Shatter (True Believers #4)(17)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Why did she have to make it sound like I was the unreasonable one? “You just had to be there. To hear his tone. It was . . . what’s the word when someone is talking down to you?”

“Patronizing?”

“Yes. Patronizing. That’s what he was being.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. Just give him some time to get over the shock before you judge him. And then if he proves he’s truly a Grade-A asshat, we’ll deal with it.”

That made me smile as I approached my apartment building. “Are you going to take a hit out on him?”

“No. I’ll just have Tyler and Riley work him over.”

“You can’t do that. It’s illegal. But thanks for offering.” I was not going to think too closely about why the idea of Tyler punching Jonathon in his very cute face made me super upset. His cute face that was going to merge with my genetics. “Hey, I just had a thought,” I told her.

“Should I be scared?”

I laughed. “Shut up! No, I just had a really good thought. My baby is going to be super cute. I mean, how can she not be cute with two cute parents?” Just seeing Jonathon again had reminded me of how nerdy adorable sexy he was.

I admit it, I had my shallow moments. Hey, honestly, we all do. But that wasn’t what I was saying, well, aside from no one wants to think they’ll produce a goblin child. The point was more that suddenly, it felt real, and I felt . . . okay. Even looking forward to meeting my baby, who would be cute simply because she was mine. I had a human being growing inside of me and suddenly that felt very awe-inspiring. Glass half full. That was me.

“I’m sure she will be adorbs. It’s genetically impossible for her not to be. And I will buy her many pretty dresses. Unless she is a he and then I probably shouldn’t buy him dresses.”

I was about to reply when I pulled open the exterior door and found myself face-to-face with Nathan. “Oh!” My heart started to race. “Shit. Jessica, let me call you back.”

“Are you okay?”

It depended on what Nathan wanted. “Yeah. Fine. I just don’t have enough hands right now. Give me twenty.”

We hung up and I stared at Nathan, chewing on my bottom lip. What the hell was he doing here? Had he heard I was pregnant? How did he even know where I lived? I definitely had not told him.

Unless it was just a coincidence. Maybe he knew someone else in the building.

“Hi,” he said, and gave me a nervous smile. “How are you?”

“Okay.” Pregnant. “How are you?” I had no idea why I asked that. I guess I was being polite.

“Not so great. Can I come upstairs? I really, really want to talk to you, Kylie. Please. Just let me apologize face-to-face once and then I’ll leave you alone forever.”

My heart twisted. Tears formed in my eyes, damn him. “So I need to do this to give you closure? To make you feel better?” Somehow, the pure selfishness of that made me profoundly sad, not angry. I had loved him with all my heart, but did I even really know him? Obviously not.

“No, no, of course not. I’m trying to say I’m sorry. Can we at least go inside and sit down on the steps? We’re blocking the door.”

There was no one around and it didn’t matter, but I was starting to feel light-headed. This whole creating-a-placenta thing was kicking my ass. I was exhausted all the time. Pushing around him, I unlocked the interior door to my building and sat down on the bottom step with a sigh. It suddenly felt like a long walk to the second floor.

Nathan sat down next to me, his hands on his knees, legs apart. I stared at him, at the familiar curve of his nose, his jaw, the mouth that had kissed me so many times with so much tenderness and I wondered what really was going on in his head. I wondered if I would ever know the truth and if I did, if I would even recognize it as honesty. He turned to speak and started a little when he realized I was watching him.

Then he surprised me by starting to cry. That was so not Nathan. He joked, he got angry, he grinned. He didn’t cry.

“I’m sorry,” he said, covering his eyes with his hand. “I’m so sorry, Kylie, baby, you have to believe me. I never meant to hurt you.”

It got to me. I didn’t want it to get to me, but it did. Throat tight, I tried to hold on to my anger. Tried to remember that moment when I had found the texts he had been sending to Robin. “If you had sex with Robin when you were both drunk and that was the end of it, I would believe you. But that wasn’t the end of it. You weren’t sorry at all. You’re just sorry you got caught.”

He wiped his eyes and sniffled. “I’m sorry I did it. I’m sorry I texted Robin. But I missed you, Ky, when you were back home, and this is going to sound stupid, but I missed you so much it scared me.”

This wasn’t helping. “That does sound stupid. The thing is, there is literally nothing you can say that will make it okay that you were texting my best friend telling her that her pu**y tasted like chocolate.”

He winced.

Good. I wanted him to squirm. “Does that make you uncomfortable to hear that?”

“Yeah.” He shifted on the step.

“It was really uncomfortable to read it.”

For a second, he just stared at the floor then he looked at me, his nose twitching. “I deserve that.”

I sighed. “What do you want?”

“I just want you to know it was real, you and me. Everything I said, all those feelings. I loved you. I love you still.”

It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have had any impact on me whatsoever.

But it did. It made me cry. I had devoted a whole year of my life to loving him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair of him to cheat. It wasn’t fair of him to continue to try to cheat. It wasn’t fair of him not to just leave me the hell alone and let me heal.

“Baby, don’t cry. Why are you crying?”

He reached for me and I jumped up. “I can’t do this. Go home, Nathan. Leave me alone. Please.” I ran up the stairs, feeling flushed and nauseous.

There was nothing he could say that could undo any of his actions. What I didn’t understand was why he still cared, why he wanted to continue to insist that he loved me. Because in my world, you couldn’t love someone and do what he did. The two can’t coexist.

I was afraid he was going to follow me so I unlocked my door as fast as I could and closed it behind me, locking the dead bolt. I was leaning against it, breathing hard, when my phone buzzed in my hand.