Page 91 of Breakaway

True.

“But you’d have no home to come home to.” For some reason that seemed so important to her—to have a place her brother and sister could come home to if they needed. To be there for them if they needed her.

“I know. But I’m older now, Remi, I’ll find a place in the summers. I’ll have enough money for that.”

Apparently she was the only one who wanted to hold onto the house.

Was she being overly emotional about it? Perhaps she was. Was she being selfish wanting to keep the house? Maybe.

So she called a realtor and arranged for him to come over and look at the house. She might as well do it all—sell the house, give up their home, find some little apartment to live in by herself for the rest of her life. She got so agitated, she started packing things in boxes, decorative things that served no purpose, clothes that were out of season, anything left behind in Kyle and Jasmine’s bedrooms.

So much for redecorating the house, like she’d wanted to.

Pain stabbed through her like a knife as she threw stuff into boxes, blinded by stinging tears.

And wasn’t this just the way it always was. Her sacrificing everything for everyone else.

Oh for heaven’s sake. She paused over one of the boxes she was filling. She sounded like the biggest martyr in the world, all sorry for herself.Get over it, Remi. This wasn’t just her house and she needed to accept that. She rolled her eyes at herself and straightened her shoulders, then went to find the newspaper. She had a life to get on with.

She scanned the classifieds for apartment listings, looking for something near the school. Two bedrooms would be good, in case Kyle or Jasmine did in fact need a place to stay. But she bit her lip when she saw prices in the neighborhoods she’d like to live in. Eep. She’d had it pretty good, living rent-free in a house that was paid for. Maybe it was going to have to be one bedroom. If Kyle or Jasmine needed a place to stay, they’d have to figure things out.

The next day, the realtor was enthusiastic about the house. Remi knew it would sell easily. Her parents had bought the house many years ago and since then the neighborhood had become very desirable and house prices had escalated to the moon. They’d get good money for it. So she signed the papers and the For Sale sign went up in the front yard.

She cried when she looked at it, her emotions all ragged and shaky. But she swiped the tears away and pressed her lips together and returned to shoving stuff heedlessly into boxes. And while she did that she tried not to think about Jase.

Then the doorbell rang.

She froze with her hands in a box of sweaters, tears dripping down her cheeks.

It was Jase.

He eyed her face, which she knew only too well looked atrocious, then her baggy yoga pants and faded T-shirt. “Hi.”

She stood aside and held the door open for him to come in.

“I have a game tonight,” he said.

Oh, yeah. Life did go on. And he had to go play a game while their lives fell apart.

Then a hot wave of shame swept over her. That wasn’t fair. Jase’s career may be a game, but he was talented and dedicated and serious about it. So were a lot of other people, including a lot of fans who counted on him being there and winning. It really was a big business, despite being just a game.

“Oh. Okay.”

They walked into the living room and stood facing each other. He actually didn’t look much better than she did. His face too was tight, with lines grooved around his mouth and eyes. He still had greenish and yellow bruises around one eye, still hadn’t shaved and now had dark circles under both eyes.

“Can we talk about this now?” he asked in a rough voice.

She nodded and put her hand out for him to sit on the couch.

“I want to tell you what happened.”

She sat at the far end from him and picked up a cushion to hug against her like a shield. “Okay.” She needed to hear it. Painful as it was, she needed to hear it, needed the answers to her questions, like,how could you be so fucking stupid? She bit her lip.

“Brianne came to see me a couple of weeks ago to tell me. I didn’t believe her. She’s been phoning me ever since we broke up and I thought she was making this up so we would get back together.”

Hope flared in her as she listened. Maybe that was true!

But he extinguished that hope with his next words. “She got something from her doctor to prove how far along she is.” He bent his head. “The timing worked out. It must have happened the last time we were together.”

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