Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chandler
“I’m sorry about your shoes.”
My toes sank into the cold sand. I’d dropped my shoes in the trash can at the edge of the beach; the only thing worse than shoes with puke all over them was shoes with sand-crusted puke all over them.
“Just shoes, Frankie. I can get another pair.” I took a deep breath and glanced at her. She wobbled a little on the uneven terrain, but I shoved my hands into my pockets instead of reaching for her. She was fine. A little shaken, but fine. And if I reached for her, she’d only pull farther away.
We reached the flat stretch of sand that was just short of where the waves crashed and broke. Here, the beach was bereft of people. Lou had pointed out this part to me the morning she’d taken me on a tour; we’d been on the larger, more public rim of coastline, and when she’d pointed out the lighthouse where Kit lived, she’d also mentioned a smaller, more private section of the beach that only the locals knew about .
“I’m pregnant,” she repeated, the words still sounding like they were foreign on her tongue.
“I gathered.”
“Who told you?” She bundled her arms in front of her as another breeze swept through.
I shook off my jacket and handed it to her. “It was an accident.”
The horror on Lou’s face when she realized I didn’t know about the baby and that she’d just revealed her sister’s secret was branded into my mind. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. If I hadn’t left—hadn’t disappeared the way I had—it wouldn’t have been a secret at all.
“Lou.” She stared at me, hesitating a beat before another whip of wind made her grab my coat.
“She thought I already knew.” I should’ve already known, the thought punched to the front of my mind, but I reined it back, keeping silent as she put on my jacket, and we continued our slow stroll toward the tower of the lighthouse.
“So you’re…” I lifted my fingers to count, not trusting my mind with even the simplest of mental math.
“Almost thirteen weeks. I…I had my twelve-week check-up last week.”
Check-up. That meant at a doctor. A doctor with tests and scans and imaging. A check-up with pictures and ultrasounds and a beating heart. My throat felt like it closed up, but somehow I still kept breathing.
“Frankie…”
“Just say it.” She huffed, suddenly annoyed. “You have to be angry I didn’t tell you. Didn’t reach out. You can say it. You can be angry. It’s fine—I’m fine.” The flippancy in her tone was anything but fine.
“I was going to ask if you had a picture.”
She stopped walking, her head lowering for a second before she fished underneath my jacket and pulled out her phone. The waves crashed and roared, louder and louder in my ears, until I realized it wasn’t the sound of breaking waves at all but the thundering churn of my heart.
She handed me her phone and everything stopped. Stilled.
I turned away from her, staring at the black and white speck on the ultrasound image. My baby.
I was going to be a father.
My pulse trampled through my veins, the word never having any kind of positional connotation in my life until this moment. Until it became me.
“Chandler…”
I looked up and blinked. I didn’t even realize I’d sunk down to sit on the sand, my arms propped on my knees, holding the phone as I stared.
Shit .
“Can I…have this? The picture.” I stammered like an idiot. “Not your phone.”
She nodded, and I swore there was the tiniest of smiles on her face.
My finger shook as I entered my information into a contact card in her phone, changed some of the settings, and then sent the image to myself. “Thank you.”
She took her phone back and sat down beside me, the two of us watching the spin of the tide. Pregnant. It changed things, but not everything. Not why I’d come back. Now how I felt.
There were a million things I could say—even more that I wanted to say—but this moment was hers. She’d given me the photo. She’d sat right beside me. She wasn’t pushing me away for the first time in a week even though I probably still deserved it, so that was why I stayed silent. Because this conversation was going to be on her terms .
I lost count of how many times the waves rose and broke on the shore before she spoke over them.
“When I realized about the baby, I was in shock. I guess I must’ve forgotten to take my birth control one of those mornings, or who knows, maybe it just didn’t work,” she began and sighed. “I took the test, and the first thing I did was call Lou. She…well, I think she was more shocked than I was.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at my lips and then disappeared at her next words.
“My first thought was that I had to tell you. I was still upset, but I had to tell you. And then Lou told me she’d offered you more money for the inn…and you’d accepted.”
My heart beat like the walls of my chest were closing in—violent and feral and desperate to exonerate itself to escape. But I didn’t want this to turn into a conversation about me and why I left. My reason didn’t matter if she didn’t believe I wasn’t going to do it again.
