About That Fling (29 page)

She turned and ran from the restaurant.

C
hapte
r
F
ifteen

“Jenna, wait!”

Adam was breathing hard by the time he caught up to her on a street corner less than a block from the restaurant. He watched her hesitate, then turn to see him chasing her down, determined to—what, exactly?

He didn’t know.

She froze, rooted in place, coiled with an energy that said she was on the brink of running again. “Adam, stop.”

He halted beside her, breathless and caught somewhere between hurt and frustration. “What are you doing?”

Her eyes flashed in the hazy light of a street lamp, and she looked like she wanted to be anyplace but here with him. “Go back inside,” she whispered. “I just—I need a minute alone.”

“You could get a minute alone in the bathroom. You’re escaping. Running. In high heels, for that matter. You’re going to break an ankle, Jenna.”

She looked down at her boots as though noticing them for the first time. “So you chased me down the street to make fun of my shoes?”

“No, I chased you down the street because I want to understand what just happened back there.”

He watched her throat move as she swallowed, her fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides. “You want answers. So does everyone in that room, Adam. I can’t give them to you.”

“Running away isn’t the answer, Jenna. Hiding isn’t going to get you anywhere.” He cringed, hating the patronizing tone in his voice. Apparently, so did Jenna.

“So what are you, some sort of expert on coping strategies?”

“Kind of. It’s one of my areas of specialty, actually.”

She rolled her eyes. “It figures. I’m sure you can plot out my behavior on a chart, figure out why I’m as fucked up as I am. Go ahead, Adam. Judge me. Tell me all the psychological reasons I created this whole mixed-up mess of lies and deceit and cover-ups.”

“I’m not judging you, Jenna,” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice calm and even. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“You want to know why I didn’t tell you about the miscarriage.”

He raked his fingers through his hair, hating the pain in her eyes. “Look, maybe it’s none of my business, but it seems strange, doesn’t it? We spent an entire weekend together sharing family stories and intimate details. You know the name of my grandparents’ dog and the poem my mother read at my wedding. You didn’t think to mention something as major as that?”

“So I owe you the story?”

“I’m not saying you owe me,” he said, resisting the urge to shake her. “I’m just saying, I thought we were on the same page. As far as intimacy and truth and sharing and—”

“It’s where I met Mia.”

“What?”

“In a support group for women who’d had a miscarriage.”

The air suddenly felt colder. “Mia had a miscarriage?”

“It happens, Adam. To one in four women. Did you know that?”

“No, I—I mean, I knew it was common, but I didn’t know the numbers. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

Still, something wasn’t adding up. He wanted to reach out and touch her, tell her they could get through this. That the half-truths and cover-ups could be over now, and they could start fresh. “So you had a miscarriage. Recently?”

She looked away. “Two years ago. Right after I broke off my engagement to Sean.”

“I see,” he said, not entirely sure he did.

She looked back at him then, her eyes locked so tightly on his that he couldn’t look away, not even if he wanted to. “Sean is sterile, Adam.”

All the air left his lungs. “What?”

“You heard me. My fiancé—the man I was supposed to marry—wasn’t the man who got me pregnant.”

He turned the words over in his head. They didn’t make sense, or maybe he just wasn’t grasping what she was trying to tell him. “What are you saying?”

Her hands were balled at her sides now, fingers clenched into tight fists. “That I cheated on Sean, okay? That I’m no better than your ex-wife. Isn’t that what you’ve been braced for? To find out my tendency to cover things up, to pretend everything’s just peachy keen—that makes me just as untrustworthy as Mia. Congratulations on being right, Adam.”

He stood reeling in the torrent of words. He didn’t know whether to hug her or push her away or push her for answers, but a tight ball of dread had formed in his gut. She’d lied. Cheated. Hadn’t he expected this?

Part of him didn’t want to hear another word. Part of him wanted to hear the whole damn story. He took a deep breath. “What happened?”

She shook her head. “Sean and I dated for about three years. We always had this on-again, off-again relationship, but we kept coming back to each other. We talked about getting married, about having three kids and a dog and a house in Lake Oswego.”

Adam nodded, trying to take it all in. He didn’t know what to say, so he was grateful she kept going with no prompting from him.

“We used to break up for a few weeks or months even. We’d get back together and then break up again. It was a stupid cycle, really hurtful.” She took a shaky breath and kept going. “During one of the splits, I reconnected with an old college boyfriend. Technically, Sean and I weren’t together anymore, and I was lonely. It was a one-time thing, a stupid, casual fling.” She gave a dry little laugh that sounded hollow. “It was the only time in my life I’d ever had a one-night stand.”

“Until me.”

“Until you,” she repeated, her voice shaky. “I was on the pill, but it’s only ninety-eight percent effective. I guess I was one of the two percent.” She took another breath, looking weary and worn down. “Anyway, Sean and I got back together a few weeks later, and I found out I was pregnant right after that. I didn’t know what to do, but I figured odds were still pretty good he was the father. We hadn’t been apart that long, right? I was still figuring out how to tell him when he proposed.”

“Out of the blue?”

“It wasn’t totally out of the blue. Like I said, we’d been talking about it for a while. I knew he wanted kids, and we’d looked at rings before, talked about a future together. It seemed like a sign, you know?”

“So you said yes.” His voice sounded flat, but not judgmental. He hoped, anyway.

