Chapter 23
After I left Beau, I stayed in bed for a week.
I rested on my side, cradling my belly on the foam mattress in Ashley’s guest room…which also happened to be her office in the attic. When I wasn’t doom-scrolling on my phone, I watched Ashley edit videos for her channel.
Tonight, unfortunately, she decided to work on the video from my baby shower.
My glasses pushed into the side of my face as I watched her edit, but I didn’t care enough to adjust them. Ashley kept her big white headphones on as she stared at her dual monitors, sparing me from enduring the repeating audio as she cut and arranged clips from the shower.
My phone buzzed on the mattress and I looked down. With a silent sigh, I deleted the text from Dr. Ornelas’s office requesting that I reschedule my missed appointment. I knew I should have gone, and Ashley would have gladly driven me to the city, but I just…couldn’t.
I gently tapped the card that read “The Fontaine Family” against the top of my belly. When staring at my phone screen hurt my eyes, I switched to fidgeting with the satisfyingly thick cardstock of my souvenir from the April Showers gala.
The skin of my belly twitched—Annie had the hiccups.
I placed the card in its usual place on the tiny nightstand next to Mom’s ashes and patted my abdomen where Annie’s bottom was.
Brady, clearly jealous, pushed against his sister and Annie responded with a swift kick across my ribs.
I grimaced, but patted them both to try to soothe them.
They fought worse than Beau and I had.
As soon as I calmed them, a Braxton Hicks contraction stole the breath from my throat.
I shifted on the mattress as I tried to breathe.
The twin bed that pushed against the sloped attic wall was too damn small, but I was in no position to complain.
Ashley and Tyson had already sent their kids to Dr. and Mrs. Copeland’s house so they could take care of me before my c-section.
They were making huge sacrifices for me, but I couldn’t stop comparing them to Beau.
Crinkled plastic water bottles lined the floor by my bed, but they couldn’t replace the unique four flavors of water that Beau would make.
Ashley checked on my symptoms and told me what was normal, but she didn’t scour medical journals for me like Beau had.
Pete, their big ginger cat, snuggled by my belly every day, but he was no Titus.
Ashley had said that lying in bed and wanting to do nothing was perfectly fine for the thirty-fifth week of pregnancy, but I didn’t feel perfectly fine.
Every night, I’d wake up with my arm stretched out across the crowded attic-turned-nursery. I’d panic in my sleepy haze, thinking Beau had disappeared into thin air, and then I’d have to hold back tears when I woke up enough to realize I was the reason he was gone.
So, this is what being an independent woman looked like—lying like a slug in your best friend’s attic because you couldn’t bring yourself to trust the father of your children.
I sure was a winner.
I glanced up at Ashley’s monitor and watched a clip of a tracking shot of the green-tiled fireplace at Miss Kaye’s house. Ashley’s camera captured the shiny glaze of the tile, then the clip jumped to the wooden mantle that held Mom’s ashes.
The clip changed to a wide shot of the white room at Miss Kaye’s, right as Beau handed me my snack plate. He kissed me on the cheek and my stomach twisted as I watched my face harden and my lips form the words, “We aren’t together.”
Beau’s shattered spirit flashed across his face before he slipped the mask back on and walked away. I shut my eyes, refusing to see any more.
Another contraction rolled through my abdomen—a more painful one, that time—and I couldn’t help but think I deserved it.
I let out a miserable groan and Ashley took off her headphones. She swiveled around in her blue chair and rested her elbow on the corner of the double bassinet that was crammed between her desk and my nightstand.
“That one hurt, huh?” she asked.
“Still just Braxton Hicks,” I muttered. As much of a pain as they were, they didn’t come at a measurable pattern. It was all just senseless misery.
Ashley glanced to the floor but then looked back up at me. “Liv, I’m tired of seeing you like this. Just talk to him.”
I shook my head against the pillow. Despite the temptation that gnawed at my fingertips every time I reached for my phone, I had refused to reach out to Beau.
“No, he needs some space to get over me,” I said dully. “He needs to hate me, maybe find someone else out of revenge, and hopefully move on.”
Even if the idea of him with someone else made me want to fall to my knees and cry, Beau deserved to finally have happiness in his life.
Ashley’s mouth thinned at my response. I knew that look.
