Page 74 of The Games We Play

I look up to her, in shock, my breathing still labored.

“You had an abortion?”

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NAOMI

You had an abortion?

Four words totaling one question I’ve been dreading hearing from him. Something I knew he would say once I told him, but I didn’t have to tell him. Somehow, whatever he’s looking at already confirmed it.

“How do you know that?” I ask, my voice barely audible.

His face falls, like he wasn’t ready for that confirmation.

I glance down at his phone in his hand. “What are you looking at?”

“It’s true?”

Although his face is sheet white, his emotions are written all over his face for the first time ever. Morphing between confusion, sadness, and anger.

My door is wide open, but I’m turned facing him, his foot on the first step of my porch, rooted there in shock.

This is not how I envisioned telling him, and now I’m so mad at myself for not telling him sooner.

“Please come in, so we can talk,” I tell him, holding out my hand, begging him with my eyes.

Please take my hand.

He looks at it, then back at me, tilting his head with a look like he doesn’t know who I am anymore, and it’s breaking my fucking heart.

“You knew my last name, you could have found me. You could have told me. Why didn’t you fucking find me?” He takes a step up as I step forward, and we’re now level like we were the first night I found out he moved in next door.

This is a side of Seamus I have never seen. Even when we were kids, he was never angry. He’s always been so controlled, and even more so as a military trained adult. He’s the most difficult man to read. But right now, anger drips off him in waves, and I feel it all the way to my bones.

I push my hand closer to him. “Please, come inside.”

Instead of reaching out for me, he runs both his hands through his hair, taking another step back. His eyes are bouncing all over the place, like he’s trying to piece everything together in his head with all the unanswered questions.

“I could have been there for you. Regardless if you kept it or not. I could have been there, Mimi. I could have…” I cut him off, because his words are like daggers to my heart.

“It might not have been yours.”

His foot slips off the last step as his feet stumble to the ground. His brows are furrowed, his eyes are boring into mine, and he looks like he’s in physical pain.

He’s pacing, mumbling to himself. Probably going through the entire two weeks in his head, wondering if what we had was real.

“Seamus,” I call out his name, because I’m losing him.

He’s always seen me, watched me. And when I would look into his eyes, I could see so much desire and need. Now they are vacant. Dead.

I imagine they look exactly like how he’s felt the last ten years, disassociating himself from everything he saw and feltduring his time in the military. Protecting himself from feeling anything.

His back is now facing me as he stares at the ground. His head hangs heavy, like he’s defeated and he has come to terms with what he just heard, and whatever reasoning he’s settled on. He’s getting lost in his head about what this is, and Ineedto explain.

“I need you to come inside, Seamus. I gave you the chance to tell your story, you need to let me tell mine,” I say, my voice soft but stern. I need to pull him back to me.

He can step away and choose not to listen, or he can turn around and hear me out.

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