“I said yes.” She sighed. “I was scared, and I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to marry him. The relationship felt like it was already on its last legs, and part of me knew that. But I didn’t think I could say no.”

“Did Sean know you were pregnant?”

She shook her head. “No. I was still figuring out what to do, whether to say anything about the hookup with the other guy, or just—”

“Cover it up.”

He heard the hollowness in his own voice. The unspoken accusation. The sight of tears welling in her eyes told him she’d heard it, too.

“We started planning our wedding,” she said. “He wanted to do it quickly, even went ahead and ordered these stupid invitations without telling me. I was only seven or eight weeks pregnant at that point, and I’d only known for about ten days. But I made up my mind I was going to tell him over dinner.”

“Let me guess,” Adam said, nodding at the gaudy neon sign behind them. “Rigatelli’s?”

She nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “It was our special place. We had our first date here, had our first anniversary celebration. I thought—” she stopped, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. Adam wished he had a tissue to offer, but had nothing. Not even a napkin. “I thought I could just ease into the story, you know? Gauge his response to being a father and go from there.”

“How did that work out?”

She shook her head. “The whole thing didn’t go like I expected.” She closed her eyes as though forcing herself to revisit that night. “As soon as we ordered, he said there was something he needed to tell me. That he felt guilty about hiding the truth for so long, but that he felt like I needed to know. He started talking about adoption, about the US foster-care system and babies overseas, and at first I couldn’t figure out what he was saying.”

“He was sterile.”

Jenna nodded and opened her eyes. “The baby couldn’t have been his.”

“Jesus.”

“So I broke up with him.”

Adam blinked, wondering if he’d heard her wrong. “What?”

She closed her eyes again, the guilt etched plainly in her face. “I broke up with him. I said I didn’t want to get married and that we needed to call off the engagement. I said it wasn’t about having kids or not having kids or anything to do with that. I just knew I didn’t want to marry him. I knew it before I said yes, and I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt right then.”

“I see.”

“The thing is, it was true. I
didn’t
want to marry him. He wasn’t the one.” She closed her eyes, her face so creased in pain that Adam felt his own throat tightening. “That evening, I went home and started having cramps. I wasn’t sure at first—it was so early in the pregnancy, and it can be hard to tell.”

“You had a miscarriage that same night?”

She nodded and opened her eyes to look at him. “Part of me wondered if I made it happen. The lying, the cheating, the deceit.”

“It couldn’t have been your fault,” he said, feeling dumb offering such an empty platitude.

She shook her head. “I never told Sean about the pregnancy or the miscarriage. He never knew. Hell, he probably still doesn’t. He barely looked up from his phone when Mia said what she did just now.”

Adam stared at her, trying to wrap his brain around the magnitude of it all. “Who knows about this?”

“Only your ex-wife,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Christ, what a tangled mess. Mia knew about the miscarriage, but Sean didn’t. And Mia didn’t
know
Sean didn’t know, because what kind of woman would hide that from her fiancé?” She choked out a sob, her voice rising higher. “Sean knew I was sneaking off to meet you a few weeks ago, but Mia didn’t. Gert knew, too—that you and I were seeing each other. Gert’s agent knew I was trying to keep her story suppressed, but Gert didn’t. Gert knew I went to Seattle with you, but Mia didn’t.” She was sobbing in earnest now—big, heaving gasps that made her shoulders shake. “I’ve spun such a ridiculous web of half-truths and lies and cover-ups that even I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

Adam swallowed, his chest tight with emotion. “And the whole thing blew up in your face tonight.”

She nodded, watching his face for a response. Adam didn’t have one. He didn’t know what to think, what to feel. Tears were streaming down her face, and part of him wanted to put his arms around her and comfort her. Part of him wanted to walk away.

He stood rooted in place, torn in two once again.

Jenna wiped her eyes.

“You should go, Adam.”

“What?”

“I can’t,” she said, sniffling. “I just—I can’t. I’m so done.”

“Done,” he repeated, not sure he understood what she meant. “Done with what?”

“With everything. With this whole tangled-up mess of secrets and betrayals. I’m just done.”

Her words sounded brittle, her voice like someone else completely. He nodded numbly, the echo of the word in his brain.

Done.

With him?

The finality in her eyes, the stiffness in her posture, told him the answer.

Maybe it was best. She looked up at him then, tears shimmering in her eyes. Waiting for him to stop her? Or waiting for him to say his goodbyes.

“Adam! Jenna!”

He turned to see Gert bustling out of the restaurant, her hair wild and her coat flying. She spotted them on the street corner and hurried toward them, running damn fast for a seventy-eight-year-old woman. Adam moved toward her, bracing himself to catch her if she tripped.

But she didn’t trip, and she waved him away as he approached.

“We have to go to the hospital
now
!” she shouted.

Jenna gasped, drawing a hand to her mouth. “The baby. Mia’s having the baby?”

“No,” Gert panted, halting on the sidewalk. “No, not the baby.”

Jenna moved toward her, reaching out as she drew closer to her aunt. “What is it?”

“It’s Mark.” Gertie drew a hand to her throat, her eyes wild and fearful. “He’s been shot.”

Adam blinked, fighting to process the words. “Shot?”

“Shot,” Gert repeated, nodding. “By his ex-wife.”

Jenna drove in a trance to the hospital with Mia beside her looking pale and stunned. She held her phone in her lap, but she wasn’t looking at it. She stared out the window, wordless and stiff, with her red hair falling over her face like a curtain.