Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (48 page)

“She’s not ill,” he said. “She’s pregnant.”

The breath left my lungs. I stood there, frozen in place on the sticky, dirty Brooklyn sidewalk in the still heat of a summer night. “She told you that?” I finally managed to say.

“Yeh, she did. She needed someplace to go, didn’t she. Nearly two months along, and not feeling too flash. I told her to come to me so I can look after her. I told her to bring Karen as well.”

“That’s meant to be me.” I’d found my voice somehow. “It’s my job to look after her. That’s my baby.” Two
months?
She’d fallen pregnant all the way back in New Zealand, had been pregnant ever since, and hadn’t told me? Why not?

The heavy sigh was a reproach. “I know, my son.”

I would have pursued it, but now wasn’t the time. Now, something else mattered more. “She didn’t bring Karen. Karen wouldn’t come. But which airline did she fly? Do you know?”

A long pause, then, “Air New Zealand. Arriving in about twenty-four hours, and no worries, I’ll be there to meet her.”

Right.
“Hang on a tick,” I said, then navigated to my texts and typed in a quick note to Charles.

Come back.

“I’m here,” I told Koro. “I’m on my way to get her.”

“I reckon you’d better think first,” he said, “about what to say to her.”

“I know what I’m going to say to her. I’m going to tell her she’s coming home where she belongs.” There was Charles, pulling up to the curb, and I jumped into the car and told him, “La Guardia. Fast,” and he pulled away.

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and I was wondering if I’d lost the connection when Koro said, “What is she to you? Something you own?”

“What? No. Of course not.”

“Something to prove what your own mum didn’t, then. That you can treat a woman any way you like, and she’ll stay.”

“No,” I said again, more impatiently this time. “I’m not treating her any way I like. I’m treating her well. I’m treating her right. I’d give her anything, and she knows it.”

“Won’t give her the choice, though, will you. Won’t give her her freedom.”

It
was
true. I
was
wrong everywhere, copping it from everybody, when all I wanted to do was love Hope and take care of her. “What did she tell
me,
then?” I demanded. “That she wanted somebody to be there always, to hold her forever. I want to be that somebody. Now she doesn’t want it after all? Now I’ve done it wrong? That’s rubbish.”

“Is it, eh. How would it feel for you, then? If she told you, ‘I want you, but only if you live where I say, take the kind of job I say, talk to the people I say?’”

“I’m not saying that.”

Another sigh, and the thought that I’d disappointed him, that he didn’t understand…it sliced to the bone. It was all boiling over inside me, and I couldn’t be on this phone anymore. I had to go find Hope. Go
get
Hope.

He was talking again now, and I waited for him to finish so I could go do it. “If you love her,” he said, “if you want her—let her go. If you can believe I’ve learned anything in all these years, that I’m not just hanging about here because I’m too stubborn to die, then believe this. Let her go. That’s the only way you’re going to keep her. Give her the chance to think it through, and yourself the chance to understand what she’s trying so hard to tell you. Give her her freedom, same as she’s giving you. Such a thing as holding too tight, my son. Such a thing as squeezing a woman too hard.”

Hope

When the phone rang, I didn’t answer.

I’d meant to. That was why I’d gone to Hemi’s apartment, after all—to tell him I was leaving, and to tell him why. To tell him about the baby. And to tell him I loved him.

I’d called Koro because I hadn’t been able to think of anybody else. “I know it’s putting you in an awkward position,” I’d told him. “I’m not asking you to take sides. I’m just asking for advice. I don’t know what to do.”

When he’d told me to come, it had sounded crazy. “But,” I’d said, “I need a job most of all. How does that help?”

“And we’ll find you one,” he’d answered. “Think I can’t do that? I can do that.”

“I need one that’s real, though,” I’d tried to explain.

A rasping noise, then, that I realized was his wheezy chuckle. “It’ll be real, no worries. No other kinds of jobs around here, are there. Come to me, my darling. Come for a wee while. Have a rest and a think.”

I’d said yes, and my head was still spinning from the whole thing. The idea of it, and the cost of a last-minute ticket. And that I’d left Karen again. That had been the worst.

No, not the worst, not if I were honest. How could I choose which was worse? Karen would forgive me for leaving her. I’d asked her to come, after all. But would Hemi?

I tried to talk to him. My finger hovered over the button to answer his call again and again, and every time, I lost my nerve. But after the taxi had deposited me outside the Departures area, after I’d stood in line and checked my bag and gone through Customs and the never-ending security line and made it to the gate with minutes to spare. I sat in a row of molded plastic chairs, my purse in my lap and my heart in my throat, I emailed him.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t get it right, and I knew it.