“I did,” was all I said when I felt her looking at me, waiting for my confirmation or denial.
She looked away quickly, but not before I saw how her face blanched and she clutched her legs tighter to her.
“After that, I was pissed. I was angry and it was still early. Anything could’ve?—”
“Don’t,” I interrupted. The thought was already clear in my mind, I didn’t need to hear her say it. If she’d miscarried and been alone…if I never knew…
She exhaled slowly and admitted, “I don’t know that I was ever going to tell you, Chandler. Honestly, I don’t. Especially if you hadn’t…”
“Come back?”
Frankie made only a soft sound as a reply and then drifted to silence again.
“This wasn’t what either of us planned…what either of us wa nted,” she said and crossed her legs. “And I want to be clear that I don’t need anything from you. I’m not asking for anything. You don’t have to have any part in this?—”
“Don’t do that, Frankie.”
“Do what?”
“The thing where you push people away to prove you’re independent.”
She blustered and stood. “I’m not pushing?—”
I rose with a growl and grabbed her arm, hauling her back to me. Her gasp was soft and fractured when she landed against my chest, her palm gripping my shirt but lacking any kind of pressure to push me away.
“I get that you’ve been the strong one, Frankie. I get that no one asked you to do it, but everyone admired you when you did. When you became the strong sister for Lou when she was timid. For Kit when he was broken. For Jamie and the rest of your family so they didn’t need to worry. But let me tell you something, baby, I’m not here to tell you you can’t be strong, I’m here—will be here to show you you don’t have to be alone.”
Her lips parted, her pulse fluttering like a wild bird trapped in her throat.
I shouldn’t have reached for her—shouldn’t have pulled her close. It was a selfish thing after months of fantasizing about her. And now that I held her—felt her warmth and softness fitted right to me—I didn’t want to let her go.
“Chandler…”
My hand slid up her neck to cup her cheek, my thumb stroking her cheek like I could wipe the blush from her skin. The breeze tangled around us, and cinnamon swept into my nostrils, my head dipping lower to feed on her scent.
Her gaze drifted to my mouth, her tongue sliding out and wetting her lips. An invitation. A dare. The flame inside me surged and turned every inch of me hard in a second. I wanted her so fucking bad. For months, I’d wanted her like this. And it was more than desire. More than passion. It was the whole of her warmth. The heat of her boldness. The strength of her compassion. She’d set me on fire, and now all I wanted was to burn and burn and burn.
“Frankie,” I groaned, my fingers sliding to her chin and lifting her mouth to mine.
Her breath caught, and she stepped back. I didn’t want to, but I released her.
“You left,” she said, doing her best to hide the way she panted. “Without a word.”
My jaw locked. Again, I felt the truth knocking at my lips. I could tell her everything—lay the reasoning bare at her feet right now. But I wouldn’t enter through that door until she trusted that I wouldn’t walk right back out of it again when she needed me most.
“And now, I’m here to stay.”
She let out a laugh of disbelief. It hurt, but it was deserved.
“All week you’ve wanted this, and now you’re hesitating to tell me why?”
Now I saw it. The curious light flickering in her honey eyes. The need to know. To figure it out.
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
I stepped close to her again, feeling a small surge of victory when she didn’t back away. “Because I want to show you you can count on me first. Because when I tell you what happened, I don’t want there to be any doubt in your mind that I’d ever leave you like that again.”
Her throat bobbed. She was so used to banter—so used to a fight…I loved the look on her face when she saw someone fi ghting for her.
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
“Well, for starters, I’m going to let you stalk me.”
Her jaw dropped. “What? How? Wait—what if I don’t want to stalk you?”
Flustered Frankie was adorable. “You don’t have to, but you can.”
“I don’t understand.”Her brows bunched together.
“You sent me that photo, and I enabled the ‘share my location’ on your contact. So now, you can always look and see where I am,” I told her, watching her eyes widen. “Or not look. It’s up to you.”
“I probably won’t look,” she said defiantly.
“You probably won’t have to,” I agreed. “Because I plan on spending all my time with you.”
“So really, you’re the one who’s going to stalk me?” she countered but didn’t sound upset by the idea.
My head tipped, and I flashed her a grin. “I prefer to think of it as haunting.”