Chapter 16
KYRA
The last several days had been a special kind of torture for Kyra.
She’d watched her own hope be destroyed and resurrected again and again.
Once would have been enough. Destruction alone might have sent a clear message, but this roller coaster was something she couldn’t deal with right now, nor did she want to.
She’d never been the kind of person who made the same mistakes repeatedly.
No, she learned and changed her behavior.
Now she was determined not to make the mistake of getting close to Adam again. He would pull away every time something triggered his commitment phobia, or whatever it was he was dealing with. He’d proven that more than once. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him to prove it again.
She spent the rest of the morning clearing out the detached apartment and the spare room in the main house. Her car was almost completely packed when Adam came out carrying a large box. “You’ll want this,” he said.
What was it? When she looked more closely, she realized it was the swinging bench he had bought for her. “I can’t take that,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I have nowhere to put it,” she said.
“There’s room in your car.”
She tried to smile as she answered, “I mean in my apartment. I don’t have a yard or a big enough balcony. You keep it. Let the next person use it. You paid for it anyway.”
His face fell. “It was meant to be a gift.”
“I have the plant. That’ll be your gift to me.
Keep the swing. I really don’t have space for it.
” She didn’t tell him that she had planned to move in with her mother for the duration of her pregnancy.
In reality, she didn’t want reminders of him cropping up in the life she knew she’d be living without him.
“OK,” he said. His voice was more dejected than she would have expected it to be, but she reminded herself not to let it get to her.
Any regret he felt about her leaving would fade in time.
And any relief he might have felt had she chosen to stay would have faded as well, along with his affection for her.
Once he turned to take the box back to his garage, she hopped into her car.
There would be no goodbyes if she could help it; a clean break.
She buckled seatbelts around herself and her plant, which was sitting in the passenger seat next to her, and she threw the car in reverse.
There was a chance he had come back out of the garage to see her pull away, but she refused to look in the rearview mirror.
She didn’t want to see him standing alone behind her.
She didn’t look behind her until she knew his ranch was long out of view.
When she got to the base of the mountain, she finally shed a few tears, but she tried to swallow the feeling as quickly as it had arisen.
Crying behind the wheel was never a good idea, so she held all her feelings down with everything she had until she finally pulled up in front of the little house she’d grown up in.
As soon as she pulled into the driveway, Jasmine came out to greet her.
Kyra had barely stepped out of her car when she was immediately pulled into her mother’s arms. Only then did she finally let herself break down.
Jasmine held her a long time before finally speaking.
“Let’s get inside, and I’ll make you a hot drink. ”
“I have to unpack the car,” Kyra said, sniffling.
“I’ll help you unpack later.” Jasmine took her hand with an understanding smile. “Let’s sit down and talk.”
Kyra nodded, but then she bent back into her car to get the plant from the front seat and bring it with her. “It’s kind of cold,” she explained. “I don’t think it’s used to cold weather.”
Jasmine laughed a breathy laugh. “You’ve always been such a sweetheart. I know you’re going to make the most magnificent mother.”
Something about coming home and being in the presence of her mom made everything feel manageable.
Kyra sipped the herbal tea with honey that Jasmine had made for her and told her everything that had happened over the last several months.
Life with Adam wasn’t unpleasant, but it had become so confusing, she hardly knew what to do.
Finally, Kyra had decided enough was enough.
“It was a good choice, honey.” Jasmine reached across the table to pat her daughter’s hand. “Sometimes, it takes a little distance to make big decisions. I think you’re doing everything right.”
Kyra heaved a deep sigh. “Thank you, Mom. That means a lot coming from you.”
When she’d properly calmed down, Kyra started unpacking her car with Jasmine’s help.
They lugged her things upstairs and left them in the spare room, which used to be Kyra’s, but had become the guest room.
All her childish posters and stuffed animals had been removed.
It made perfect sense, but right now, Kyra felt about as vulnerable as she had felt as a child, and she could have used those small comforts.
“Hey, Mom, can I help out at the bakery tomorrow?”
