19. Loren
19
LOREN
T hose three words slipped past my lips too quickly. I wanted to share them with Matt in a different context. Maybe somewhere we could actually be alone. And not now, minutes before we’d need to get ready for the next important meeting with the Gammon people. This was crunch time. We had to have our minds on the big presentation.
Instead, I just ensured our concentration was shot. Mine was. It had been all week when I was trying to avoid talking to Matt. I was a wreck, putting up a wall to guard myself from him approaching me and acting like I wanted nothing to do with him.
It wasn’t only because I wanted to wait until after this meeting to talk with him about the fact that we would have a baby. It was also a safekeeping tactic in case Tom caused trouble. I knew he wouldn’t accept this “defeat” well. He’d given me dirty looks since the weekend, proving his malice toward me for choosing to be intimate with someone else.
I’d rehearsed, debated, and practiced how I could share this news with Matt. I would be neutral but clear. It would be best to keep emotions out of it.
Impossible. I felt like I was on the verge of throwing up after telling him. That was how anxious and nervous I was.
The moment was over.
My secret was out.
And now, I had to stomach through the agony of still wondering how he felt about this news.
He stared, stunned and unmoving. His confused gaze was locked on my lips, not because he wanted to kiss me, but perhaps because he wasn’t sure where to look or what to focus on.
Evidently, I snapped something in him. A fuse was broken and the circuit that ran his sharp mind wasn’t going. He was numb, quiet, and so immobile that I couldn’t help but worry if I’d frozen him, jarred him too far.
“You…” He cleared his throat. His brow furrowed and he blinked once, then twice. “You what?”
I nodded. He had to have heard me, but I could do a take two and say it again. “I’m?—”
“ Pregnant ?” he said on a rushed exhale.
Yeah, he’d heard me the first time. Asking me again was likely just to confirm it out loud. It didn’t matter how many times I told him. The details wouldn’t change.
His eyes opened wider, almost to the point they’d pop right off. I hadn’t known him for long, but I’d seen him surprised here and there. Or alarmed. The expression of utter shock he displayed right now was in a league of its own.
I bit my lip, waiting for him to react with something else. With a reply. Words. An opinion. I’d even welcome more questions.
What I couldn’t tolerate or wait through was this silence. It was like watching the cogs work in his brain. He was letting it sink in. That much was obvious.
“I—” He shook his head. Backing up from cornering me, he gave up his advantage of caging me in like this. It was just us, sort of, but the further he retreated, the colder I felt and the lonelier I got.
“I need a minute.” He raked both hands through his hair as he took bigger steps back, almost like leaping away from me.
Then he was gone. He turned, so hasty in his step that he didn’t look where he was going. Almost slamming into a tall potted décor stand with ferns and pathos, he caught himself just in time before knocking it all to the floor. His stride was quick and clearly in a direction away from me.
I didn’t have to be nervous and await his reaction with bated breath anymore.
He showed me how he felt about my being pregnant.
He fled.
He walked away from the revelation that I was carrying his child.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit !
I expected him to be surprised, but seeing him turn his back and walk away hurt. It felt like too stern of a dismissal, too harsh of an avoidance.
Before panic could kick in, I thought back to which floor was Hailey’s. She was here. I didn’t have to struggle through this slap in the face alone. Right now, I needed someone to talk to, to hear me out about this huge news.
I left the spot in the hallway and sought her out. After mistaking her floor, I rode the elevator up and down to get to the corridor that would bring me to her.
While I wasn’t sure what her daily schedule was like, and lunchtime had already come and gone, I intended to spill it all with her. It was too late for worrying about what she would think. If she would judge me. In the end, I could be confident that she would stand by me. She’d be a friend, unlike Matt who stormed off in the wake of my pregnancy news.
Then again, he never was my friend. We started out as lovers, learned that we would work together, and then… found the evidence that we would sort of, kinda, start a family.
If she was busy, I’d stand there and wait her out until she could listen. All these emotions were bottling up. I was tense and nervous, wringing my hands together as I walked.
Once I found her office, I knocked once and stepped inside. Unfortunately, she was on the phone. It sounded like a call with a manager downstairs, but I didn’t interrupt.
She furrowed her brow at my unexpected arrival. Then she held one finger up to indicate for me to wait a minute.
I didn’t sit, too worked up to stay still. All this nervous energy was making me move, but not to run or walk away from the situation, like Matt did. Not that I could. Abortion and giving this child up for adoption just wouldn’t be possible. Regardless of how unplanned this baby was, he or she was my child.
Finally, Hailey disconnected her call. She set her handheld receiver down with a click, and that was my cue.
“He didn’t take it well.” That was the briefest summary that I could think of, so again, twice within the last half hour, I blurted an uncensored and impulsive comment.
“What?” She frowned. “My God. Sit. You’re making me nervous.” Her forced giggle that followed those words proved it. “Who did what now?”
I swallowed, my mouth so dry and my throat closing up from the emotional response after Matt walking away and from the panic clawing at me.
