Page 61 of Unbreakable
“I wanted that baby.”
“I bet,” he said. “I can’t imagine.”
We sat for a while, me with my grief and him with me. I guess enough time passed to where I thought I could trust Andy with the most hurtful part of all.
“His mom was glad I lost the baby,” I hiccuped. “Because now we could get an annulment.”
He gasped, which I felt was an appropriate reaction, confirming I wasn’t just being dramatic. “That’s so fucked up.”
“Right? And I just wanted him to stick up for me, you know? But he didn’t. He just let her say all that.”
“Oh, J. You deserve better.”
That really sent me into hysterics, the tears pouring out. “Do I leave him over that?”
When I met Andy’s eyes again, he just gave me a sad look. “I can’t say.”
“You think I should, don’t you?”
He shrugged and twisted his lips. “You could be loved so much more than that.”
I gasped and a thousand thoughts ripped through my cloudy head. I had a choice. I could leave L.A. I could come home, work for my parents, and prepare to take over the winery when they retired.
The man sitting on my bed would be more than happy to love me.
I could leave all the drama behind me. Maybe this was a dalliance with a life that was never meant to be mine. Maybe how hard and fast my relationship with Dylan burned flamed it right out. Maybe losing the baby was meant to be the end of my story with Dylan.
Maybe the hometown hero sitting in front of me, the kind man who didn’t take the easy road, was meant to be mine. Maybe my future was sitting on my bed in my parents’ house, offering me a quiet, gentle life. It would be a life without the clack of pucks against the wall, and the scrape of skate blades, and the smell of refrigerant and stinky hockey equipment. It would be a life without fancy dresses and glamorous parties, but it could be a happy life.
I could choose to leave Dylan and move home. I could choose to return to the comfortable, the path of least resistance.
I could choose Andy.
He seemed to think I was choosing that. Andy’s eyes flitted to my lips and slowly, gently, he leaned in to kiss me.
And for a moment, I thought I was making that choice too.
Then his breath on my lips snapped me out of it. At the last second, I turned my face and his lips crashed into my cheek.
“You need to leave,” I said. “Get out!”
Andy jumped away from me, putting his hands up. “Fuck. Jeannie, I’m sorry!”
“Go!”
His scent trailed in his wake and I sat, hardly breathing. What had I just done? I almost cheated on my husband. I was so desperate for a reprieve from everything that I almost blew up my new life. I pressed my fingertips to my temples, willing my muddy brain to work.
Instead, I returned to my previous activity of staring into space, trying to figure out if I’d ever break the surface of this gloom.
“Where’s my girl?”Dylan’s bright voice echoed through our apartment. I was right where I’d been for the prior twenty minutes, staring at the knobs on the washing machine. Something about deciding whether the clothes needed to go on hot or cold made me freeze. I’d been doing that since I got back from Temecula.
But as I went out there, everything that had happened since I met Dylan smacked me in the face. Meeting him. Loving him. Getting pregnant with him. Getting married to him. Losing. Him not arguing with his mom. Us making up.
But my mind kept going back to him not defending me. The hurt was so raw after everything we’d endured.
But it didn’t merit what I did.
“In here,” I called.
