“Well. Um. Ethan and I want to buy a house.”
“Oh. Really.” Remi’s stomach rolled over. It had been a big
step for them to move in together in Ethan’s apartment. Buying a house together
sounded serious. She still wasn’t convinced their relationship was all that
mature. She sat at the big, oak kitchen table with Jasmine.
“We want to buy a house, but things have tightened up a lot
because of the recession,” Jasmine continued. “So we need a big down payment.”
“Oh. I guess you do.” Remi nodded, still not sure where this
was going. She sipped her coffee, scalding hot, dark and rich. “Do you have
some money saved up?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She waited.
Jasmine looked down at her coffee, appearing to struggle for
words. Then she looked up. “I want you to sell the house,” she said.
Remi shook her head. “What?”
“I want you to sell the house.” Jasmine smiled. “It’s our
house. All three of us. Right?”
“Uh…right.” Remi’s mind spun. What did she say? What?
“So if it belongs to all three of us, then one third of the
value is mine and I want that money for a down payment on a house of our own.
Me and Ethan. So you need to sell the house.”
Remi stared at Jasmine. What was she talking about? “But I
live here, Jasmine.”
“I know. But you could find somewhere else to live. You’d
have your third of the money.”
“But…” Remi blinked, looked around her. This was her home.
This was
their
home. Even though Jasmine had just moved out, she’d
already moved back once. She needed a place to come home to when things didn’t
work out. Okay,
if
things didn’t work out.
Think positive.
And
Kyle—he lived in the dorm at college, but this was really still his home.
“I can’t move out, Jasmine,” she said slowly. “I don’t want
to sell this house.”
“But, Remi.” Jasmine leaned forward. “A third of this house
is mine.”
It was true.
Their parents had left everything to all three of them,
including the house. It had to be split evenly three ways, somehow, someday.
But Remi had never thought ahead to the day that might happen.
How could she leave here? The house meant so much to her.
Stability. Security. Family. In a life that had her parents flitting in and out
and then gone for good, it was the one constant. Home.
But that wasn’t the only problem. Remi did not have faith
that Jasmine and Ethan’s relationship was strong enough to last. Buying a house
together was a serious commitment.
She sighed. She knew how that was going to be received.
Jasmine wanted to hear that as much as she wanted to have her head shaved.
Remi ran her hand through her hair, still tangled from an
energetic night with Jason. “Jasmine. This is kind of sudden. I need time to
think about it.”
Jasmine’s mouth twisted. “What’s to think about? You know
you have to do it. Part of this house is mine.”
The urge to give her sister a shake rose inside her, but she
tamped it down, taking a deep breath. “Jasmine. Think what you’re asking. I can’t
just sell the house on whim. I need to find somewhere else to live. And besides…”
She tried to stop herself, but the words came pouring out. “I don’t know if you
and Ethan buying a house together is such a good idea.”
Jasmine’s eyes narrowed and her mouth pouted.
“I knew it,” she said, pushing her cup away. “You just don’t
like Ethan.”
“It’s not that.” Dammit, why had she said that? She needed
to be careful here. “It’s just what I said. You two have fights all the time.
You don’t trust him.”
“Yes, I do.”
Remi resisted the protest that sprang to her lips. Fine. “Okay.
Could you just let me think about it? Maybe there’s another way.”
Jasmine stood up and crossed her arms across her chest. “There
is no other way. We don’t have enough money and we’ll never have enough money
for a down payment. The way the economy is now, we’ll be lucky if we ever have a
house. How are we supposed to have kids, living in an apartment?”
Remi stared at her, aghast. “You want to have kids?”
“Well, maybe someday.”
Oh dear God. Jasmine was a very young twenty-one-year-old.
There was no possible way she was mature enough to be a mother.
It was all her fault. She’d reared Jasmine for the last five,
nearly six years. She should have made her more independent, more responsible.
But no. She was too busy being the responsible one, taking responsibility for
everything.
Suddenly Remi felt very heavy and very tired, the weight of
it all pressing down on her shoulders. She slumped a bit.
“I’ll think about it,” she said slowly. “I promise.”