Pacing back and forth, I glanced at her and drew in a deep breath to steady myself. “Matt.”
“Matt? Matt Richards?” She raised both brows. “Your boss? The jerk who’s gonna be CEO after Wendy retires?” She huffed. “If she ever retires.”
“Yes. Him.”
She tilted her head to the side as she narrowed her eyes. “What about him?”
“He didn’t take the news well.” I bit my lip and winced.
“He didn’t take what news…” Her eyes opened wide. “The news about—” She gasped, sucking in so much air so quickly that I doubted her lungs could have room for it. “ Your news?”
I nodded, covering my mouth with one hand and hugging an arm around myself in a hug as I continued to fret and walk back and forth.
“Your news about being pregnant?” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me he was an asshole about it because you just started and all.”
“No.”
“Then what? Is he being a dumbass about it and claiming the timing of it is going to complicate this big project with the Gammon company?”
“Well, he is concerned about us all being focused for that,” I admitted.
“Fuck him.”
I deadpanned, stopping in my tracks to shoot her a wry look. “Hailey. I already did . Literally.”
Her mouth hung open.
“Wait. You mean that he didn’t take the news about your being pregnant well because he’s your boss and wants to dictate what the people on his team do with their personal lives?”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s not a dictator at all. He contributes to the team.”
She stood to come around the desk toward me. “Or you mean that he didn’t take the news about your being pregnant because he’s…” Again, she gasped, louder and with a more bugged-out expression. “He’s…”
I nodded. “Matt’s the father.”
If her jaw dropped any lower, it’d hit the floor. She hunched over, as though the news I shared was a physical hit that punched the air right out of her.
“What?” If she hadn’t whispered it in a bewildered hiss, it would’ve come out as a screech.
I didn’t need to let the whole building know.
“Yeah. Matt. My boss.” I hurried to thrust a hand in the air to stop her from launching into saying more. “I didn’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“That first weekend I was here. I wanted to go out and, I don’t know, celebrate. So I headed to a bar for a drink. A pervy guy was being pushy with me, Matt was there, and he intervened.”
“But you didn’t know…” She rubbed her cheek before gripping the back of her neck, still so stunned.
“No. He was just a stranger at the bar being nice to a woman being harassed. But then the second we saw each other and started talking, one thing led to another and we spent the night together at the hotel next door.”
“Oh, my God , Loren!” She gripped my hands and tugged me to sit. While she took one of the two chairs in front of her desk, I lowered to the other. She didn’t release my hands, almost as if she had to secure me to stay here and explain further.
“You were just two strangers who fell into bed together.”
I nodded. “Then I came here, and on my first day, I saw who he was and…” I shrugged. “It’s been awkward—even before I thought I could be pregnant and took the test.”
“Well, now it makes sense.”
I scowled. “Nothing makes sense! How is this my life?”
“That part about you two not seeing eye-to-eye. Always bickering. Because you already got a head start on being an actual couple.”
I shook my head so fast that I could’ve made myself dizzy. “No. We’re not. We’re not a couple. Not at all. We’re on the same team for this pitch and that’s it. Nothing more.”
Nothing more? That was what I told Matt. We had our fling and that was that. Except… I didn’t really stick to that premise when I leaned in to kiss him in the conference room.
“Nothing makes sense anymore.”
“Okay, so you didn’t use protection?”
“We did. We used up all three condoms and then?—”
“ Three ?” she exclaimed.
I winced. I wasn’t the sort of woman to kiss and tell. Or to spill about any of these details. “One of them must not have done its job.”
“You could say that again.”
“I just blurted it out to him. Ever since I took the test over the weekend…” I started to say.
Ever since we had another moment we shouldn’t have had…
“I’ve been thinking I could avoid him and bottle it all in. This Gammon meeting is so important. I didn’t want to drop this bombshell before it. But he cornered me, concerned about why I was acting so off.”
I blinked, pausing for a moment. And he said he cared. About me. In the middle of all the shock, I hadn’t given myself time to let that sink in. That Matt cared about me.
You sure have a funny way of showing it, Matt , I thought wryly. If he cared so much, he wouldn’t have freaking walked away.
“And you told him?”
I nodded. “I blurted it out. He would’ve kept at me, and I just snapped and told him.”
She scrunched up her face. “And what did he say? What did he do?”
I drew in a deep breath. “He walked away.”
She licked her lips, still cringing. “Okay. Not the best move. I’m sure he was surprised and shocked…”
Then she leaned over, patting my knees before taking one of my hands between hers. “And if he doesn’t come to terms with it like a mature adult, then screw it. I’m here for you, no matter what.”
I sniffled, overwhelmed by how sweet this woman was. Lunging closer, I hugged her and closed my eyes, savoring the strength of her embrace.
She was more of a sister than Becca had ever been. Even if I didn’t have contact with my family back home in Hamming, and even if my baby daddy wanted to walk away from me, I had found a new family here in Hailey. In this tumultuous time of learning I’d grow my own little family by becoming a mother soon, I would never forget how blessed and grateful I was for Hailey to be in my life.