I should have known that it was all too good to last. Life was never that easy. No one was ever suddenly handed everything they ever wanted and lived happily ever after. The universe just didn’t work that way. Especially not for me…
“Nat?” Devlin caught hold of my hands as I took a step back without even realizing I was pulling away from him. “Your hands are freezing.” Of course they were. How could they be warm when I felt as if there was no blood left in my body? There was a wound in my heart that was emptying my body of every last drop and I had no one to blame but myself. “What’s wrong? Talk to me, baby.”
That one word hit me square in the chest with the force of a wrecking ball. “I need to tell you something.” It came out a whisper and I was surprised that it had even been that loud. Surprised that any sound had left my throat at all it was so tight with the lump that was now choking me.
“Okay. So tell me.” He gave me a small smile, but his eyes were full of worry. “Whatever it is we can deal with it, and then we can go back to the bus. Screw this party. I just want to be with you.”
I opened my mouth, only to close it. I had to swallow hard several times before the lump loosened even a little. “I…” Fuck, this was hard. How had I been so stupid? What had possessed me to..?
“Nat?”
I closed my eyes as another tear spilled free. “I didn’t… I couldn’t…” Shit, I wasn’t even making sense. Taking a deep breath, I just blurted it all out. “I-I didn’t take the pill. I couldn’t. The idea of even putting it in my mouth and swallowing it, of possibly hurting something that we created together, had me throwing up. So I flushed it.” I had to swallow again as a sob tried to break free. “I bought the Plan B pill on my way home that day, but I didn’t take it.” The sob escaped and I pulled my hands free from his suddenly slackened hold to cover my mouth.
“But we’ve been having sex without protection for weeks now.” He stepped back, his eyes almost accusing. “You said that it was safe. That you went to the doctor…”
I closed my eyes to block out that look, wanting to vomit. Had that look been on his face when Tawny told him that Harris was his son and not Liam’s? In that moment, I could picture that it had been.
“I-I d-did go to the doctor…” I stuttered through the clarification as I fought another sob. I should have told him sooner, should have told him when he’d texted me the next day that I hadn’t been able to take that fucking pill. Maybe we could have cleared up everything long before now. Maybe then he wouldn’t now be looking down at me like I’d committed the worst possible crime. “W-wh-when I m-missed my period.” His face visibly paled and I wanted to run away from him.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
If he’d yelled the question at me it might have hurt less. The look on his face, the betrayal in his eyes as he looked down at my waist, gutted me. “When were you going to tell me?”
Devlin
How was it possible to go from so jealous I couldn’t see straight, to feeling like I’d been given everything I’d always wanted when Natalie said that she loved me…to this? All within ninety minutes? I felt like a yo-yo being twisted and turned by some magician.
I couldn’t believe that Natalie had lied about taking the morning-after pill. Although, to be fair, she’d never really said that she had taken it. Just that she had bought it. Of course that had made me think that she would automatically take it. Why would she have told me repeatedly that she’d bought it if she hadn’t used it?
Clenching my jaw, I turned away from the sight of her as she struggled to get the words out, to tell me if she had even planned to tell me I was going to be a father again. It hurt to look at her. I couldn’t help but compare what was going on between us right now to the day that Harris had been born and Tawny had had no choice but to name me Harris’s father instead of Liam.
I’d been blindsided that day, too. I’d figured that after my drunken mistake with Tawny that I wouldn’t have to confess that I’d betrayed my best friend by sleeping with his girl. It had been a mistake, one that I never planned on repeating. When Liam had made the announcement that Tawny was pregnant, I still hadn’t thought that the baby could be mine. I remembered putting on protection. I was safe. The baby wasn’t mine.
And then Harris had been born and there was no way that anyone could ever make the mistake of who had fathered that baby. He’d looked just like me, from a head of dark hair to the tone of his skin. I’d been helpless and kind of hopeless as I’d watched Liam’s love and trust in me fade from his eyes as he’d looked from me to that little baby wrapped in a blue blanket.
“I—” Natalie broke off and I turned to face her again. “I was waiting to see Dr. Rashid on the thirteenth.” My eyes narrowed, remembering that text message from the doctor’s office. She’s said it was for Lana and Dallas. Obviously she had forgotten to say that it was for her as well.
“Were you trying to punish me for that fucking bet? Is that why you didn’t tell me?”
“No!” She shook her head, tears pouring down that elfin face that I loved so much. But I was so pissed, so fucking hurt, that her tears didn’t gut me like they might have if I’d been thinking clearly. “If I’d wanted to punish you for the bet, I would have followed through with the one I’d made with Marissa. Not telling you about being pregnant had nothing to do with your bet with Zander.”
It took a moment for my anger-fogged mind to realize what she’d just said. “You made a bet with Marissa?” What the fuck? Natalie and sweet little Marissa had made a bet? “What kind of bet, Natalie?”
She winced. “I wasn’t going to go through with it.”
“What kind of fucking bet?” I demanded. I didn’t know why the thought of her making a bet with Marissa bothered me so badly. Hadn’t I done the same thing? Maybe it was because I already sensed that the bet those two chicks had made was going to hurt more than anything else ever had…
Natalie bit her lip and looked anywhere but at me. “Marissa was hurting over what she’d thought Wroth had done, and I was still mad and hurt over your bet with Z. So Marissa made me a bet…” She broke off and I glared down at her, silently telling her to continue. “She bet me that I couldn’t make you love me and then walk away at the end of the summer… Before she did the same with Wroth.”