“Except you,” Gabi guessed.
He regarded her with surprise. “How did you know?”
“Not your style. When Cora Jane dragged you into Castle’s last summer specifically for my benefit, you were completely low-key and laid-back.”
“Maybe I’d just learned my lesson about overplaying my hand,” he suggested.
“Nah,” she said confidently. “So, what happened? Did she ignore you?”
He thought back to the way Kayla had gravitated right to him, as if she’d somehow sensed that she’d found a safety net. That’s when they’d become friends.
Friends, he thought. How he’d hated that at the time. He’d wanted to be her boyfriend. Instead, she’d confided in him, trusted him with her secrets, tortured him with tales of her dates.
“She didn’t ignore me,” he said quietly.
Apparently something in his words or his tone sank in, because Gabi studied him even more intently. “But something went wrong, didn’t it?”
“Not wrong exactly. She liked me well enough, but I wasn’t really her type. She liked her boys wild—the wilder, the better, in fact. She thought of me as friend material.”
“Oh, dear,” Gabi whispered, her expression filled with compassion. “That whole wild thing is so not you. Or have you changed?”
He smiled at how quickly she’d caught on to the problem. “I haven’t changed. Still the solid, responsible guy I’ve always been. Boring to a fault.”
“You’re anything but boring,” she said heatedly.
He smiled. “Thanks.”
“How’d you end up together, then? Did she finally mature and realize what a treasure she had in you?”
This was the hard part, the part he’d never wanted to admit to a living, breathing soul, not even his sister. He suspected Louise had guessed because he’d asked for some barely veiled legal advice, but for once in her life she hadn’t pushed for more information. Even she seemed to understand that the topic was off-limits, that his pride demanded a shroud of secrecy over the rest.
“Kayla didn’t go away to college, and the two of us stayed close. She hung out with a lot of college guys who came here to party during the summer. Then she got pregnant,” he said simply. “And the guy didn’t want any part of her or the baby.”
Gabi looked stunned, obviously making the connection between that situation and her own. “But you stepped up?”
He nodded. “I wasn’t going to let her face the pregnancy alone.”
She studied his face. “But you did more than that, didn’t you? You claimed the baby as your own? You let everyone think you were the one responsible for her being pregnant?”
He nodded. “Don’t make me into some sort of saint, Gabi. It worked out for me. In fact, it was like a dream come true. I had the woman I’d loved and a child on the way. Maybe it wasn’t the way I’d envisioned, but once we committed to marriage, we were making it work. We really were. It was harder for Kayla than me, but she tried. I think her feelings for me deepened.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it was just gratitude, but we were doing okay.”
“And then you lost them,” Gabi said softly. “Oh, Wade, that must have torn you apart.”
“You have no idea.” He looked into her eyes, which had filled with tears. “Don’t you dare cry for me,” he said. “And don’t start making comparisons.”
“But here you are again, standing by me.”
He could almost see her pulling away, twisting what had happened back then into a precursor of what was going on right now. “It’s not the same,” he insisted. “It’s not. Kayla and me, we were a couple of young, foolish kids. I had this idealistic sense that I could save the day. You, Gabriella, don’t need saving, not by me, not by anyone.”
“But still—”
He cut her off. “No buts. Sure, there are similarities in the situations. Even if I wanted to deny that, there’s Louise to remind me that I jumped into an ill-advised marriage because of an unplanned pregnancy. I assure you, though, that’s where the similarities end.”
“How can you say that? I am carrying another man’s child, Wade. And here you are, ready to save the day.”
He gave her an impatient look. “Did you not hear me just now? You don’t need saving, and my attraction to you started long before I knew anything about the pregnancy, before you knew about it, as a matter of fact. This is not some weird pattern of behavior, Gabi. It’s an unfortunate coincidence, that’s all.” He raked a hand through his hair, then corrected himself. “Not unfortunate. I didn’t mean that the way it might have sounded. I’m glad you decided to keep the baby, but if you’d decided on adoption, that would have been okay, too. Despite what my sister thought, I would have accepted your decision.”
She didn’t look convinced.
“Gabi, what do you want me to say? I can’t pretend that the past wasn’t the way it was. And there is a blessing in the experience that you might not have considered.”
“What’s that?” she asked, a surprising tear rolling down her cheek.
“I can say with absolute, one hundred percent conviction that I don’t have to be any baby’s biological dad to love it with everything in me. The baby I lost was as much a part of me as if I’d provided the sperm, maybe even more so because I loved it without the tiniest reservation or doubt from the moment I felt it kick for the first time.”
Gabi was openly weeping now, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. Had he thrown her off with this revelation? Had he said too much? Gotten too intense?
“You may be the sweetest, kindest, most wonderful man I’ve ever known,” she said as the tears continued to flow. “And
