Page 18 of Knocked Up By The Mountain Man

"Because my friend hasn't shut up about you since he met you," he says with a laugh.

A bubble of hope swells inside of me, but I quickly pop it with a needle. The needle of shame, the word burden etched into the side of the shiny, silvery surface.

Okay, so maybe Jack found our encounter just as memorable as I did. Maybe he thought about me, talked to his friends about me.

That's fine.

But that was before he knew about the pregnancy…and once he finds out, he's not going to be happy.

I know that now.

"I've never heard Jack rant and rave about a woman quite like you," Adam continues. "And I've known him for a long time, since high school. The guy is over the moon about you. Of course, he'd probably punch me if he knew that I was telling you all of this."

He laughs.

"You must be pretty special to grab his attention like that."

"I don't know," I mumble. "It was just a one-night stand."

"Jack doesn't do one-night stands," he says. "He had a few girlfriends when we were younger. Got his heart broke, then decided to put it on ice. It's been frozen solid ever since. Till he met you."

I'm quiet.

It's bittersweet knowing that Jack liked me so much that maybe we could have been something. That my delusions about starting a new life in the mountains weren't all that delusional.

Maybe we could have worked.

Maybe if two layers of birth control hadn't failed us, if the fates had aligned differently, maybe we could have really been something.

But that's just not how things worked out.

"So where are we headed?" Adam asks as we get closer to the bottom of the mountain.

"Uh..." I hesitate.

I hadn't thought it through. I had half a mind to ask him to send me back to the inn, where I could see if maybe some rooms had opened up at the last minute.

But then I remembered that I left all of my stuff in Jack's cabin – my duffel bag and everything in it.

I open my phone and look at a note I made weeks ago.

"Take me here," I say, reading out the address. "Do you mind staying in the car for a little while after we get there, just in case he isn't home?"

I can sense Adam's unasked questions in the air between us, but he simply nods, turning right at the base of the mountain instead of left.

CHAPTER 10

JACK

I pace my cabin, having half a mind to jump into my truck and follow Adam and Alyssa down the mountain.

It's not that I don't trust my friend, but the idea of Alyssa putting her trust in a man other than me, a man she doesn't even know, is driving me nuts.

I want to know what I did wrong.

What happened? What did I say to Adam that had Alyssa running out the door like she was getting away from me as fast as she could?

I pace down the hallway and stop in front of the guest room door. She left it ajar, and I know I should respect her privacy. I know that going into her room is an invasion of that privacy, and yet still I can't stop as my feet take four big steps through the doorway and into the room, stopping at the end of the bed.