I furrowed my brows. “What? He’ll find someone better than me. I know you think I’m great, but you should have seen those gorgeous women at the gala who looked at Beau like he was a god descended from the heavens—”
“Remember when I sold Valentine’s Day candy grams for student council freshman year?” Ashley interrupted.
I blinked. What did high school have to do with this? “Um, sure?”
Ashley pulled her legs into her chair. “I was in the hallway, shilling those lollipops tied to balloons to anyone who passed, when Beau walked up and demanded to know if anyone had bought one for you. He was a complete asshole about it.”
I ran a hand down my belly and smiled as I remembered. “Oh yeah, you bought me five of those candy grams just to spite him!”
Ashley nodded. “As soon as Zach Wilson walked into Geometry class and handed you all those balloons, Beau got pissed. He started furiously scribbling in one of his notebooks like he was writing a manifesto or something.”
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“I thought it was just a one-off, but Beau kept harassing me about you—if you had tricked a poor soul into being your boyfriend, if you managed to find a date for prom, or if you were actually going to college or were just going to slum it around Elren for the rest of your life.”
I rolled my eyes. “God, I forgot how much of a dick he used to be. I wanted to strangle Mr. Garza for making Beau sit behind me in English class junior year.”
“But that’s the thing,” Ashley said as she leaned forward. “Mr. Garza never had assigned seating.”
I blinked. That’s right. Beau had whined in the car months ago that I had annoyed him in class, but he chose to never move.
“And it wasn’t just junior English either,” Ashley said, “Beau always sat near you if he could. You never noticed because you always sat at the front, but I did because he was so damn tall that I would have to lean on the edge of my chair just to see the whiteboard!”
Maybe Beau had a fascination with me, but didn’t that come hand-in-hand with the nature of the competition between us?
“We were academic rivals, Ash,” I said. “He probably just wanted to keep tabs on me—know thy enemy, and all that.”
Ashley folded her arms. “You only think that because you don’t know what he asked me before the reunion.”
“Wh-what? What did he ask?”
“He asked if you were married.”
I blew out the breath I had been holding in. “Well, of course. He was planning to hate-fuck me.”
She shook her head. “If that was really what he wanted, he would have asked if you were single. Or he would have just messaged me the question.”
“Wait, he left the manor and found you?”
She nodded. “He just walked in while Tyson and I were in the middle of the department store renovation. The question was buried in enough small talk that I didn’t think anything of it, but looking back, it was obvious that it was very important to him to know if you were married.”
Ashley’s eyes fell to the floor and she bit her lip. “I always thought he was just an asshole, but I started re-thinking everything during the middle of your pregnancy. Between the insistence of his questioning before the reunion and how he acted back in high school…”
My heart stopped. “Do you think he was in love with me then?”
She scoffed. “I think he didn’t have the balls to admit to himself that he had feelings for you, but something was there—something strong enough where he couldn’t move on from you even if he tried.
It’s like he always wanted to…” Her green eyes rolled around the room, as if she were searching for the right answer.
“He wanted to what?” I insisted.
Her eyes landed on my face. “He wanted to keep you.”
I took a quick glance at “The Fontaine Family” card on the nightstand as my hands splayed across either side of my belly. Though a very sudden and very warm feeling of being wanted filled my body, I couldn’t accept it.
“Well, I don’t want to be kept.” I scoffed. “How many times do I have to say it? I want my independence, to keep winning million-dollar verdicts, and to never rely on a man, ever.”
Ashley’s brows peaked and her eyes strained. “And what’s the point of achieving all that if you still aren’t happy?”
The warmth in my body disappeared in an instant, leaving behind a hollow cavern beneath my ribs. I was about to argue that happiness didn’t pay bills when the familiar rumble of a diesel engine echoed outside.
“That’s him!” I gasped as I shifted my legs off the mattress.
“Wait,” Ashley protested, “shouldn’t you—”
“I can’t believe he has the gall to show up here,” I grumbled as I leaned forward, trying to stand up from the mattress. “I have to tell him to get lost.”
Ashley sighed, but hopped off her chair and pulled me to my feet before leading me to the stairs. Before I could descend the first step, pain flared down the side of my belly and I gripped Ashley’s hand.
“Are you sure you want to go downstairs?” Ashley asked. “You’re obviously in a lot of pain and—”
The doorbell rang and my heart raced.