“Fine.” Jasmine turned and flounced out.
* * * * *
Jason squinted at Brianne. “You’re what? Pregnant?” Is that
really what she’d said?
“Yes.” She twisted her fingers together on her lap, still
looking at his chest.
Why was she telling him this? Did she think he’d be upset?
He didn’t care about Brianne’s life anymore, he’d moved on. She had to know
that.
Suddenly his gut cramped. She couldn’t be telling him this
because… Holy fuck. Did she think he was the father?
“Brianne.” His voice came out sounding funny. “Why are you
telling me this?”
She looked at him blankly. “I thought I should. You have a
right to know.”
“Are you saying…?” He felt his throat close up, paused.
Tried again. “Are you saying I’m the father?”
Her eyes widened. “Of course you’re the father! There hasn’t
been anyone else.”
The room moved around him, shifted, faded away. He wasn’t
sitting, he was floating. He gripped the armrests of the chair to hold himself
in place. His vision went foggy and he felt like his brains were spinning
around in his head.
It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t be pregnant. It was a
mistake.
“You’re on the Pill.”
She nodded, bending her head. “Yes. But…” She shrugged. “I
guess we’re one of those point-zero-one percent where it doesn’t work. For
whatever reason. I don’t know.”
“Are you sure? How do you know? You could just be late.”
Jason’s fingers ached from clenching the upholstery and he
tried to relax. His ass was almost lifting out of the chair, his body had gone
so tight and rigid.
“I did two tests. Just to make sure.”
He stared at her, the room still moving in circles like a
bad case of bed spins after too much partying. And then he shook his head. Was
this for real?
“Brianne. You’re not just doing this to try to get back
together, are you?”
Her mouth dropped open. “No!”
“Are you sure?” She’d been phoning him all the time, wanting
to talk. This couldn’t be true. “How far along are you?”
“Two months.”
But…but… “Brianne. We broke up two months ago. Are you sure
there hasn’t been anyone else?”
“They start counting from the first day of your last period,”
she said, her voice low. “Which was two weeks before we broke up. It probably
happened that last night…” Her words ended on a small sob and she pressed a
hand to her mouth. “I’m not exactly happy about this either. There goes my
Victoria’s Secret job.”
That did sound like Brianne, but…
He narrowed his eyes at her. It couldn’t be true. It just
couldn’t. Anger surged inside him that she would stoop this low.
“You’d better go,” he said, rising.
“What?” She stared at him. “You really don’t believe me?”
He slowly shook his head. “No. I don’t.”
“Jase!” Her cry sounded distressingly anguished. “I’m
telling you the truth! I wouldn’t lie about this!”
He shook his head stubbornly, folded his arms across his
chest and lifted his chin. “Just leave, Brianne.”
“But…but…what do I have to do to make you believe me?”
He scowled. “I don’t know.”
“If I…show you the pregnancy test…?”
He pursed his lips. “That’ll prove you’re pregnant, I guess.
It won’t prove I’m the father.”
“Jase!” Her eyes filled with tears. “I haven’t been with
anyone else! I love you!”
Fuck. He closed his eyes.
“I can get something from my doctor,” she said, standing,
her fingers twisting together. “My doctor can tell you how many weeks I am.
Then you’ll know.”
He gave a jerky nod. “Yeah. You do that,” he said. She
wouldn’t get anything from her doctor. Because it wasn’t true.
* * * * *
He wasn’t even going to tell Remi about it. Because it was
just so crazy and there was no need for her to get all upset about it. Jesus!
He swiped a hand across his forehead as he drove back to her place later. They’d
decided to just order pizza and celebrate his win at her place.
When he got there, she greeted him looking a little like a
goaltender who’d just been bombarded with fifty shots on goal with no defense.
Which was pretty much how he felt. He sucked in a breath as he kissed her.
“You won’t believe what happened,” she said. He followed her
into her kitchen where she began to open a bottle of wine.
Oh, man. He could say the same to her. But he wasn’t going
to.
“My sister wants me to sell the house,” she said.