Her mother turned to her after placing her plant near the window. “Are you sure you’re up to it? It might be better for you to rest.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” Kyra admitted.
“All right, honey. I could always use a little help. Come in when you’re ready, and leave when you need to. OK? Promise not to overwork yourself.”
“I won’t.”
The next day Kyra struggled to get out of bed.
It was so unlike her that she was convinced she’d come down with something.
The trouble was that she lacked any other symptoms. She didn’t have a fever, a cough, or any nausea.
Her only symptom was a complete lack of the energy that she usually had first thing in the morning.
She dragged her feet from her bed to the shower and got ready for the day in a slow-motion daze.
Kyra was never one to give up easily, though, or to mope in the corner the second she hit any roadblocks in life.
No, she kept marching forward no matter what happened.
She convinced herself her exhaustion was due to her pregnancy and made her way to the bakery.
Her mother was already there and probably had been since four in the morning.
By the time Kyra got there, it had been open for a while.
The early rush was well underway, and her mother looked frazzled but energetic.
“Kyra!” Jasmine smiled when she spotted her daughter in the dining room. “Thank goodness you’re here. Can you take over at the register for me?”
“Sure thing, Mom. I’ll be right there.” Kyra made her way to the back and put her things in her locker. Then she headed out to the register to relieve her mom.
“Thanks so much, honey,” Jasmine said. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Kyra expected that she would fall back into an easy routine as soon as she started working at the bakery again. But something about it felt wrong. She lacked the spirit she used to have. She kept forgetting to smile, and she could tell the customers noticed.
After getting through the line, she popped her head back into the kitchen. “Hey, Mom, can we switch places?”
Jasmine didn’t waste a second. She pulled off her apron and handed it to Kyra. “Not a problem. You feeling a little out of sorts?”
“I feel drained,” Kyra said. “I don’t think I’m the right person to be the face of the business today.”
“Gotcha.”
Kyra didn’t need to ask what still had to be done.
Everything was so automatic for her that all she had to do was glance at the state of the kitchen to know she needed to be shaping and frying more doughnuts.
For a while, things were perfect. Muscle memory kicked in, and Kyra was able to work without thinking.
Normally, she wouldn’t start to fade until after six hours on shift on a busy day. Today, though, she only lasted two.
Jasmine came back after another wave of customers and found Kyra bent over with both hands planted on a stool, propping herself up. “You don’t look so good,” she said. “Is everything OK?”
“It’s dandy,” Kyra said in the least sarcastic voice she could manage.
Apparently, some unhappiness found its way through, and Jasmine picked up on it. “Why don’t you head on home, honey. I never planned on having extra hands today. You’ve been so helpful already, and I think I can handle the rest of my shift on my own.”
Kyra felt like a failure, but she said, “Thanks, Mom,” and started to collect her things from her locker. “You don’t have to pay me for today.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jasmine said. “Now get your butt home, grab some snacks, and put on your favorite comfort show. I’ll be home in no time. Until then, you take excellent care of my future grandchild, OK?”
Kyra forced a smile. From the bottom of her heart, she meant it, but she couldn’t muster the energy for a more sincere expression.
Her mother seemed to understand and hurried her out the door before Kyra could properly protest. In truth, a big part of her didn’t want to protest at all.
She was tired, and it wasn’t the same kind of tired she used to feel at the end of a long day on the ranch.
It was a bone-deep tired that came from a lack of hope.
Back at the house, she curled up on the couch and listened to a show she’d grown up watching.
She was too tired to keep her eyes open to watch it, though she had always followed her mother’s instructions to the letter.
And though she was hungry, she was also too tired to make a snack or eat it.
Honestly, she doubted she would even be able to hold anything down, though she was past the morning-sickness part of her pregnancy.
When Jasmine got home, she found her daughter still curled up on the couch, half asleep with the show streaming quietly in the background. Kyra wasn’t even watching it. “Kyra?” Jasmine said, shaking Kyra’s shoulder gently. “Are you awake or hypnotized?”
