“I’m…I’m fine.”
She studied me. “You look nervous.”
“I’m not.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, but I got out before she could press me. My legs felt like Jell-O. It was all I could do to pretend to be normal. Walk normal. Breathe normal.
Lieutenant Dan was walking next to me, pushing his head under my hand.
When we got in the house, I couldn’t focus. The twins jumped on me. Jafar was strutting through the hallway squawking obscenities, Grandpa was harassing Briana, who was harassing him back, and the whole thing felt like it was happening underwater. Time felt elastic. I couldn’t tell how long we’d been here. A minute? An hour? Did the limo get here yet? No. I would have remembered. Would I have remembered?
Then I was in the living room, sitting on the sofa with everyone.
Amy and Jeremiah were there and about twenty other people for the parties.
Briana was holding my hand, but I swear I could hear her phone going off, even though I knew the sound was down. My heart rate was up and my mouth was dry and Lieutenant Dan was shoving his head under my arm, and I had the realization that I was having a panic attack.
Amy and Jeremiah were making some sort of announcement. I was in a fish tank.
I could see Amy’s mouth moving. “We’re having a baby.”
And then I was conscious of everyone’s eyes darting to me and I said the only thing I could think of saying because I had to get the hell out of there. “In this economy?”
Then I fled from the room while I could still make my legs carry me.
Chapter 39
Briana
As soon as Amy made the announcement, Jacob disintegrated. The shift was palpable. The tipping of a teetering glass on the edge of a table. Shattered.
His anxiety had been high all day. Probably because he knew he had this bachelor party and was already worn out from dinner with my family last night. He’d been sort of moody and detached from the minute he woke up. I’d been trying to give him space since he was people’d out, so I’d spent the day watching TikTok videos and texting Alexis so I stayed out of his hair. But now I wished I’d gotten him to stay home instead. He wasn’t in a good place to hear this news on his best day.
He used his escape phrase and practically ran to the steps leading to the basement. By the time I got down there, he was sitting on the little futon sofa in the room with the pool table, crying and breathing into his hands.
He was having a panic attack. Like, an actual panic attack. Because Amy was pregnant.
My heart broke.
I stood in front of him, watching him have a breakdown on this futon, and I couldn’t begin to describe the way it felt seeing him like this. Watching him live the moment he realized that it was really over because there was going to be a baby now and they might have figured it out before that, but now it was real.
She wasn’t leaving Jeremiah for him.
Amy and Jeremiah were going to be a family.
It was over.
All his hopes were over. He was heartbroken, and so was I.
I was right here. I was right here and I was in love with him and he didn’t care because he couldn’t even see me past her. I had fallen completely and utterly in love with him and he had stayed completely and utterly in love with someone else.
I started to cry too.
I just stood there in front of him, my shoulders slumped, tears starting to roll down my face.
Lieutenant Dan was almost frantic, trying to crawl into the space between Jacob’s stomach and the hands he had cupped over his mouth. And I wanted to crawl into that space too.
Screw it. I did.
I moved the dog over and climbed into Jacob’s lap. I straddled him in my blue summer dress and wrapped my arms around his neck and put my lips to his ear and just kept whispering the same thing over and over and over again. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He responded immediately. Like I’d reached him in the fog and he was clinging to me before he lost me again. His arms wrapped around me and he buried his face in my hair and it felt like the magnets that had been flipped and turned and flipped and turned had finally snapped together and spun to a halt.
“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”
Even if you don’t love me back. Even if it never matters to you or means anything or goes anywhere. I love you.
His breathing was labored.
I put my hands on his wet cheeks and looked him in the eye and started reciting the grounding exercises I used for panicking patients in the ER.
“Look for five things you can see,” I whispered. “Four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste.”
But he didn’t look for any of them. He just looked in my eyes. It must have worked, because after a few moments, I felt him calming down. His breathing steadied, his heart rate settled. When it was clear he was coming out of it, I put my forehead to his and closed my eyes.
Love me. Just love me instead. I’d take care of you. I’d protect you and shield you and be anything you needed. I’d be harmless to you…
He shook his head gently against mine like he could hear my thoughts. “I can’t fucking do this anymore…” he breathed.
Neither could I. But then I couldn’t even bring myself to get off his lap. The power this man had over me terrified me because there was so little I wouldn’t do. I was glad he never asked more of me after he asked me on that date, because I wasn’t capable of saying no to him. Even if it was against my own best interest. Especially if it was against my own best interest.
Why was I spending all my time pretending that I wasn’t in love with a man in love with someone else? Why was I doing this? Why was I torturing myself? Again.
It was so unfair.
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, trying to hold it back, but a sob choked me. He pulled away to look at me, worried. I turned, but he tipped my chin back to him. “What’s wrong?”
I just shook my head.
“Briana, look at me.”
I opened my eyes. His face was so close I could see the tears on his lashes, the red rims of his eyelids. We breathed into each other’s space and he stared back at me, one of his quiets, the one I couldn’t ever read.
He was so perfect.
His face was like art to me. The slope of his nose. The angle of his jaw. The black flecks in his eyes, the fullness of his bottom lip. I studied him unapologetically. Canvassed him up close with so much longing I felt like my heart would give out under the strain of loving him this much.
I was aware of everything. Every point of contact. My hands on his warm, firm shoulders. My dress hiked up, my bare thighs against his thighs. The tickle of his breath on my face, his belt buckle pressing low into my stomach.
He was looking at me too. His face looked tortured and pained, and I hated that she did this to him. That she could.
We just peered at each other. Me loving him, and him loving her. He raised a tentative hand and wiped a tear off my cheek. “Briana…” he whispered.
The sound of my name caressed my ears.
There was something so intimate hanging in the space between us. I was hypnotized by it. By the proximity to him and the hand on my skin and the way his sad eyes were roaming my face.
His gaze moved to my mouth.
He pressed a thumb to my bottom lip and pulled it down the slightest bit. And then he did the worst possible thing. The absolute worst thing he could ever do. He drew my face to his and kissed me.