I go inside.
I go to her door.
I attempt to turn it, but it’s locked.
I knock.
“Rachel?”
I hear movement. Something crashes against the door, and I jump back. When I realize what’s happened, I step forward again and bang on the door. “Rachel!” I yell, frantic. “Open the door!”
I hear her crying. “Go away!”
I take two steps back, then lunge forward and shove my shoulder against the door as hard as I can. The door flies open, and I rush inside. Rachel is curled up against the headboard, crying into her hands. I reach her.
She pushes me away.
I walk back to her.
She slaps me, then scoots off the bed. She stands up, shoving me back, pushing her palms against my chest. “I hate you!” she screams through her tears. I grab her hands and try to calm her down. It makes her angrier. “Just leave!” she yells. “If you don’t want anything to do with me, just leave!”
Her words stun me.
“Rachel, stop,” I plead. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her tears come harder now. She screams at me. She says I left her. I put her in bed this morning, and I left her because I couldn’t handle it. I was disappointed in her.
I love you, Rachel. More than I love myself.
“Baby, no,” I tell her, pulling her to me. “I didn’t leave you. I told you I was coming back.”
I hate that she didn’t understand why I left today.
I hate that I didn’t explain it to her.
I walk her back to the bed, and I position her against the headboard. “Rachel,” I say, touching her tear-stained cheek, “I’m not disappointed in you,” I tell her. “Not in the least. I’m disappointed in myself. Which is why I want to do everything I possibly can to turn this around for you. For us. That’s what I’ve been doing today. I’ve been trying to find a way to make this better for us.”
I stand up and grab the folders, then spread them out on the bed. I show her everything. I show her the brochures for family housing I picked up from campus. I show her the forms we need to fill out for free campus child care. I show her the financial aid brochures and the night classes and the online course review and the academic adviser list and how it will all coordinate with my flight-class schedule. All the possibilities are spread out before her, and I want her to see that even though we didn’t want this, even though we didn’t plan for this . . . we can do this.
“I know it’ll be a lot harder with a baby, Rachel. I know that. But it’s not impossible.”
She stares down at everything I’ve laid out before her. I watch her in silence until her shoulders begin to shake and she covers her mouth with her hand. She meets my gaze as huge tears spill out of her eyes. She crawls forward and throws her arms around my neck.
She tells me she loves me.
You love me so much, Rachel.
She kisses me over and over.
“We’ve got this, Miles,” she whispers against my ear.
I nod and hug her back. “We’ve got this, Rachel.”
chapter nineteen
TATE
It’s Thursday.
Game night.
Normally, the sound of their Thursday-night game gets under my skin. Tonight it’s music to my ears, knowing that Miles should be home. I have no idea what to expect from him or this arrangement we’ve got going on. I haven’t texted or spoken to him in the five days since he’s been gone.
I know that with as much as I’m thinking about him, I shouldn’t be doing this. For something that’s supposed to be a casual thing, it’s felt anything but casual. For me, it’s been extremely involved. Intense, even. He’s pretty much all I’ve thought about since that night in the rain, and it’s quite pathetic that I’m reaching for the doorknob to walk inside my apartment and my damn hand is shaking, knowing he might be in there.
I open the door to the apartment, and Corbin is the first to look up. He nods but doesn’t even say hi. Ian waves from his seat on the couch, then looks back at the TV.
Dillon’s eyes roam up and down my body, and I do what I can to stop myself from rolling my eyes.
Miles doesn’t do anything, because Miles isn’t here.
My whole body sighs from disappointment. I drop my purse onto the empty chair in the living room and tell myself it’s a good thing he isn’t here, because I’ve got way too much homework to do anyway.
“There’s pizza in the fridge,” Corbin says.
“Nice.” I walk into the kitchen and open the cabinet to remove a plate. I hear footsteps closing in on me, and my heart rate kicks up a notch.
A hand touches me on my lower back, and I immediately smile and turn around to face Miles.
Only it isn’t Miles. It’s Dillon.
“Hey, Tate,” he says, reaching around me to the cabinet. The hand that first touched my lower back is still on me, but now that I’ve turned to face him, his hand has slid to my waist. He keeps his eyes locked with mine as he reaches past me and opens the cabinet. “Just need a cup for my beer,” he says, excusing the fact that he’s right here. Touching me. His face only inches from my face.
I hate that he saw me smiling when I turned around. I just gave him the wrong idea.
“Well, you won’t find a cup in my pocket,” I say, pushing his hand off of me. I look away from Dillon just as Miles steps into the kitchen. His eyes are burning holes into the part of me that Dillon was just touching.
Miles saw Dillon’s hand on me.
Miles is looking at Dillon now as if he just committed -murder.
“Since when do you drink beer from a cup?” Miles says.
Dillon turns around and looks at Miles, then glances back to me and smiles a very blatant, flirtatious smile. “Since Tate was standing so close to the cabinet.”
Shit. He’s not even hiding it. He thinks I’m into him.
Miles walks to the refrigerator and opens it. “So Dillon. How’s your wife?”
Miles doesn’t make an attempt to remove anything. He’s just standing there, staring into the refrigerator, with his fingers gripping the door handle harder than it’s ever been gripped, I’m sure.
Dillon is still looking at me, staring down at me. “She’s at work,” he says pointedly. “For at least four more hours.”
Miles slams the refrigerator and takes two quick steps toward Dillon. Dillon stands up straight, and I immediately scoot two feet away from him. “Corbin specifically instructed you to keep your hands off his sister. Show him some fucking respect!”
Dillon’s jaw twitches, and he doesn’t back down or look away from Miles. In fact, he takes a step toward him, closing the space between them. “Sounds to me like this isn’t really about Corbin,” Dillon says, seething.
My heart is pounding in my chest. I feel guilty that I gave Dillon the wrong idea and even guiltier that they’re arguing about it now. But dammit, I love that Miles hates him so much. I just wish I knew if it was because he doesn’t like that Dillon is flirting when he’s got a wife at home or if he doesn’t like that Dillon is flirting with me.
And now Corbin is standing in the doorway.
Shit.
“What isn’t really about me?” Corbin asks, watching the two of them in their standoff.