Page 32 of Coming Home Country
Something I couldn’t name flashed in his eyes, mixing with the defeat I found in their blue depths.
There was more to this story, and I deserved answers. Now was as good a time as any to demand them.
“Why did you marry her?” I yelled the question, my words echoing in the small space.
When he didn’t answer, I pressed on. “What made her so fucking special that you would throw away everything we had?”
His body vibrated with tension, hands sliding into his hair and tugging on the short strands. Then, finally, he shouted, “Because I knocked her up!”
My stomach bottomed out, and I stumbled backward at his admission. The betrayal went so much deeper than I could have everimagined.
Hewas the one who had decided we should wait until I was eighteen to have sex. There had been dozens of times when I’d begged him for it during our years of dating, but he always held firm, adamant that I was worth the wait.
Not sure why I was surprised that it had all been a lie. The trail of broken promises from this man was a mile long. Of course, he was having his cake and eating it too, fooling around at college while the devoted girlfriend he planned to marry sat at home. Until it backfired, and he got her pregnant.
It all made so much sense now, why he’d rushed into marriage.
God, I was such a fool for ever trusting him.
Whisper-quiet, Tucker added, “At least that’s what she led me to believe.”
My head snapped up. “What? You’re saying the kid’s not yours?”
He huffed out a wry laugh. “There is no kid.”
I was so confused, a million questions poised on the tip of my tongue, and I couldn’t settle on which one to ask first.
Collapsing onto that bottom step, he rested his elbows on his spread knees. He looked as broken as I felt.
“November of my junior year, I passed this really grueling test in a course known for having a high failure rate. So a bunch of us went out to celebrate. Needless to say, it got out of hand, and the next morning, I woke up in bed naked with a woman.”
Gripping the shelving behind me, I barely managed to remain upright.
“My immediate need to vomit had nothing to do with alcohol consumption and everything to do with how sick I was over fucking up the best thing in my life because I’d gone out and got drunk one night. I didn’t remember how I’d gotten back to my room, and I certainly didn’t recognize the woman asleep beside me.
“I spent weeks agonizing over how I was going to tell you about the mistake I’d made, praying that you’d remember how much I loved you, see how torn up I was about betraying you, and by some miracle, you wouldn’t kick my pathetic ass to the curb. I didn’t even care that it ruined the big surprise I had planned for Christmas; all I needed was to know that our relationship could survive, that we could still have the future we planned. The rest could wait until we were back on solid ground again.”
Swallowing, I rasped, “What surprise?”
Voice thick, he replied, “I was going to ask you to marry me. Evie had already helped me pick out the ring.”
A knife pierced through my heart, and the first tear slipped down my cheek. It was even more painful to hear how close we’d been to our happily-ever-after when it had been ripped away.
“Did you—” My voice broke. “Did you give that ring toher?”
“No.” Tucker shook his head. “That wouldn’t have been right. Believe it or not, I still have it, though. Bring it out sometimes to stare at it and imagine the future that should have been. Guess I’m a glutton for punishment like that.”
My knees gave out, and I crumpled to the concrete floor. Tucker jolted, like his first instinct was to run to me, to offer comfort, but he held himself back, remembering his place in our new dynamic.
This was all too much. Maybe I’d been better off in the dark before because the truth would torment me for the rest of my life.
“So, um.” He cleared his throat. “As you can probably guess, I never got the chance to beg your forgiveness. Brooke”—I flinched at the mention of her name—“showed up at my door in early December to tell me she was pregnant and that I was the father.”
Tucker stood, shaking his head, self-loathing evident in his tone. “I was in freaking pre-med. I should have demanded proof, but I panicked. AllI could hear in my head was what had been drilled into us growing up: if you got a girl in trouble, you married her. So, with my back against a wall, that’s what I did.”
I pressed a palm against the nausea churning in my gut.
“I was too busy reeling from the change in direction my life had taken to notice the warning signs that something was off. She begged me not to mention the baby to my family when I brought her home to meet them. Said she wanted to make a good first impression, and I agreed because I knew the risk of miscarriage was higher in the first trimester.
