Here Without You

‘Brooke …’

‘Reid, don’t.’ My words are barely audible.

‘I just – I don’t want you to get the wrong impression –’

‘Okay, then let’s just drop it?’ I press my forehead to my knees, wrapping the sweater all the way around myself like a blanket. I can’t deal with this right now.

‘Brooke, I worshipped you. And what I thought you’d done, with those other guys – I could have handled it a million different, better ways. I know you hate me for deserting you and I deserve that. I’d talked myself into the belief that he wasn’t mine, and I let that colour everything else. But I did love you.’

Tears well up in my eyes and soak into the thin flannel covering my knees.

‘Um. I need to go,’ he says. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?’

‘Sure. Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

I hang up and realize two things. One, Reid has just told me that he once loved me. And two, I still don’t really know why he wants to adopt our son.

DORI

When I woke up, the bedside clock read barely past 8:00 in the morning. Reid wasn’t in bed next to me, and his impression wasn’t warm against my palm. I got up and pulled on the robe, which never left its peg last night. Flushing from the memory of Reid’s follow-through on his pre-dinner promise, I stepped through our shoes, my lingerie, his shirt and tie, dozens of hair pins and his slacks. I’d insisted on folding the dress over the desk chair.

He wasn’t anywhere. I frowned, wondering if he’d left the suite to get something when I caught sight of him on the terrace, in his robe. Despite the sun’s rays on the patio cushions, the air here is still quite cool this early, and our room is at the top of the hotel – even chillier.

And Reid was outside. On his phone.

I could have gone to take a shower. Or ordered coffee and breakfast. Or picked up the bits of clothing and undergarments strewn from the suite door to the king-sized bed, in anticipation of the fact that we need to pack up and check out in a few hours.

Instead, I went to the door and opened it slowly. My body ached at the sound of his gruff morning voice – kept low, only a few words made their way to me: Worshipped. Million. Better. Mine. Love you.

I must have made a sound, because he turned and looked right at me, still talking. To her. I knew he was talking to her. He told her he has to go, that they’ll talk tomorrow. He hung up as I backed into the room and he followed me inside, closing the door behind him.

I didn’t know it would come this soon.

Tossing the phone on to a low table, he reaches me in four long strides and grabs my shoulders, stopping me before I back into a wall. ‘Dori, we need to talk.’ He swallows, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look this apprehensive. ‘I’ll call for breakfast – unless you already have?’

I shake my head, no.

He leads me to the sofa and seats me in a corner before opening the room service menu and calling in a breakfast order. On this call, his voice is full of his usual self-confidence, but it vanishes as soon as he sits next to me, the dark blue of his eyes flicking away and searching the room as though he’ll find the words he needs to say somewhere outside himself.

‘Okay. Do you know who Brooke Cameron is?’

I nod. ‘Yes.’

He exhales a long breath, one hand at the back of his neck. ‘Well, we used to go out.’ His eyes watch mine closely, reading and measuring. I don’t know if I want to hide my thoughts or open them all to him. ‘A long time ago – five years.’

Most people dismiss relationships that take place at fourteen or fifteen. Puppy love. Infatuation. A crush. But I know all too well how serious fifteen can be.

‘It didn’t end well.’ He runs a hand through his hair, unable to stop fidgeting. ‘It was pretty ugly, actually. I thought she’d cheated on me. So I broke up with her without even really ending it. A couple of months later, she called and told me she was pregnant.’

Pregnant?

My brain calls up Colin, and what I would do or say if I ran into him now. He’d discarded me for no reason that I knew of, although Deb suggested the fact that he’d turned eighteen and I was fifteen was incentive enough. I never told him I was pregnant. I knew he wouldn’t care.

‘Dori?’ Reid says, his hand on my face. I look back into his worried eyes. ‘Where’d you go? Talk to me.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t understand. Why is she calling you now?’ As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know the answer. No. No. No.

His jaw flexes and his throat works. ‘She gave him up for adoption.’

I bite the inside of my cheek and my hands grip each other in my lap.

He cups his hands over mine. ‘God, your hands are freezing. We can talk about this later –’

‘No.’ My voice is the only solid thing left of me, and he flinches. ‘Finish. Please finish.’

He closes his eyes briefly before answering. ‘He was mine, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t talk to anyone about it, Dori. My parents didn’t know. I’ve never even told John.’

‘How do you know he’s yours?’

‘We just did a paternity test.’

Just. As in recently.

I’m missing something, and I don’t know what it is. When children are adopted, their biological parentage is no longer an issue. ‘But – you said she gave him up … Why –?’

‘A couple of months ago, she hired a private investigator to look for him. She was having nightmares about him and just wanted to make sure he was okay. The PI found out that he’d been removed from his adoptive home months ago due to drugs and gross neglect. He’s in foster care now. So she’s … she’s applying to adopt him. And … so am I.’