Hemi,

I have to go.

You’re thinking I’m running away, and you’re right. You’re worrying that I won’t be safe, but I will be. I’m going to your Koro. He told me to come. Please don’t blame him. He wants me to be safe, too, and I know how hypocritical that’s going to sound. I don’t want to be taken care of, so I’m running to another man to take care of me. I know it. This might be wrong, too, but I can’t tell anymore, and I’m so tired. And I just found out that I’m pregnant, and I don’t even know if you want to have kids. I don’t think you do. You never said, even when Karen asked, and if you’re too busy for me, how would you want a baby? I can’t stand to have you say yes because it’s your responsibility. I have to figure out what to do.

I know you’ll want to come after me, but please don’t, not yet. If you love me, please try to listen. Give me some room. Give me some time. You’re going to say I’m hysterical, and I’m wrong, and maybe I’m both of those things. I know that’s how I feel. I just know that somehow, now that I have so much, I feel more stuck than I’ve ever been. I’ve got your money to spend, and I know you’d give me anything, but it isn’t working. Please give me this instead.

I wrote all that, then had to stop to cry. The woman in the seat beside me glanced at me and looked away, and I put my hand up to shade my eyes and tried to hide it, to pretend that I had allergies, and knew I wasn’t fooling anybody. And after a while, I started again.

I want to erase that and start over, because it sounds like I don’t love you and that I’m saying you’re wrong. I
do
love you. I love you so much it hurts, and I don’t know who’s wrong and who’s right anymore. I know that you’re smarter than I am, and richer than I am, and so much more successful than I’ve ever dreamed of being. You’re everything more than I am. But if I’m going to be anybody to you, if we’re going to make it to forever, I have to be somebody to you, too. I have to be somebody to myself. I can’t be yours if I’m not mine first.

I keep thinking—what if we have a daughter? What do I tell her? Find a man to take care of you? Or do I tell her—find your future? Find your path? And
then
find a man who wants to share that with you? That’s what I want to tell Karen, too, and I’m so afraid I’m telling her exactly the opposite, becoming exactly the wrong role model for her.

And what if we have a son? I want him to grow up believing that a woman can set her sights as high as he can. I want him to want a woman, someday, who knows how to do that. I want to be the kind of woman I’d want my daughter to become, or even my daughter-in-law.

I don’t expect you to see. But please see this. I love you, and I want to become the woman who’s worthy of you. I’m trying and trying, but I can’t see my way anymore, and I don’t think you can, either. All I want to do is support you, and instead, all I am is a distraction to you, and I know that, too. How can I support you if I can’t stand up to you? If I’m sending you this email because I’m scared to tell you to your face?

I’ll email you again when I’m there. Meanwhile—please believe that I’m going to take care of our baby, and please take care of my sister. Or if you can’t anymore, don’t feel bad. I know it’s too much to ask, and I would have taken her if she would have come. Tell me if you need her to come to me, and tell her, too. I miss both of you so much already, I can hardly stand it.

And please, Hemi. Take care of yourself. I know you’ll blame yourself, once you’re done blaming me. It’s not your fault, just like I’m trying to tell myself it’s not mine, even though I don’t believe it and I’m guessing you won’t either. It’s just us. It just is.

Hope

My fingers hovered once more, and then I typed the rest, all in a rush, hardly able to breathe.

P.S. I didn’t give your ring back. I’m still wearing it. If you want it back, you can tell me. But I want to marry you so much, and I don’t care if you have money or not. I don’t care if Anika wins or not. I care for your sake, but I don’t care for mine. That’s got nothing to do with how I feel about you. I want to marry you. Please believe me. I still love you. I’ll never stop loving you.

Hemi

Hope wouldn’t answer me.

I stood in the Departures area. Check-in had closed for her flight, and I was out of time and out of luck. I watched the minutes tick down on the clock, I watched the board change from
Boarding
to
Departed,
and I knew I’d failed.

And then I got her email.

I read it, and then I read it again, and then I stood there in the middle of people going places, in the midst of people moving on, and knew I’d lost.

My good thing’s going to know I’ve got her, and that I mean to keep her.

I hadn’t done it. I’d lost my good thing, and it was worse than that, because I’d lost our baby, too.

What were you supposed to do with a person who was out of control and wouldn’t listen to reason?

Especially if that person might be you?