Kyra looked at her mother and sat up on the couch. “Sorry. I guess I’m kind of tired,” she said with a sheepish smile.
“You’re more than simply tired, honey,” Jasmine said. “You’re depressed.”
“What?” Kyra tried to laugh but failed. “No, I’m not. I don’t get depressed.”
“I know it when I see it,” Jasmine insisted.
“Trust me. You’re good at denial, but you can get depressed just like the rest of us.
It’s rare, but I’ve seen it before.” She tapped Kyra on the nose, which got a lackluster chuckle out of her daughter.
“I’m going to whip us up some comfort food, and we’re going to spend the evening together doing whatever we want. ”
Kyra sighed. “I doubt I’ll be very good company for you.”
“That’s hardly the point,” Jasmine said. “Tonight, it’s all about what kind of company I can be for you.”
They spent the evening together in the house Kyra had grown up in.
She should have been comforted, but all she could think about was how this place felt so much less like home than it used to.
She missed the horses, the cows, and the chicks.
She missed Adam, though she shoved the thought out of her head every time she had it.
She realized, with some heaviness, that the ranch had become more like home to her than both her apartment and the house she’d grown up in.
At some point, without any particular trigger, Kyra finally burst into tears.
Her mother cocked her head at the television, assuming something in the show had brought it out, but the scene was a relatively uneventful one.
Ever the pragmatist, Jasmine got up and brought back a box of tissues.
“You’ve fought it long enough, honey,” she said. “Time to let it out.”
Kyra didn’t know how long she cried, only that it was long enough that the episode they were on had come and gone.
When she finally settled down, her mother’s arms were around her, and Kyra was holding a bunch of soggy tissues balled up in her hand.
Another pile of tissues was on the floor beside her.
She sat back and sniffled. “Sorry,” she said to her mom. “I don’t mean to be such a bummer.”
“You aren’t a bummer,” Jasmine said, getting up to get a wastepaper basket for the tissues. “Your boss is the bummer.”
When she returned with the basket, Kyra insisted on picking up the tissues herself, however awkward it was with her new belly. “It’s not his fault,” Kyra said.
“Oh, isn’t it?” Jasmine’s eyes narrowed. “It takes two to tango, honey. This situation is as much his responsibility as it is yours, and it isn’t fair that you’re the only one feeling it.”
Kyra didn’t know how to respond to that. Part of her wanted to defend Adam, but another part of her was so grateful to have another person on her side, she didn’t dare. Finally, her sense of justice won out. “It was my decision to keep the baby.”
Her mother shrugged. “And it was his decision not to use protection. Like I said, it takes two. The difference is you’re not running from it, and I couldn’t be prouder.
You, me, and this little baby are going to make the best family anyone could ever ask for.
It’s a shame your baby daddy is going to miss out on all of it.
He could at least call and check up on you.
The fact that he hasn’t even made sure you got home safely is making my blood boil. ”
“It’s OK,” Kyra mumbled. But it wasn’t, and she knew it as well as her mother did.
“Give me your phone,” Jasmine finally said.
“Why?”
“I’m going to call him to tell him you got here safely,” Jasmine said as though that wasn’t the most obviously thin excuse she could have used. “I promise not to yell at him too much.”
Kyra handed her phone over to her mother.
“Don’t yell at him at all, OK? But I should have told him I got here safely.
You’re right about that.” Not only that, but she was curious to know how he was doing.
At least it would be her mother finding out rather than her.
Less temptation to say something she would later regret.
Jasmine had always been great at diplomacy, so Kyra trusted her not to make a mess of things.
Jasmine glanced through Kyra’s contacts and found Adam’s number. “My hot boss?” she said with a chuckle. “You’ll want to change his name in your phone.”
Then she called him. Kyra held her breath while her mother waited for Adam to pick up. What would he say? Would he be worried about Kyra? Would he even care what happened to her after she had left the ranch? Something in her hoped he would.
But after several seconds of waiting, Jasmine finally hung up the phone. With a shake of her head, she handed it back and said, “He didn’t pick up.” And Kyra’s heart broke all over again.