In a single predatory movement, she slipped on her glasses and stared him down. “Oh, now it’s time? Now that she’s pregnant?”
He took a small step back; apparently, the power of the glasses wasn’t just contained to me. His eyes lowered respectfully, but when he spoke his voice was quiet but steady. “It never should have happened this way, I understand that. And I apologize.” He gazed up at her. “Apologize with all my heart—I really do. I never meant for this to get so out of hand. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was come between Becca and her family.”
Her mouth twitched, and I stifled a small smile. Apparently, the power of his eyes wasn’t just contained to me either.
“I’m truly sorry for lying to you, Sharon—and my grandmother and Max. If I could go back and do that part over again, I would.” He straightened up ever so slightly. “But I can’t regret these last few months. I never will. They’re what brought Rebecca and me together.”
You could have heard a pin drop. My mother’s eyes swam with momentary tears, but unlike me, she had long ago mastered the art of controlling them.
“And so now everything’s different?” she asked skeptically. But I’d been hearing her read Marcus’s side of this discussion for the last two days. She wasn’t fooling anyone. Anyone except Marcus who was still staring at her like at any moment she might bite off his neck. “Now you’ve just magically happened to fall in love the second you find out she’s having your baby?”
“It was convoluted, drawn out, and at times literally painful. But she captured my heart in a way no woman ever has.”
My mind flashed back to our initial encounter—the fight outside the coffee shop. He’d almost been crucified by a plumber as a public example of the Icarus Effect. Later, he’d willingly sacrificed himself on stage in front of a bunch of rowdy college kids just to make me smile. Of course, in the time between those encounters, I’d kicked and Maced him as well. Plus, Max punched him.
Painful was understating it. But it had its good moments too. I looked up from the pictures on the floor and saw a soft, nostalgic smile lighting the edges of his paled face.
“But yes, to answer your question.” He lifted his head and looked my mother straight in the eyes. “I fell in love with her.” He looked at me. “And I did that before she got pregnant.”
“Is that true?” my mom asked quietly.
“Yes.”
He took a step forward, glancing warily in Sharon’s direction. But much to his extreme astonishment, she had somehow vanished from the room.
Finally free of parental supervision, Marcus knelt down beside me. He gazed tenderly into my eyes and stroked back my hair. “I know you don’t feel the same about me, and you don’t want a baby, but I had to let you know that I love you, Rebecca.”
“Is that what you think?” I cut him off. “You think that’s why I left?”
He paused uncertainly and a sick feeling of guilt crept up in my stomach. My face tightened, and I wound one hand gently through his before pulling us to our feet.
“Come on,” I said quietly, “let’s take a walk.”
Chapter 7
I had been coming to the beach since I was two years old. There were pictures of me bobbing up and down and freezing in the tiny waves on the floor at my mom’s. It was a different beach than the ones Marcus and I had been to so far. No tropical sand and bright sunlight here. Algae-covered boulders and tiny stones comprised the shoreline, and it was actually raining when we arrived.
“Should you be out here in the rain?” Marcus asked hesitantly when we stepped out of the car and headed down to the water. There was no one around as far as the eye could see, and he stared up ominously at the darkened sky.
I couldn’t help but smile as I skipped lightly from rock to rock. “I’m not going to cryogenically freeze our unborn child. But having lived in LA so long, I can understand your confusion.” I pointed up at the sky like I was making introductions. “Marcus, this is weather. Weather, meet Marcus.”
“That’s funny,” he said flatly, following me down to the water. It lapped up against his custom boots and he shivered. “Seriously, you’re not cold?”
“I grew up here, remember?” I took off my shoes and rolled up my pants before walking in up to my ankles. “You get used to it.”
He looked at me like I was crazy but followed my example—trying to hide his shivering all the while. We walked side by side, close but not touching, for a couple of minutes. The rain lightened somewhat, but a fine cloud of mist hung low in the air, giving the entire beach a somewhat magical feel—like the road to Camelot.
“You know I love you,” I said. “This whole time, I’d been wondering just how to phrase it, how to say something so complicated and make it make sense. In the end, I’d realized it was simple. And when I told you those three life-changing words, I meant them.”
He stopped in his tracks and turned to me. “And I meant them too.”
“I know,” I said, “that’s what’s so crazy. Marcus,” I took both his freezing hands in mine, “I wouldn’t pretend to love you just because I got pregnant. It’s exactly the opposite. If I wasn’t sure about you, if I wasn’t sure about us…I’d get as far away from you as possible. I was raised in a broken home—that’s not something I would ever do to a child.”
He watched me without blinking, hanging onto every word.
“That’s why I left,” I admitted softly. “Marcus, I…I think I’ve loved you for a while. I blurted it out to Amanda the second before the test turned positive. I’ve been trying to get myself to say it out loud since…well, since that night on the roof.”
His face softened despite the chilly breeze. “So why did you leave?”