28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
B rooke listened to the message for the fourth time, tears running down her cheeks, her heart broken all over again as Cody’s deep, rich voice told her yet again everything she didn’t want to hear.
He picked her again!
Mindy Sue unlocked the new deadbolts on their door and walked into their dorm room with a huge smile on her face. She kicked the door closed behind her, executed a perfect pirouette on tiptoe, and did a rockin’ booty dance, shaking her butt with her hands in the air. She stopped abruptly with her right hip cocked out to the side when she spotted Brooke lying on her back in bed. “What happened?”
Brooke pressed her phone to her chest and let the tears fall in a torrent. Mindy Sue sat beside her, pulled her up by the shoulders, and wrapped her in a hug. Brooke held on for dear life.
“What is it, sweetie? Tell me. Is it the stalker? Did he send you that bracelet with the heart charm?”
Brooke grabbed the silver box off the desk beside her and threw it against the wall. “It’s not that.”
“Okay. Definitely pissed at the stalker, but that’s not what’s making you cry.” Mindy Sue leaned back and met her gaze. “Is it the baby?”
“No.” Brooke put her hand to her slightly swollen belly and sobbed harder. “Cod-dy.”
“Has something happened? Is he hurt? What about Cody, Brooke?”
She sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. “He left me a message.”
“Finally. One of you needed to make the first move. What did he say? Does he want to talk about what happened?” Mindy Sue leaned back again. “Did you finally tell him you’re pregnant?” Mindy Sue thought Brooke should have called him the second she found out she was carrying his child.
Cody deserved to know he was going to be a father—twice over. But Brooke had made up her mind when she found out she was having his baby that she’d wait until after the wedding so she didn’t spoil his day. It was just a month.
But now…June!
She didn’t want to wait that long.
“I missed the call because I was on the phone with campus security about the damn bracelet.” Brooke released Mindy Sue and flopped back on her pillow. “He called to tell me they moved the wedding to the end of June. June! He wants me to come to the wedding. He says he and Kristi are in the same place in their lives and they want the same things.”
“Well, you expected this right? She’s pregnant.”
“She lost the baby.” Brooke wrapped her arms around the baby she carried like she could protect it from nature.
Mindy Sue shot up to her feet. “What!” She sat down heavily and made Brooke bounce on the mattress. She took Brooke’s hand and held it in hers. “Oh my God, Brooke. This changes everything.”
Brooke wished that were true, but that wasn’t the message Cody left her.
“Not in Cody’s mind. They’re still getting married and plan to have a family later. He said I have school and my life here. Obviously, he loves her .”
Brooke’s heart broke over that yet again. “He said I could bring whoever I’m with to the wedding. He thinks I’ve simply moved on.” She was too upset to even process or understand why he’d think that he was so easy for her to replace.
“Asshole.” Mindy Sue held tight to Brooke’s hand. She leaned down and kissed her on the belly and said to her slightly swollen stomach, “I’m sorry, baby. But your daddy isn’t being nice to your mommy.”
Brooke smiled despite how upset she felt about the call.
She couldn’t wait to be a mom. The pregnancy was going well. She tried to find joy in it despite not being able to share it with Cody.
Mindy Sue teased her about her middle-of-the-night cravings for ice cream and oranges.
Though she still had seven months to go, she’d already started working on lists of things to buy for the baby, what she needed to bring to the hospital, pediatricians’ names back home, and daycare centers near her new apartment. She wanted to be a good mom and have everything set up and perfect by the time the baby arrived.
Brooke hated the idea of leaving the baby in daycare, but she’d have to at least a few hours of the day if she was going to work in the bookstore and expand her business into other ventures over time.
Of course Cody would be a part of their child’s life. From the beginning, she planned to tell him about the baby— after he got married.
Now, she’d have to wait until she was only a few months from her September due date.
Mindy Sue took the cell phone and held it in front of her. “Call him. Tell him you’re pregnant. He’ll dump her. You and he can raise the baby together.”
Brooke took the phone and wiped more tears away. She held her finger over the call button, but didn’t tap it.
Instead, she let the fantasy play out in her mind. She’d call him. He’d come immediately. He’d be happy about the baby, especially after losing the one with Kristi. They’d get married and raise their child together on the ranch. She’d spend the rest of her life making him happy. He’d never regret marrying her. They’d be happy together. Forever.
That’s what she’d always wanted. A life with him.
But not this way.
