“It may not just be a few weeks. It could be the whole pregnancy.”
“So what? You can’t have sex for a few months and she’s not worth having?”
“You’re putting an awful lot of words in my mouth, Sin. I am trying to make this work. I’m doing my best. It just isn’t easy, that’s all. It’s one obstacle after the next when it should be the easiest. This isn’t our seventh year of marriage, this is a new relationship. It should be fun at this stage, and when it isn’t fun, there should be memories of when it was. I have a few damn days of nice memories—that’s it. We don’t have enough of a foundation to weather this kind of crap.”
He’s not wrong, but it still feels like an excuse to me.
“Tell me you don’t want to fuck the waitress.”
His eyes narrow. “I’d like to fuck someone, sure. Laurel has had sex more recently than I have, and now she’s closed for business.”
“No, she damn sure has not. Laurel hasn’t had sex since Easter.”
He rears back briefly, then frowns at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t fuck her. She didn’t tell you?”
Clearly, she did not, because he laughs. Not with real amusement, but a tired half-laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
“I didn’t. We fooled around, that’s it.”
Seeing I’m serious, he stares at me. I expect relief to follow, but this seems to piss him off more. “Are you fucking kidding me? You didn’t even have sex, and she’s this hung up on you? I fucked her for three days straight and she cut me off the first time I was mean to her. I gave her the first vaginal orgasm of her life, and you…” He trails off, shaking his head. “What the fuck?”
I know I would be more relieved in this scenario than he is, but his sincere surprise knocks a little bit of the wind out of my sails. I don’t know why Laurel didn’t tell him that. I specifically told her to.
When I paid the doctor a little visit and persuaded him to feed them the weak uterus bullshit, I figured it might make things a little hairy, but Laurel needed more time and I didn’t want to risk Rafe steamrolling over her.
I know he has to sleep with her if this is going to work, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. I guess I can’t claim complete selflessness here, because there was no reason to add the part about how they shouldn’t fool around either except that I didn’t want them to.
“I’m in the way,” I say more calmly.
Rafe sighs, but he seems calmer now, too. “You are, but that’s not all it is. I thought that was it at first, but it’s more than that. I’m trying to build a relationship with just the broken pieces. Most people having a baby together get a chance to fall in love first. We didn’t get that. I never even wanted any of this in the first place, and maybe I could get on board with it with someone I loved first, but Laurel and I barely knew each other. The timing here is not good. We skipped right past falling in love and fell straight into the kind of rut it should take people years to sink into. It certainly doesn’t help that I look at her sometimes and I can see her thinking about you. She might as well be projecting her thoughts onto my wall for how clearly I can see it.”
“Do you want this to work?” I ask, simply.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I like Laurel. It’s not… she has plenty of appeal, the problem isn’t her. It’s everything, and everything is a lot to deal with.”
“You have to want it to work,” I advise him. “It won’t work if you don’t. You’re just wasting each other’s time at that point.”
“Yeah, well… I don’t think she wants it to work. She was open-hearted when she came here, but bit by bit, we’ve closed her off.”
I notice he says we, not letting me off the hook, and he doesn’t even know how much I contributed to that. I do, though. I know exactly how much I contributed to it.
“She’ll open back up if you work at it,” I tell him. “It’s still fresh. She’ll come back around if you earn it. The ball is in your court at this point, but… you’re right, this isn’t my business. I need to take a step back. We need to give Laurel a break from me. If you and I need to meet up, let’s do it away from the house for a while. If you two go out, don’t invite me. Give her a chance to clear me out and make room for you. And be nice to her. Don’t do shady shit like this. You need to stay away from the waitress. I’ll stay away as long as you do, but this won’t work if your eye is already wandering. You have more focus than that. Laurel is great, and she deserves your full attention, not whatever scraps you can cobble together at the end of the day.”
He’s not angry now, but I can see my words still irritate him. “That is not what I was doing. But yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” He misses a couple beats, and I don’t say anything either, so he adds a far too knowing, “You still want her, don’t you?”
There’s little point answering such a stupid fucking question, but I
do anyway. “Of course I do.”
Since I’ve said far more than I meant to and I have a shitload of work to do, I turn and leave without another word.
16
Laurel
Over the next few days, more things change.