Chapter 18
EVAN
“What did you think of the ceremony?” Evan asked Mia, slipping into a seat beside her. They were at a post-wedding lunch on the lawn. The buffet table strained under the weight of various pastas, salads, pizzas, and meat dishes. A second enormous buffet table held only desserts.
“It was beautiful.” Mia looked down at her plate, and Evan frowned. She’d been a little off all morning; the kiss last night must have gotten to her more than she was letting on. They needed to talk about it, but Evan was dreading the conversation.
“Can I get you a bowl of gelato?” Evan suggested. Mia was picking at her food halfheartedly, but she looked up and smiled at that.
“Actually, yes. That would be nice.”
Evan’s heart soared at her smile. “I’ll be right back.”
He stood and threaded through the crowd to the dessert table.
There were far more wedding guests now than before, and Evan found that he missed the quiet family atmosphere from the past few days.
He threaded through a group of Sarah and Luka’s hospital friends and made it to the table, where he took scoops of pistachio and Baccio gelato: pistachio because he knew it was Mia’s favorite, and Baccio because it looked chocolatey and she’d probably like that.
On the way back to the table, he ran into Luka and Sarah, who were coming out of the building where they’d taken a short break after the ceremony. They were holding hands and beaming, and Evan made a beeline for them.
“Bro!” Luka beamed. “There you are.”
“I want to congratulate you both,” Evan said. “I wish you a long and happy marriage.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said, leaning against her new husband. Luka reached out and clapped Evan on the shoulder.
“You mean that, don’t you?” Luka asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, because, until this week, I only ever heard you disparage the institution of marriage. Mia is a good influence on you.”
“I’m thankful I got to know Sarah better and saw how great a fit you were for each other,” Evan explained, but even he knew it wasn’t true.
Mia had changed how he felt about marriage.
It no longer felt inconceivable to spend a whole life with one wonderful person.
Evan couldn’t give up his work, but he understood now how other people could make that choice.
He didn’t feel as judgmental about it anymore.
He should reach out to Tyler and say the same thing.
Back at the table, Mia was looking down at her plate, biting her lip. Evan’s heart went out to her, and he held out a hand.
“Come on.”
“Hmm?” She looked up at him, confused.
“Let’s go eat the gelato on our bench.”
Smiling slightly, she let him help her up, her hand small and delicate in his. “Where’s ‘our’ bench?”
“Any bench with a good view is our bench. Like the one in Napa Valley, remember?”
“How could I forget?” She smiled.
They walked away from the wedding party and found a quiet bench overlooking the fields away from the noise and hubbub. Evan handed Mia her ice gelato and she took a tentative spoonful.
“Hey,” Evan said, “is everything… okay?”
Mia looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah. I already said I was okay.”
“I know, but you seem a little down today, and I feel bad. You came here because of me, and I wanted you to have a good time. If anything made you sad… like the kiss last night… you can tell me.”
Mia bit her lip, her gaze skating away. It was all the confirmation Evan needed that something was wrong, no matter what she said.
“Come on.” He nudged Mia’s shoulder. “If this is about our kiss, well—”
“There’s something else,” Mia blurted. Evan glanced at her. She was running the spoon around the melted gelato at the edge of the bowl.
“Okay.” Evan’s heart sank, even as his mind spun through the possibilities for why she was upset.
Maybe she was reconsidering their arrangement for future events after last night’s kiss.
Maybe she’d had a bad experience with one of his sometimes-thoughtless family members.
Maybe she was upset that he’d worked this morning and hadn’t been there when she’d woken up.
“I…” Mia’s eyes were bright. “I don’t know how to say this.”
“You can tell me. Spill it all out in one breath.”
She looked away. “Maybe it isn’t the right time. Ugh, I’m so sorry.” She sank her head into her hands, and Evan instinctively reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.
“You can tell me,” he repeated.
“I’m pregnant.” She spoke the words into her hands, so they came out a bit muffled, and Evan was sure he’d misheard.
“What did you say?”
She straightened and looked directly at him, her face set. “I’m pregnant.”
Evan reeled back, his hand falling from her shoulder. He felt shocked and dizzy, like someone had dumped icy water over him. He shook his head. “How?”
“It must have happened the night we spent together in Napa Valley.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t intend for this to happen. We were so careful. But it did happen, and this is a good thing, Evan.”
“I…” Evan looked away, not knowing what to say.
The whole world blurred in front of him.
He’d finally come to terms with why some people would get married, but kids…
kids ended careers. He’d always said that.
A minute passed as he stared out over the fields, feeling as though his world was crumbling.
“Say something,” Mia said, her voice breaking.
Evan’s heart went out to her, but he had no idea what to say.
He didn’t want to make promises that he couldn’t keep or ask questions that might hurt her more.
And he wasn’t even sure he could string a coherent sentence together with the way his head was spinning so much.
The one thing that was clear was that he couldn’t be a father. Reign was his baby, and fatherhood had never been part of his plan. He looked at Mia and she looked back at him, her beautiful brown eyes full of unshed tears. And he shook his head.
“Let’s talk about this,” Mia pleaded. “We can work this out.” But Evan got to his feet. He couldn’t reassure her, not when he felt so jumbled himself. If he spoke now, he’d only hurt her.
“You — and the baby — will never want for anything,” he managed. A tear rolled down Mia’s cheek.
“Is that it?” she asked, her voice low and hurt. She wiped the tear away, but her eyes were still bright.
Evan opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again. He turned and hurried away. He needed time to gather his thoughts. He needed space. This was all so sudden, so unexpected, and so confusing. How was he supposed to have any role in a child’s life when he worked eighty-hour weeks?
Aimlessly, he stumbled back toward the villa.
He couldn’t face Mia — or his family — right now.
He couldn’t bear to see how happy they were.
And he couldn’t bear to hear another comment about how Mia had made his life so much better.
She had. But her presence in his life had chipped away at everything he knew.
He struggled to work now. He thought of her all the time.
And now she was going to have his baby. She’d turned everything on its head, and Evan couldn’t bear to think about the way forward now.
So, he did what he always did in these situations.
He went up to the room they shared, took his laptop, and found a quiet place.
There, he began to work. Usually, he was able to lose himself completely in his work, but today, everything reminded him of Mia.
And the baby. He forced himself to answer emails, review analyses, and go over the schedule for the next week once he was back, but it was almost impossible to focus.
He kept thinking of the baby. And Mia. He found himself typing “pregnancy” into the search engine before quickly closing the tab, exasperated and confused.
After a few minutes, Evan gave up. He wasn’t about to get anything done.
He was going to need a better distraction than work — if such a thing even existed.
And he couldn’t miss Luka and Sarah’s wedding.
It meant a lot to his brother that he was here, and he couldn’t let him down. Mia had helped him see that.
So, Evan got up and headed downstairs, ready to pretend that everything was fine even as his life crumbled and he barreled headlong into an uncertain future.