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“I’m sorry, Brett.” I waited for a while, but it was all she said. This couldn’t be it.
“What did I do wrong?” I asked. I knew I sounded pathetic, but I needed to know. Until five minutes ago, I had thought everything was perfect between us, and I had planned to make everything official. Now everything was crumbling, and I had absolutely no control over it.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. This isn’t about you, it’s about me.”
Right, like I hadn’t heard that line before.
“Please,” she carried on, “trust me. It’s better this way.”
“How the hell is it better this way?” I was becoming exasperated. “Do you love me?”
Erica hesitated. “I do.”
I had half expected her to say no after how she was acting. “Then what is the big deal? Why can’t we just be together?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” Erica said, and her tone was suddenly snappy. I knew this side of her better, but I hadn’t expected her mood to change so quickly. She caught me off guard, and instead of staying calm and trying to coax her out of her shell, I got angry.
“After everything we’ve been through together, the least you owe me is an explanation.”
“And what exactly have we been through together? Everything that went wrong at the office we had to handle alone because we couldn’t be seen together. The only thing we did together was fuck.”
We were yelling at each other through the door now. I wanted to shout obscenities at her, but I caught myself. What was I doing? I had come here to show her a grand gesture, to confess my love for her. Instead, we were fighting with each other through her apartment door. Nothing was working out right. Maybe it was better for me to give her some space.
“Fine,” I said, and I didn’t sound nearly as angry as I had before. “If you want me to go, I’ll go.” I waited a second for her to say something in return. I hoped she would and that this wasn’t the end. When she was silent, I turned around and walked away. I may have changed enough that I was willing to accept that I had fallen in love with her and was willing to admit to it. But I hadn’t changed so much that I had become the pathetic idiot that would wait around for a woman to make up her mind about whether or not she loved me. If Erica didn’t want me in her life, then I would leave.
I walked out of the apartment building and climbed into the limousine. The tuxedo I was wearing, the limousine, the expensive jewelry I had bought all seemed ridiculous now. Maybe my grand gesture had been too much pressure. Maybe Erica would have preferred me to pick up the phone and give her a call.
But if she didn’t understand how I was trying to show her what I felt for her, if she didn’t know that luxury was my way of spoiling her by now, then maybe we didn’t know each other nearly as well as I had thought. The woman I had seen tonight, after all, was just as different from who she usually was as I was different from myself too.
I instructed the driver to take me home. On the way, I called the restaurant and canceled the reservation. I had meant to do a press release on Monday morning, letting the world know that Erica and I were together. The idea had been that it would pull my company back up to where it was supposed to be while allowing Erica and me to be together without having to hide. Now that it wasn’t going to happen, I wondered how long it would take me to build the company back up to what it had been.
But it wasn’t about that. This was about Erica. She had allowed me to believe that there was something between us up until I had been ready to accept it. And then she had rejected me.
Maybe Shane was right. Maybe love wasn’t my thing after all.
Chapter 22
Erica
When I woke up on Monday morning, I was sick to my stomach. I rolled over in bed, and that only made it worse. Maybe if I closed my eyes and rested a little longer, it would help. The moment I closed my eyes, my stomach turned, and I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. I barely made it to the toilet before I started retching. I fell to my knees and threw up violently, even though I had nothing in my stomach.
While my stomach tightened and my body doubled over to eject anything I had in my stomach, a little voice at the back of my mind kept shouting at me “this is what happens.” This was morning sickness. I was pregnant.
