Page 7 of Mending Hearts

“I don’t know.” I leaned against the counter and gazed out the big pharmacy windows to the street. “I’m thirty-five. I’ve always wanted to be a dad.”

“You’re at an age where having a baby makes sense for you. You’ve got stability, maturity, financial independence. You live in a town where you’d have a good support system.”

“Yeah, if only I could.” I mimed taking a baby from someone. “Here, Mia. Let me carry the baby for you.”

“Sure. Just ask Mia to have the baby and give it to you to raise.” She wagged her finger. “That was a dumb suggestion. Sorry. My brain goes to some weird places sometimes.” From under the counter, she produced her phone.

I turned back to the windows and let Maggie’s words turn in my brain. Even if Mia went for that suggestion, as crazy as it sounded, how would we keep something like a pregnancy a secret? And if we managed that feat, how would we keep a baby secret once he or she was born?

“Tyler? Did you hear me?” Maggie tapped me on the shoulder.

“Sorry.” I made a whirling motion with my finger on the side of my head as I rotated to face her. “My brain is working overtime trying to sort out my feelings.”

“Grady got her on the phone under some songwriting pretense.” She handed over her phone with a text message on the screen. “Hotel name and alias.”

The hotel was a famous chain down the street from my secondhand shop. I frowned. When I’d called, I’d used the wrong alias. At least she was close.

“Are you going to talk to her?” Maggie plucked her phone from my hand.

“Yeah, at some point tonight. I need to get my head straight first.”

“Whatever you two decide,” Maggie said, “it’s a permanent decision. There’s no going back from it. You’ll be tied together through that child for the rest of your lives.”

I nodded and pushed off the counter to an upright position.Forever. I took the lollipop out and leaned over Maggie’s counter, dropping it into the trash.

“I hear you, Maggie. I hear you.”

I wasn’t sure if Mia would hear me out, but a plan was beginning to take shape.

Chapter Three

Mia

Ibit into the greasiest cheeseburger I’d ever eaten and moaned. Meat. Meat tasted so good. And cheese. The meat and cheese together were heaven. The inventor of the cheeseburger was a genius. Pasha was a genius for bringing this glorious creation to the hotel. He merely raised his eyebrows at my request. Not a single accented syllable in protest or rebuke. Then he’d said he knew “best place,” and he hadn’t been lying.

Denying this pleasure for so long was insanity. I took another bite, chewing slowly, savoring the chargrilled taste. In the summer, barbequed burgers were one of my favorite smells. They reminded me of childhood, of normalcy, of being at a friend’s house in a better neighborhood for a pool party. Of life before the knock on my mother’s door. Why had I given up red meat?

My mother. The answer was always Laura Malone.

And the fucking dietician she hired when she thought I had an eating disorder. I hadn’t been sick. Not really. Had I been developingsomething? Probably. Looking back, my relationship to food hadn’t been right. But what teenager could take the constant, unrelenting scrutiny of their body and survive? I’d burst onto the music scene as a plump-faced fifteen-year-old. Ripe for trolls and internet memes and all kinds of other nasty shit. Thinking about those magazine covers made my stomach dip.The criticism still happened, but the jokes were rarely about my weight. Instead, they critiqued a facial expression or a bad camera angle or, in the rare picture, some cellulite.

It became second nature to examine myself in the mirror or to ask my mother whether I looked like a fat girl in skinny girl’s clothes. The proof of my plumpness was splashed across countless magazines, on the internet, on the TV, radio, everywhere. The attention had been so extra. Too much. So, I’d lost the only thing I could—the weight.

I polished off the last bite, wishing I’d asked him to bring two, when a knock sounded on the door. Pasha was the only person who knew I was here. At the door, I checked the peephole. Sure enough, it was him.

“Did you need something?” I kept the open door propped against my shoulder.

“Man from shop here see you.” Pasha threw a thumb over his shoulder. “I tell him wait down hall.”

Around his wide shoulder, I could make out Tyler’s frame in the corridor. I’d used a good chunk of cash to rent out the whole floor. Not that Little Falls was a tourist hub in January, but I’d learned early and often I could never be too careful. One social media post could light a fuse, blow up my life.

I bit down on my acrylic nail and narrowed my eyes. How’d he know where I was staying? Had I told him earlier? I didn’t think so. “What’s he want?”

“Talk to you.”

Hadn’t the text message been enough? At the shop, the woman who kissed him was clearly a girlfriend. If he cheated on her, I’d officially inherited my mother’s poor taste in men.

From down the hall, Tyler held up a paper bag. I frowned. “What’s he got?”

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