Chapter 23 #2
“I’m in pain all the damn time.” I gripped the wooden handrail and took my first shaking step down. “If I don’t go down there and tell him to leave, he’ll wait on the porch forever!”
Reluctantly, Ashley helped me down the two flights of creaking stairs until we reached her living room. I was nearly out of breath, but I released Ashley’s hand and hurried to the front door.
The antique hinges creaked as I opened the door. “Beau, you can’t be here—”
But he wasn’t there. My heart sank as I scanned the empty porch, finding nothing but Ashley’s hanging ferns and a deserted driveway while the faint chirping of crickets filled the night.
A sharp spike like a tearing sensation flared up on the right side of my belly and I grimaced. I looked down and splayed my hand across the aching spot when my eyes caught a flash of white on the welcome mat.
I took a step back so my belly wouldn’t block my view and found a folded paper note covering a small dark box like a tent. I widened my stance to bend over and retrieve it, but Ashley snuck around from behind me and picked up the note.
With a soft smile, Ashley handed me the note. It was written on college-ruled notebook paper and had a short message written in ballpoint pen on the front.
“You win,” Beau had written.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and unfolded the crinkling paper. I held my breath as my eyes traveled down the paragraphs written in blue ink.
“Olivia,
According to my research, you had a 1 in 100 chance of getting pregnant with an IUD. We had a 30 in 100 chance of making a baby after one try and our pregnancy had a 3 in 100 chance of resulting in twins.
For years, I believed my grandfather that I would never reap the benefits of good fortune for the rest of my life, but putting the odds together gave us a .009% chance of having our twins, and ultimately, of you coming back into my life.
And that makes me the luckiest man alive.
As lucky as I am, you have ruined me. You unspooled me little by little and wrapped me around your finger, but I have no intention of ever untangling myself from you.
You won, Olivia. You will forever have all of me.
Consider this as my complete and unconditional surrender. Accept me, reject me, do whatever you wish, but if you want me to be part of your forever, just come home. I’ll be waiting on bended knee for the rest of my days.”
My heartbeat pounded against my brain as I read the last line over and over.
How could he? I made it damn clear to him that I couldn’t be with him, but he was still trying to win me over! What would I have to do to make him give up? How much more did Beau want me to hurt him?
Pain flared through my abdomen again, but I beared down, staring at Beau’s letter like I could have burned a hole through it with the intensity of my gaze.
Beau Fontaine was an incomprehensible ass, impossible to reason with, and the most stubborn man to walk the planet, but he would not get me to break.
A footstep on the creaking floorboard behind me forced me to tear my eyes away from Beau’s letter. Tyson stood in the curved archway between the kitchen and the living room, a cold bottle of blue Tigerade in his hand.
“Thought I heard a truck in the driveway,” Tyson said. “Did someone come by?”
My trembling hands made the notebook paper crinkle, but Ashley’s lilting voice remained calm. “Beau Fontaine left presents on the welcome mat.”
Presents? Oh, right! Something had been under the note. I turned from Tyson back to Ashley, and my breath caught in my throat when I saw the tiny leather box resting in the palm of Ashley’s hand.
He didn’t. He fucking didn’t.
I shook my head, but Ashley’s brows softened and she nodded in response. She slowly held out the box.
“Should I kneel?” Ashley asked.
“N-no…” I stammered, but my shaking hand floated up to take the box anyway. “No…how dare he? I’ll kill him. I’ll…”
But all my words failed when I opened the box.
Sitting in a cushion of white velvet was a ring that I instantly clocked as being an original Art Deco piece.
The central round diamond sparkled like rainbow fire under the living room lights.
Eight emeralds shaped like tiny fans surrounded the center stone amongst the metalwork, creating the illusion of a flower in the abstract.
I gently plucked the ring from the velvet, holding the platinum band between my fingers as the ring sparkled.
“Oh!” Ashley cooed. “It’s beautiful!”
“He left that on the porch?” Tyson said incredulously.
“Beau might be too much of a coward to propose in person,” Ashley said as she peered at the ring, “but damn did he drop a dime on that ring.”
Beau could have purchased any ring in the world, but he didn’t buy this one. A sharp pang flared between my heartbeats when I finally placed where I had recognized the ring—his great-great grandmother Adelaide.
It was the wedding ring earned from ten years of patience.
My head swam. I slowly put the ring back amongst the velvet and lowered the box on a nearby credenza.
I told Beau that we weren’t together and he responded with a marriage proposal.
If he truly loved me, he wouldn’t torture me like this. I tried to give us a clean break and starve him of me so he could find happiness elsewhere, but just like at every juncture of this damn pregnancy, he had to barrel in and smash all my efforts to bits.
He called his proposal his unconditional surrender, but asking me to marry him required my surrender.
Did he think I was so weak-willed that I would bend at the glitter of the most beautiful piece of antique jewelry I had ever seen?
That I could forget everything I was and become the Fontaine wife he wanted?
No matter how much he wanted to keep me, I was still me.
Did he want every day to start with an argument?
Did the former star athlete want to resign himself to rotting in bed and watching murder shows with me?
Did he want to hate me during football season when our alma maters went head-to-head?
Did the man who owned a damn helicopter want to share his life with a woman who still stopped at weekend garage sales?
How could Beau have spent all those months with me and still want me? He had no idea how big of a mistake he made by leaving that ring on the welcome mat.
I hated him for ignoring my boundary and for giving me emotional whiplash, but most of all, I hated him for how badly I wanted to say yes.
“I can’t…” I whispered to myself. “I…”
Searing pain tore through my belly like I was being split in half and I gripped the wooden edge of the credenza to keep from falling. I gritted my teeth as my body shook.
Footsteps pattered over the pounding in my ears as Ashley and Tyson both ran to my side.
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Ashley asked.
I opened my mouth to try to answer her, but I couldn’t. I had no air left as pain reverberated through my body like a church bell.
Suddenly I was wet, much too wet, between my legs. I shoved myself off the credenza and turned. Tyson tried to help me, but I brushed past him as I made a beeline for the bathroom beneath the stairs.
I barely had enough time to flick on the light and slam the door shut behind me before I collapsed onto the toilet. My vision blurred. Cold sweat ran down the side of my temple as pain roiled through my abdomen.
Did my water break? Were the twins coming?
Only when the pain waned for a short reprieve did I dare look down. I stared at my underwear stretched between my knees as all the warmth drained from my face.
“Ashley,” I called. “ASHLEY!”
The weathered brass doorknob turned and Ashley entered the bathroom. Her eyes widened as she looked down at my underwear—stained with blood.
Ashley’s eyes then locked with mine and her face hardened. “Don’t move. I’m calling Beau.”