“You’re kidding? Why?” He reached for the bottle and
corkscrew she was struggling with. “Here. Let me.” He popped the cork out and
poured wine into two glasses while she told him about her earlier conversation
with Jasmine.
But his mind drifted off, back to that horrifying conversation
with Brianne. He still couldn’t believe she would go that far to try to get him
back.
“Jason?”
He looked up at Remi. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay? You seem…distracted.”
He forced a smile, his body tight and twitchy. “Yeah. Fine.
Go on.”
He tried to listen, he really did, but his thoughts were all
over the place and Remi was noticing. Jesus. He had to stop thinking about
Brianne. He firmly pushed those thoughts aside and focused on Remi. “So what
are you going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She looked around her. “I love this house.
But it’s true. Kyle and Jasmine are entitled to their share of the house. Even
though I think they need this place to come home to. At least for a while.”
He nodded and drank some of the wine. Then the words just
popped out of his mouth. “You know…you could move in with me.”
He couldn’t believe he was sitting there calmly, steadily
looking at Remi, inviting her to move in with him, and his heart wasn’t racing,
his gut wasn’t heaving, his neck and shoulders weren’t rock-hard with tension.
He’d thought about it earlier and now the idea had slid into
his head like a puck gliding into the net, and before he’d even had time to
think about it, he’d said it. He wanted Remi to live with him.
She stared at him. “What?”
“You could move in with me.” He reached for her hand. “I
want you to live with me.”
She moved her head slowly from side to side, pretty lips
parted. “But we hardly know each other. We can’t move in together.”
“We know each other,” he said, stroking his thumb across the
back of her hand. “I love you, Remi. I want to live with you.”
“Are you crazy?”
He remembered the last time they’d had a conversation like
this and how heated and angry her question had been. This time her voice was
soft, wondering. He grinned. “No, I mean it.”
“Wow.” She blinked at him. “That’s a pretty serious step for
a guy who just wants to have fun.”
“It would be fun living with you,” he said. “I know it.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Jason, there’s more to it
than that.”
“I know. I actually thought of it this morning, how much
easier everything would be if we lived together. Just think about it. Maybe
this thing with Jasmine will blow over. There’s no rush. But you know…even if
you don’t have to sell the house…think about it.”
She nodded, her eyes a little dazed. “Okay.”
“Let’s order pizza. I’m starving.”
* * * * *
It took Brianne a week.
She showed up at his apartment the next Saturday, grim-faced
and pissed. “Here,” she said, shoving a paper into his hand. “Nine weeks. Now
do you believe me?”
He stared down at the note on official medical stationery.
It looked…real.
His stomach heaved, his mouthed filled with saliva and he
swallowed repeatedly. He could not puke. He could not puke.
“And I brought this too,” she snapped, pulling a plastic
baggie out of her purse. She handed it to him too. He looked at the plastic
stick inside. “That’s the pregnancy test I took. For the third damn time.” Her
lips tightened into a thin line. She glared at him.
He wiped his mouth. The silence stretched out, long and
thick.
A million questions backed up in his brain. He closed his
eyes.
Jesus. A baby. Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“What are you doing to do?” He sounded like his voice was
coming from far away, echoing in his ears.
“I’m…I’m going to have the baby.”
He squeezed his eyes closed. He’d never been someone who
believed in abortion but he’d also always believed in a woman’s right to
choose. Because they were the ones who got pregnant. But at that moment, he had
to ask, why,
why
she would do that when her career and his life would be
so hugely impacted by this.
But he knew why. It was a baby. Their baby.
Jesus Christ. How could this have happened?
How could he be a father? He felt like a kid himself. And
what was he supposed to do about Brianne? They’d broken up. He didn’t love her.
But she was going to be the mother of his child.
Nausea rolled again. He fought it down and looked at Brianne
standing there, arms folded across her chest, hip cocked.
He had to ask it. “What do you want from me, Brianne?”
Her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. “You know
what I want.”
Did she want them to get back together? To try to make
something work for the sake of their child? The questions ricocheted around
inside him, but he was a coward, too afraid to speak them aloud in case she said
yes, that’s what she wanted.