t real life,” Dean interjects.
“Shut up, Dean,” Kate snaps and eyes him harshly. “I’m proof that epic love does exist. Just because you’re a grumpy cynic doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be.”
He grumbles under his breath and takes a sip of his mocktail. I glance back and forth between my two friends who have been trying to cheer me up for the past few hours—it’s not working. It’s not working because having a baby alone is terrifying. And being pregnant with a broken heart is just freaking painful.
I don’t want to eat.
I don’t want to feel.
I don’t want to think.
I just want to go to sleep and wake up in Josh’s bed with the baby in my arms as he watches us sleep.
I could see that life with him. I could see it so clearly that I ignored all the signs that he wasn’t all in. God, I’m such an idiot.
“So, what is your plan exactly?” Dean asks, gazing at me from across the table. “I honestly don’t know why you’re still staying here with Kate when I told you that you could come live with me. I’ll help you raise the baby. I don’t have an epic love distracting me the way Kate does. You and the baby can be my epic love.”
“Hey, asshole,” Kate growls, glaring at Dean. “She can stay here as long as she likes. My love story doesn’t get in the way of my friendships.”
Dean shakes his head. “I just think it’s fucked up she won’t stay with me out of respect for a man who couldn’t respect her enough to be honest with her about his past.”
I exhale heavily. Dean’s right. I’m a mess. As soon as I left Josh’s, I drove straight to Kate’s, knowing I couldn’t go to Dean’s and hurt Josh like that.