Existing (48 page)

When I see his black car pull
up outside, I swing the front door open and walk toward his car with a smile on my face.

“Hi,” he
says with a grin when I climb into the car next to him.

I lean over and kiss him long and hard. When I
finally pull back, he grins. “Wow,” he says huskily, “that was the best hello I’ve had in quite a while.”

I giggle and shuffle down in my seat. “Hello
, Cabe.”

He starts the engine and pulls down the road. “We’re going to mine.”

I glance over at him. “Where are your parents?”

“They’re away with my brothers.”

“Where did they go?” I ask.

“Skiing in Canada for four days.
We own a lodge up there.”

I turn
, feeling my mouth drop open. “Are you being serious?”

He laughs.
“Yeah. Mom and Dad have too much money to know what to do with it all.”

“That must be nice.”

“I’ll take you skiing one day,” he promises, squeezing my knee.

He opens the car door for me when we pull up outside his house. “Why, thank you,” I s
ay with a smile.

“As always, you are most welcome
, madam.”

I giggle and follow him into the house
, where the smell of food immediately invades my senses. I sniff. “What are you cooking? It smells delicious.”

He takes my c
oat and hangs it in the closet under their stairs. “Chicken in white wine sauce with new potatoes and asparagus.”

My eyes widen in surprise. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

He grins. “It’s one of my dirty little secrets.”

“And how many other dirty little secrets do you have?”

He laughs. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

We walk into a
sunroom that is bathed in glorious sunshine. It reflects off the glass, making it feel hot and stuffy. He opens the double doors to let the breeze in and says, “Wait here, I’ll be two minutes.”

I can hear him clanging and banging around in the kitchen. I step outside and feel the cool air soak over my
skin. I wander around the backyard, touching brightly-colored flowers until I hear him walking across the grass behind me. When I turn around, he’s holding out a glass of white wine to me.

“Do you like wine?”

I shrug. “I don’t think I’ve ever tried it.”

He smiles and hands me the glass. “I’ve stuck a bit of lemonade in, but I have beer or water if you don’t like it.”

I take a sip and feel the bubbles floating slowly down my throat. “It’s nice. Kind of like sparkling grape juice.”

He laughs. “Well yeah, that’s kind of what it is.”

I make a face at him and sip some more of my wine as we stand side by side with the sounds of the waves all around us.

“Can I ask you something?”

I half-turn and smile at him. “You can ask me anything, Cabe.”

He nods. “I feel a bit weird asking you this.”

“Go on.”

“
The thing that you said happened last summer with Hallie?”

I nod.
He’s talking about the baby.

“What was
the guy’s name?”

“
Zak.”

“Did you love him?”
he asks. “Was he there for you afterwards?”

I shake my head. “No,
I never loved him and he didn’t even know I was pregnant.”

“What happened?” he whispers.

I sigh and take a long gulp of my wine. “My family and his found ourselves next door to each other last summer. We were in a condo in Florida for two months and so was his family. I told you that I didn’t have any friends at my old school and didn’t speak to anyone, right?”

He nods.

“Well, he was obviously bored and just started talking to me. It was weird at first, but then it just started to feel right. We’d spend all day together and then one night, after we’d been to a party on the beach, he kissed me. Things just sort of progressed from there.”

“Were you drunk or something? Did he get you drunk?” he rushes.

I can tell by his tone that he completely has the wrong idea. I need to set him straight. “No,” I say, “I wanted to do it. I was sober the first time and so was he, and he was, well, he was careful with me.” The memories of the first time and the pain that no one tells you about come flooding back to me.

“I
t just doesn’t sit right with me, Rose,” he confesses. “You had no friends, which means you probably wouldn’t have talked to another girl about it. You’d never spoken to this guy before, and then within a few weeks, you were kissing him and letting him do things to you. It just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t sound like something the old Rose would do, and it doesn’t seem like something the Rose I know would do either.”

I sigh and hold his gaze. “It was the first time in my whole life that I actually felt normal, Cabe. I just wanted to act like a normal girl and do the things that normal girls do.”

“So you had sex with him just to be like other girls? You wanted to fit in with the crowd?”

“No,” I breathe,
“I had no intention of fitting in with a crowd.”

“So why do something so intimate?
Why not just kiss the guy and not do anything else?”

I shrug. “I told you.
It felt right. I didn’t feel pressured to do it. He didn’t bully me into it or rape me or anything. It just happened.”

“Was it just the once?” he pushes.

“What?”

“Did
you only have sex with him once?”

“What is this?” I ask. “Are you jealous because I’ve done it and you haven’t?”

“No,” he growls. “I’m pissed off that you’d give your virginity away so easily. I’m pissed off that your first time wasn’t with me, and I’m pissed off for feeling pissed off and I’m sorry.”

I
blink at him. I’m not sure exactly what just happened. “It wasn’t just a one-time thing,” I finally say. “We did it a lot.”

He rolls his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry that I sort of shouted at you. I just couldn’t get it to fit right in my head.”

“It’s fine,” I say, feeling a little uncomfortable. “I can see that you were trying to make sure that I hadn’t been hurt.”

He nods. “What happened when you got back home? Did you date for a while?”

I shake my head. “No, we got back home and started school again and he kept trying to talk to me to continue being friends…or whatever, but I didn’t want to. I ignored him.”

