“Okay …”
She tilts her head at me, trying to keep her lips flat and neutral, but she can’t hide the way her eyes shimmer with a thousand unspoken fears and desires.
I can almost hear her thoughts dancing in the air.
What now? she’s thinking. What could it possibly be?
“The first time I saw you,” I tell her, “I knew I had to have you. I knew I’d die if I didn’t get to be with you if I didn’t get to put my offspring in your womb. But the idea scared me. It terrified me. I tried to fight it. I’ve never felt like this before. It’s like there’s another force inside of me, Fiona, something massive and impossible to ignore. With you, I don’t feel in control.”
“But that’s how I feel,” she says, moving forward and gripping onto my side. “I know it’s crazy. We only met yesterday and we feel like this? Yeah, people are gonna say it’s crazy. But who cares what people think?”
“I don’t give a damn,” I tell her. “It’s not that. It’s just …”
I sigh, turning away from her, my chest getting tight like there’s a boulder pressing down on me.
“I tried to fight my need for you … For three months, I tried to fight it.”
“For three months?” she says, as though she misheard me.
“Yeah,” I say, glancing at her.
She’s biting her lip, her eyebrows quirked in a question, her cheeks shiny with sunlight and heartache.
“I walked by the café every weekend on my way to the office,” I tell her. “The café where you sit at the window with your laptop and your beautiful hair all messy around your shoulders—or tied up in a bun with a pen slotted through the middle. I was captivated by you, and I made sure to walk by that same café every Saturday for three months. I tried to stop myself. I was scared of the way I felt, that’s the damn truth. I was terrified of how badly I needed you.”
She stares, her mouth falling open. I can’t read her expression.
Does she hate me?
“You knew that … just by looking at me?”
I nod, wanting to reach across and take her hand.
But something about the way she’s standing – with her hand across her belly, slightly turned to the side – tells me she doesn’t want me to touch her right now.
“I knew it instantly,” I tell her. “I glanced at the window and I knew it. It was this feeling in my gut like I’d been punched. I had to sit down and get control of myself. I’ve never felt that way before. I guess I closed myself off to emotion after all the shit that happened with my uncle when I was a kid. I don’t know.”
“And you kept walking,” she says.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “But when I walked by the following week, you were there. This time I watched you write. I watched you work. You have no idea how beautiful you are when you think nobody’s looking, Fiona.”
She laughs, shaking her head at the same time, as though she can’t decide how to feel.
“Thanks?” she murmurs, making it a question.
“I tried to fight this insane urge to own you,” I say. “But I couldn’t. So I—”
“So you made a fake magazine and a fake contest and left it on my usual table,” she says. “I’m right, aren’t I? That’s what you did. Us meeting here, sharing the same room, it wasn’t an accident.”
“No,” I say. “I thought we could meet and then I’d get all this craziness out of my system. And, when we met in person and I decided that I didn’t need to pursue this, you’d get a five-star holiday with all the expenses paid. That’s how I justified it. But when I saw you, when I spoke to you, last night … It just made me all the more certain that I needed you, Fiona. I need you.”
I move over to her, lifting my hands to frame her face. Her eyes widen and I can feel her jaw tensing, as though she doesn’t know whether to sob or scream or both.
“I never should’ve lied to you,” I say. “I hate that I did that. And I’ll never do it again. I swear on my life. I swear on the lives of our future children.”
She almost softens, biting her lip, but then her features harden and she turns away, brushing my hands aside and pacing over to the roof edge.
“I don’t know what to make of all this,” she murmurs. “I think I need to speak with my sister and my mom. I need to talk this out with someone who isn’t …”
I sigh, my chest squeezing tightly.
With someone who isn’t you, she was going to say.
“I understand,” I growl.
I move over to her and pull her close to me, squeezing her body against mine, so close I can feel her heart pounding through her chest.