Page 82 of Incipient

Wanting to comfort him, to be near him, I moved to the sofa to sit next to him, but he quickly hopped up on his feet as though he couldn’t stand to be close to me.

My heart splintered as I watched him move to the window and rest his forearm against the frame. Taking an extra-long sip from his bottle, he stared out into the empty street as though he had the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. I imagined in the moment, he did.

“You should go to bed,” he said without meeting my eyes. “I need to clear my head.”

“I’m not leaving you like this.”

He puffed out a humorless laugh and shook his head. “This isn’t your problem, Jemma.”

“It isn’t yours either. She’s lying,” I blurted out and then slammed my mouth shut, unsure of how I was going to follow up such a loaded statement. “I mean, she has to be.”

He didn’t flinch. “Isawher. She’s pregnant,” he said definitively.

As weary as I was about how much I could share with him, I knew I couldn’t stay silent on this either. Not about this. She was wreaking him, wholly and completely, and I refused to let her get away with it.

“Fine, she’s pregnant, but it’s not yours. It can’t be,” I said as I ventured closer to him like I couldn’t stand to be away. “The timeline doesn’t match—she’s too far along,” I offered, feeling it was safe to point that out without having to spill the entire truth. “And—”

His glassy sapphire eyes burned through the darkness to meet mine.

“And we would’ve been together at that time. You wouldn’t have cheated on me.”

He stared back at me, as though trying to siphon the past from my eyes; to be able to see us as we once were. It speared my heart to know that all the good parts had been wiped out from his memory right along with the bad ones.

“She’s using the fact that you can’t remember the past against you.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, and I wished for the hundredth time that day that I could know his thoughts the way he always seemed to know mine.

He leaned his back against the wall and met my gaze, his eyes searching. “What if itismine?” he asked softly.

“It’s not,” I insisted with the kind of confidence I should not have had on a matter in which I was supposed to know nothing about.

“But what if it is? What does that mean for us?” he asked, his face a blank canvas of emotion. He may as well have been written entirely in a foreign language.

“It wouldn’t change anything,” I said, answering his hypothetical honestly. The truth was, I had no intention of letting anyone get in between me and Trace again. Not this time. And definitely not Nikki. “I mean, not unless you’d want it to.”

“So, I should just ruin your life then?” he asked, darkness riding his tone. “Make this your problem too?”

I erased the gap between us. “You could never ruin my life, Trace. You’ve only ever made it better.”

He stared down at me for moment, his eyes seemingly softening before closing off to me once again. “Yeah, well the night’s still young,” he said and then tried to bring the bottle up to his lips, but I threw my hand out and stopped him, slowly forcing it back down to his side.

“Don’t do that.”

He looked down at me with hooded eyes. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t try to push me away.”

Another sardonic rumble from his chest. “You should be running for the hills right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?” he asked, crowding my space with his body.

“Because I—” Pressing against him, I bit down on my lip to stop myself from saying too much—from uttering the words I knew could ruin us. Because once I said them, once I admitted it out loud, there would be no going back.

“Because youwhat?” he asked, lowering his head to mine.

His wanting eyes fell to my mouth and my stomach coiled.

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