After lunch, I remind myself. He’ll learn that our new future will consist of an extra person.
I stare at the white tablecloth. It’s scarier when I think of it like that. How are we going to be responsible for another human being?
We’ve struggled for so long just to take care of ourselves.
“So when will you start showing?” Lo asks Rose, actually nicely. Maybe this won’t be so bad.
“I already have a small bump,” she says, trying to salvage the salmon she demolished on her plate.
“What happens when they find hooves on the ultrasound?” His nice streak didn’t last long.
Jonathan cuts in, “Honestly, Loren, when you take over Hale Co. you have to be more sensitive to these things. The company has already been through hell and back. It won’t survive if you don’t care about the industry.”
Lo grinds his teeth before saying, “Like you’re so sensitive? Like you care about this shit?”
Jonathan devours the insult with a harsh glare. “When you’re a father—”
“That’s just it, I won’t ever be a father,” Lo interjects, gripping the table as he leans closer to Jonathan. My heart catapults to my throat.
I’m paralyzed from head to toe.
“You love to do the opposite of everything I say,” Jonathan declares. “I tell you to run. You walk. I tell you to drink. You get sober. I tell you to lead my company. You start your own.”
I remember—one time, maybe on our very first date as a real couple—Lo professed a similar acknowledgement of his teenage rebellion. But this is different.
Lo’s face reddens in anger. “Get this through your head.”
Every word is emblazoned with power. “I will never subject a child to this fucking torture. I’d rather be burned alive than live knowing I put someone through this kind of hell.” It’s like a fist has torn out my heart, snapping each artery terrifyingly slow. And he just continues on. “So destroy all of those goddamn dreams of grandchildren.” He rises to his feet. “Your Hale empire begins over there, with him.” Lo points at Ryke down the table. “Not me.”
He throws the cloth napkin on his seat and walks away, fuming.
I can’t follow him. My haunted, petrified gaze is fixed on my half-eaten plate of food. Tears are submerged beneath the weight of his opinion. He’d rather die than embrace the thought of bringing life into the world.
“Lily,” Rose whispers.
I’m okay.
I internally shake my head. I’m not.
I don’t see how I can ever break this news in a good way. I don’t see how this can ever be okay like I hoped.
{ 63 }
2 years : 03 months
November
LOREN HALE
“We’re offering a solution,” Connor tells me, sitting in the living room. For Christ sake’s, every time we attempt to watch a movie, a serious conversation is somehow brought up. “It’s nothing to be upset about.”
I touch my chest. “I’m not going to live with you. You’ve been a great roommate for these past two years, but you’re having a baby, man.”
Everything has changed with Rose’s pregnancy, and the topic is honestly straining my relationship with Lily. She’s been distant from me since the luncheon. And I know it hurts her that we’re never going to have kids, but it’ll hurt even more if she’s reminded of it every day with Rose and Connor’s baby hanging around us.
I add, “You don’t need to be dealing with our shit on top of that.”
“You’re not ready,” Rose chimes in. “You relapsed only a few months ago—”
“I’m never going to be ready, Rose!” I yell, my pulse thrumming. “If you’re waiting for me to be cured, then you might as well give up now. This is going to last forever. Not a month. Not a few years. I’m an addict. I could very well stay sober for ten years and relapse again. You gotta accept that.”
Her face marbleizes. “And what about Lily?”
“I can take care of her like I always have,” I say adamantly, but a pressure weighs on me. I’ve been doing a good job until…I don’t know. Maybe when we returned back to Philly. After the road trip. She’s just withdrawn from me. It’s the worst goddamn feeling in the world.
“Oh,” Rose says, “you mean when you spent years letting her have sex with different men every night.” It’s like a right hook in the jaw.
I can’t even stomach that part of my past anymore. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I brought Lily into my arms sooner, that I supplied her with everything she was searching for, stopping her before she sought it with other men. That I quit drinking for her, from the start.