Page 34 of Billionaire's Fake Bride
“Just call him and cancel, why don’t you? Tell him you aren’t feeling good… Thatwouldbe the truth.”
“It won’t be that easy, trust me.” I found my duffle bag under my bed and ripped open my dresser, tossing my phone to my other hand so I could go through the drawers. “He’ll just say he’ll come down anyway just in case I end up with some time. I’ve been trying so hard to spend as much time as I can with him since he left. He’ll be suspicious if I suddenly try to skip out on a whole weekend visit. And I don’t think I can handle talking to him right now. I’ll say something I’ll regret later or burst into tears or-”
“Okay, calm down.” I spent an anxious minute throwing clothes haphazardly into my duffle while Claudia thought. “You just need a little space before you talk to him, I get it.”
“Yeah, and I’m getting my space.” I zipped the duffle full of clothes shut and started packing a small backpack with personal items. “I’m going to Somerset.”
“Somerset, Kentucky? You’re driving to Somerset…”
“Yeah.” Where were my comfy sneakers? I brushed a pile of dirty clothes aside and found them next to my desk.
“How long are you going to be gone?” Claudia asked, her tone surprised and concerned.
“I don’t know. A few days. Several days. A while. I’ll be fine,” I promised. “I just want to do what you said - take my baby and get away for a little while so I can focus on the idea of us.”
“Alright, if you’re sure. I just wish I was there in the Hamptons with you right now instead of being stuck here in Paris.”
“Don’t tell Nate where I’ve gone, okay?” My hands suddenly empty, I looked around for more things to pack, but there was nothing else. I was done. All that was left was to leave for Somerset, so I sat down to wrap up my talk with Claudia.
“Are you going to tell him?”
I skirted around the question, promising Claudia that I would be in touch and extracting another promise from her not to tell Nate my destination if he called her. Finally, I disconnected the call and sat among my packed bags as I typed a couple of lines to text Nate.
Hey, I’m busy all weekend. Work stuff…Normally, I would end a text like this with amiss youor put a smiley face in there somewhere, but I couldn’t bring myself to even try to appear like everything was okay. I couldn’t even manage a brief apology because I wasn’t sorry at all for what I was about to do.
I carried my bags to my car and started on the long drive. Really, I needed to call and/or email several clients, but I couldn’t stand to sit around the guest house for even another minute.
Guest house.Even after all these months, I still didn’t refer to Eilene’s guest house as my home. Why was that? For a time, the tiny dorm room in New York that I stayed in while attending college had even been my home. The house growing smaller in my rearview mirror was beautiful and perfectly suited to my needs. It should be the place I called home.
Home is where the heart is.If that was true, then my heart didn’t lie in the guest house. Maybe because it wasn’t really mine, or maybe I was getting tired of spending my evenings alone. Whatever the case, I was beginning to question the whereabouts of my heart. A piece of it lay with my baby, and my business kept another, but I knew I had more to give. I just hadn’t found the place or the person to give it to… or maybe I had, and I was still afraid of getting hurt even after all these years.
I had dropped my phone in one of the cupholders as usual, and I heard it buzz against the plastic.One, two, three…I counted the sounds all the way up to eight. I couldn’t tell if the caller left a voicemail. But after the short, cryptic text I sent Nate, I couldn’t expect him to just cancel his flight without looking for more answers. That was why I had to get out of the Hamptons. Nate could find me there. He could ask questions I wasn’t ready to answer, and I would have to tell him something that might drive him away.
“It’s karma.” The volume of my own voice surprised me, and my neck shrunk into my shoulders in a scared-turtle reflex. “It’s karma,” I repeated more quietly, respecting the silence as I whizzed along the highway. Nate left me without saying goodbye. He deserved to know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that hurt. It was only fair.
After hours of dark thoughts, decaffeinated coffee stops and ignored texts and calls, I finally was so exhausted I couldn’t drive another mile and stopped at a motel in the middle of nowhere. I tossed and turned all night and got up to a short bout of morning sickness. Before leaving, I grabbed a serving from the motel’s breakfast buffet to go and headed back on the highway.
Finally, around four in the afternoon, I turned the wheel to pull off at the familiar exit. Familiar buildings sprang up as I slowed down from highway speed, and the appearance of each one sent a deep, calming breath through my chest, loosening tense and tight muscles.
The familiar surroundings helped until I pulled to a stop at a stop sign and had a terrible realization that sent my heart plummeting further than ever before. My mom didn’t live here anymore. If I drove to my childhood home, I would find someone else living there. All the friends from high school whom I had been close to moved away years ago. My single remaining relative in Somerset was an aunt who had never liked me much, and I knew from social media that she was out of the country right now.
I didn’t even bother driving past my old street. I made a beeline for the nearest and only motel in Somerset and somehow made it through the process of renting a room before dissolving into sobs that shook my entire body.
I had no one. No one and nothing, especially in Somerset. What had possessed me to come here? No, that wasn’t the question I should be asking. What had possessed me to let myself fall in love with Nate for a second time?
I was a fool. I was a fool with an unexpected baby, lying on a hard, scratchy motel bed in my hometown that no longer had a home for me and crying for a man whom I didn’t know if I could trust with my baby or my heart.