“Why?” he asks, looking shocked. “If he wanted to carry it on with you, then you obviously must have meant something to him. Why didn’t you want him to even talk to you?”

“Because his friends were laughing at him and talking about him behind his back. I didn’t want him being laughed at because of me. He didn’t deserve it.”

“It was his choice to make, Rose. If he really liked you
, then you probably really hurt him.”

I nod. “I think I probably did, but
back then I thought I was doing what was best for him.”

“So how did you find out you were pregnant
and where does Hallie fit into the picture?”

“It was September when I noticed that my period hadn’t arrived
for a while. I grabbed a test from the pharmacy and took it in the bathroom at home. I can’t tell you how scared I was when I saw those two little blue lines. I shoved the test into the trash in the bathroom and tried to ignore it. I told my doctor that I had missed two periods and he sent me for an ultrasound scan. I found out that I was nine weeks pregnant.” I stop for a second to collect myself because, out of all the painful memories that I posses, this is one of the most difficult. I’ve never spoken these words aloud and the reality of what happened then comes crashing back into me now.

My voice wavering, I continue, “
I didn’t tell anyone, but a few days after my scan, I started having pains in my stomach and I felt dizzy. I called my Dad and told him I was sick, but I didn’t tell him what was really wrong with me. When I started to feel worse, I decided to go to bed. I just thought maybe I’d done too much, or not eaten enough or something. But as I started to walk up the stairs, the pain in my stomach almost crippled me and I got so dizzy that I lost my balance and fell down the stairs. Hallie came back from taking Ava to school and found me. I was so upset and I could tell that I was bleeding, so I ended up just blurting it out to her.”

I can feel
my eyes fill with tears, but I stubbornly push them away.

“
Why didn’t you ever tell your Dad? Where did she take you?” he asks, looking confused.

“
I don’t really know,” I say. “I think that I didn’t want him to be disappointed in me. Hallie just said it was best if my Dad never found out. She took me to a private clinic that was miles away and paid for my treatment.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Wow,” he breathes. “
She almost acted like a caring Stepmother.”

“I know,” I agree, “but she’s thrown it back in my face a few times.
Each time I’ve confronted her about hurting me, she makes some snide remark about how she could ruin me. The only thing she could tell him would be about the baby, so even though she acted like she cared, I don’t believe for a second that’s why she helped me.”

“
She’s a real nasty piece of work,” he says through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry I had to ask you and make you say all that, but I just really needed to know. If we’re going to do this, then we need to be honest with each other.”

I nod. I can
appreciate that. I take a sip of my wine and say, “Okay then, how come you’ve never had sex?”

He shrugs. “I told you.”

“You told me why you didn’t date. That doesn’t explain why you haven’t just gone and had a one-night stand or something to get it out of your system.”

He smiles shyly. “I’m just not l
ike that. My Father always taught me to respect women, so I guess it’s sort of ingrained in me now. I don’t think I could have sex with someone unless I am in love with them, and as I wasn’t planning on being in love with anyone, it was never going to be an issue.”

“You mean to tell me that you’d
have remained a virgin your whole life?”

He laughs. “I know that sounds stupid, but I just di
dn’t want it. Maybe that would have changed as I got older, but I haven’t really been bothered about doing it at all in the last three years.”

“You must have been curious about it though?” I push.

“Well, yeah,”
he grins. “I am a guy after all.”

We both
stand there and grin at each other. I’m not quite sure what I should say now.

“I’m just going to serve the dinner. Come inside in two minutes, okay?”
he requests.

“Okay.”

While he’s gone, I think about Zak. I think about how I feel about Cabe and wonder if I had any chance of having that with Zak if I’d opened myself up to him. I think about the times I shook my head when he tried to sit next to me at lunch, and wonder how different things would have been if I’d have nodded instead. He was nice, but he didn’t excite me the way Cabe does. Whenever I look at Cabe, my heart flutters in my chest and the butterflies wake up and flap around like mad in my stomach. Cabe is the last thing I think about at night and the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. Zak never consumed me like that.

“Rose, come on!”

“I’m coming.” I smile as I walk back into the kitchen and feel more flutters when I take in the decorated room. There are hundreds of tiny candles flickering on the table and around the room, and he’s sprinkled the table with glitter. A sexy, deep voice is gently singing out from the speakers.

“Did
you do this?” I ask.

He grins.
“Yeah. Just don’t tell any of the soccer guys though, okay?”

I nod and try to hide the smile that threate
ns to spill across my face. “Cabe,” I breathe, sitting down and looking at the table decorations. “This looks fantastic.”

He grins and places a plate of steaming hot food down in front of me. “I just thought it would be nice if we had a proper date. You know, just the two of us, talking about normal things like boyfriend
s and girlfriends do.”

I nod and raise my glass to his. “Our date,” I say with a smile.

He looks up and clinks glasses with me. “Our date.”

I blink at him, feeling a blush spreading acros
s my face and pick up my silverware. “This food looks amazing.”

“I was worried you wouldn’t want it with you being poorly.”

I shake my head, hating the fact that I lied to him. “I’m fine…honestly.”

I pop a forkful of chicken into my mouth
and feel the explosion of flavors on my tongue as I begin to chew. It’s mouth-wateringly juicy. When I eventually swallow, I look up and smile at Cabe.