He comes up beside me and leans on the table, looking down into my face.
“Have you been crying?” He sounds like he cares but then why hasn’t he been answering me?
“She came by and I may have made her cry.” Shay smiles at me, “gosh, you look more and more like your mother every time I see you.”
“Made her cry?” He’s still looking at me. “Why?”
“Girl stuff.” Shay waves him off and his eyes widen on my face.
He thinks I told her about the pregnancy, I can see the question in his eyes and I shake my head. He visibly relaxes and plops down in the seat beside me, grabbing my hand and linking our fingers. He gives it a squeeze and then chuckles, my head turns towards the sound.
“Aren’t you on lockdown?” He says quietly so Shay doesn’t hear.
“I escaped.” I say quietly and he laughs again, then I join in.
Shay turns towards us with hot mugs of cocoa.
“Young lady, I sure have missed that laugh.” Her smile widens when she sees our linked hands.
Charlotte, please forgive me because I am in love with your brother and I still love your family.
“Tell me,” Neil paces the length of his bedroom, “are you ever going to tell me who else you were sleeping with?”
“Is it important?” I cover my face with my hands, “it’s not happening anymore. It was a one time thing.”
“Are you sure?” His eyes are begging me to assure him.
“I promise.” I nod.
There’s relief there but I can also see the hurt, there’s nothing I can do to take that away, and we’ve never been exclusive. He falls onto his back on the bed beside me and runs his fingers over my back.
“We need to discuss the baby.” He murmurs.
“Don’t worry about anything,” I assure him, “let’s just wait until it’s born and if it’s yours you can decide what you want to do.”
He sits up and grabs my face between his hands, “I want to decide what to do right now. I don’t care who fathered this child, I want it to still be mine, and I want you to be mine.”
His face blurs as tears fill my eyes, “how?”
“I’ll take care of you,” his hand lands on my stomach. “Both of you.”
I admit, I wanted to hear these words and I wanted it to happen just as it has but for some reason I am filled with guilt and remorse. He still doesn’t know the truth about Charlotte and who the other man is.
If this relationship is going to work, it needs to be built on a foundation of trust, and we can’t do that with lies unresolved. I need to come clean and beg him to somehow keep the information to himself.
I’m basically going to hand him a nuclear bomb and hope he does the right thing. I want to trust that he’ll see my way, that he’ll agree with me, and we can move forward.
Before all that, I need to get the one bit of evidence I’ve kept hidden for three years, and then when he’s done with it, I’ll wait for his decision.
“I need to do a few things first,” I say slowly, “I need to get my shit in order and then we can figure this out.”
“What shit, Ivy?” His face falls, “why can’t we do this right now? Why are you always hiding something?”
I deserve that, I am always hiding something. I have my fucking reasons though and I’ve been through a lot of shit, I don’t trust easily. I want to snap on him and tell him to give me space but I know he’s trying to help and I need to start accepting it.
“I’m going to head home and sort some stuff out and then we’ll talk, okay?”
The look he gives me is one filled with mistrust and I nearly shrink from the scrutiny.
“Ivy do not leave here without sorting this out now. You don’t need to go home and curl up to wallow alone, let me help you.”
His words are like an attack, filled with condescension and guile. He’s trying to force me to do as he wants, disregarding my feelings.
“Don’t.” He points into my face, “I see you retreating into yourself again. Why do you do that?”
“I need to go.” I stand and reach for his door.
He slaps my hand away from the knob and I stare at him with shock.
“Not until we figure this out.”
“Don’t touch me,” I grit through my teeth, my emotions changing in rapid succession, anger, sadness, guilt, back to anger.
“Ivy.” He rears back from the look on my face. “Let me lov…”
“Don’t!” I cut him off and wrench open his room door.
“Ivy!” He yells, but I’m already partly down the stairs.
“Ivy?” I hear Shay but I’m out of the house and down the driveway.
I just need space to figure out what I’m doing, can’t anyone let me have it? Why does everything need to be sorted right now? There’s so much he still doesn’t know and he thinks he can just forgive it all?
He wants to get my hopes up and then smash me down when he realizes he really can’t forgive any of it. I can’t take any more disappointment and I shouldn’t have to. I want him to make a decision after he knows everything, is that wrong?
I turn onto the street, making my way back to the intersection, and to the stop sign I saw a few hours ago that gave me pause, making me remember a bit of my childhood. The innocence I had back then was so viciously ripped away and now I have to find a way to explain that to Neil.
My phone rings in my pocket and I stop at the corner of the street, pulling it out.
It’s my dad calling and I can imagine he’s fucking pissed. I look up and down the street, swiping open the phone to answer his call.
“Dad, don’t freak,” I placate him