She didn’t want him to marry her out of obligation. He must love Kristi. He’d chosen to make a life with her. She wouldn’t take that away from him. They could be good parents to their child without being married. She’d even find a way to forge a cordial relationship with Kristi, so her child would know he or she was loved by all their parents.
She’d had a great relationship with her stepfather. Cody adored her mother.
Stepparents could be just as important and special as a biological parent, and she would give Kristi that chance to prove it.
Holding the phone to her forehead, she tried not to cry again.
“Why aren’t you calling him? Tell him about the baby. You know he’ll do the right thing.”
“Kristi lost their baby. There’s no obligation now for him to marry her. But he is still going to marry her because it’s what he wants.”
“But you are pregnant. He has an obligation to you. He’ll do the right thing because as you said about Kristi and her baby, he doesn’t want his child to grow up without both his parents.”
True. But now that Cody had a chance to ask her to work things out and see if they could be together, that’s not what he did. “I don’t want him to marry me because he feels obligated. We had one night together. She’s been with him for over a year. Hours after we had sex, he said he’d marry her. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t take some time to think it over. He loves her and a life with her and his child was what he wanted. It’s what he still wants.”
She put her hands over her belly where her baby lay sleeping and growing. Her pants were a little tight, but you couldn’t tell she was pregnant yet. She kind of couldn’t wait until her belly popped.
“If that night meant as much to him as it did to me, if I meant that much to him, he’d have called tonight to tell me he and Kristi are over and he wants to be with me. But he didn’t.”
The tears ran down her cheeks again.
“I love him. I want him to be happy. And, apparently, that’s with her. I’ll tell him about the baby later. He can come to the delivery. He’d probably like to be there for that. They’ll already be married. He can be a father to the baby. We just won’t do it together. Lots of kids grow up without both parents living together.”
“Yes, but you could go back to the ranch and live there with him.”
“And her.” Brooke rolled her eyes. “It’s bad enough she’ll be a stepmother to my child and living in my house. I can’t live under the same roof with them.”
“It’s a big roof. You could move to your mother’s side of the house.”
“I’d be miserable seeing him with her every day, and you know it. I don’t want my child to see me like that. I don’t want my child to ever think my unhappiness has anything to do with him.”
Mindy Sue squeezed her hand. “If Cody can’t see what a great woman you are, then he doesn’t deserve you. I’m sorry, sweetie. You’ve been best friends for years. If that isn’t a foundation to build a marriage and a family on, I don’t know what is. I wish he could see that.” She put her hand over Brooke’s on her belly. “I wish that for you and the baby.”
“Some wishes just don’t come true. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. He won’t be mine, but he’ll be a good father to our baby. It’s all I can wish for now.”
They sat in silence for a moment, both wishing things could be different.
Brooke had faced reality the second she’d gotten on the bus to return to school. She’d desperately wanted to beg Cody to choose her. And in that moment, she’d realized she’d spent her whole childhood chasing after him, trying to make him love her.
It didn’t work.
Their night together hadn’t changed anything.
She couldn’t make Cody love her.
She wouldn’t use their baby to get what she wanted.
That was selfish and no way to start a marriage and expect it to last.
Cody made his decision.
Brooke had to learn to live with it and the consequences of her actions.
She needed a distraction. “Tell me why you did your ballerina-slash-booty-dance when you came in.”
Mindy Sue looked up and softly smiled. “It was nothing. It’s late. I bet you’re tired. You’ve barely been able to keep your eyes open lately.”
Brooke pointed to the book on pregnancy beside her bed. “First trimester is the hardest. The second is supposed to be better.”
“I bet you can’t wait until next month.”
“You bet. Now, tell me about your date with Tony, and why you came in smiling like a maniac and dancing.”
“You don’t want to hear about my date.” Mindy Sue stood to get ready for bed.
“Tell me. I want details.” Brooke sat up and caught Mindy Sue’s hand to turn her back. “Did he kiss you?” Brooke smiled mischievously.
“Did he kiss me? I thought my hair was going to catch fire.” She sat beside Brooke again and they laughed.
They spent the next hour devouring a pint of vanilla bean ice cream and talking about Tony, his kissing ability, and what Mindy Sue would wear on her next date. For an hour, Brooke managed to put her stalker who wouldn’t quit, being pregnant, and Cody’s message on the back burner.
Tonight was about being a college coed and sitting with her friend and talking about boys and clothes.
Life was too short to spend worrying about what might have been, and what could never be. She’d take ice cream and girl talk over thinking about her obsessed stalker and a man who didn’t want her.