35. Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Five
Emily
“ O h Jesus.” Trent breathes out the words, and the shock on his face is clear. “You’re pregnant?”
“I took a test when I was in New York City. I haven’t been to the doctor to confirm, but Maggie said it’s rare to get a false positive.”
“Maggie knows?”
“Trent, everyone is going to know.”
He stares at me for a beat, and I can see the wheels turning, as though he’s picking his words carefully. “Congratulations.”
“Trent.” I close my eyes at the ridiculousness of that word. “I know the timing—”
“Obviously, you can’t tell anyone now that I’m the father.”
“And you think people won’t be able to put two and two together? You were living in my house. I went to the station and told the police why the footage was deleted. People talk.”
He runs his hands along his face. “I’ll leave Little Falls and go back to Utica.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, anxiety sloshing around in my stomach. “That’s your solution.”
“Have you seen the shop?” He gestures around him. “There’s no one here, Em. What am I clinging onto?”
“Clinging on?” I scoff. “You’re not clinging onto anything. You’re letting it all slip through your fingers like you don’t care about any of it.” I shut my mouth before the rest of what I’m thinking and feeling spills out.
“I’ve learned when to cut my losses,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
“There is, and it’s not the one you’ve created.
Cutting your losses when going after something is doing more harm than good.
When you were a kid, you went after something with your whole chest, and it blew up in your face.
You chose wrong. But this situation and that situation couldn’t be further apart. ”
“I hurt people then,” he says, “and I’m hurting people now. I can’t keep going after something that hurts people.”
“You think leaving doesn’t hurt? That leaving isn’t harmful?
What about the people who’ve come to depend on this shop in Little Falls?
The people who took a chance on you and your ability to fix things that were broken?
” My voice catches, and I try to steady myself.
I won’t cry my way through this conversation.
“What about Amir?” My voice is so thick with unshed tears that I almost don’t recognize it. “What about me ?”
“People in this town aren’t going to be nice about me being questioned, about the shop being under suspicion. Tell me people haven’t already said shitty things to you?”
“You know what made those shitty things people were saying worse?” I ask, stepping toward him.
“Knowing that I didn’t have you standing behind me.
You were nowhere . I couldn’t go home and tell you about the stupid thing someone said to me, or the terrible way someone made me feel.
I was alone. I was alone when I had to explain to Amir why kids at camp were asking him about you going to jail. ”
“You’re proving my point, Em. If I wasn’t in your life, none of this would be happening. Those comments are exactly why it won’t work.”
“No, you’re framing all of this in some warped way that only makes sense to you.
I don’t care what those people are saying if I’ve got you.
I’ll face those questions and comments, and I’ll defend you with everything I’ve got.
You have this—I don’t know—idea that you’re saving me and Amir, but you’re not .
You’re just leaving us to face it alone. ”
“If I’m in Utica, you’ll get it a lot less. Just ask Maggie.”
He says it with such certainty that I wonder if he and Maggie talked about it one time.
And it reminds me how I once suggested that Maggie could use Trent and his past as a way to tank Grady’s bid for mayor.
I close my eyes, and I try to breathe through that memory.
My heart is squeezing so hard in my chest that I almost can’t catch my breath.
The realization that I did that, suggested that, stings.
“I’m not good enough for you,” he says, and his jaw is set.
“Who says?” I ask, my eyes snapping open.
“Come on,” Trent says. “You think no one has made a snide comment to me about sinking the reputation of another Sullivan woman?”
“Okay, fine,” I say, feeling desperation creeping up my throat. “Are their opinions more important than mine? Who gets to decide whether you’re good enough? Because if it’s me—which is who it should be—then I call bullshit.”
Everything I say is true—I mean it with my whole heart—but it also feels like I’m scrambling for footing in this conversation. He seems so set in his stance that we can’t work, his opinion of what this looks like, what it should be.
“Who holds all the pieces when you’re not around anymore, Trent?” I can barely get the words out of the tightness in my throat.
“You’re killing me, Em,” he rasps, and his hands cover his face, shoulders slumped.
“I don’t want to kill you, Trent. I just want you to let me love you.”
“I’m a marked man,” he says, his voice rough with emotion.
He drags his hands down his face, and he looks as exhausted as I feel.
I wonder if he’s been having trouble sleeping too.
Every night, I stare at his side of the bed, and I wish him there so hard.
When I close my eyes, I can almost feel his rough palm sliding along my waist, feel the dip in the mattress.
“Judy was dealing drugs on the side, and I didn’t know. But she’d have known the risks she was putting on me, on my shop. I can’t know that this won’t ever be a problem again. And I just…” He shakes his head. “I need to keep you and Amir safe from all of it.”
“ You’re not a danger, Trent.” I take a risk and step closer to him. “Nothing that’s happened in the last week is something you brought on.”
“My past is always going to rear its head. I’m never going to escape the ex-con label.”
I’m close enough that I can touch him, and so I run my hand from his shoulder to his bicep. Even that brief contact makes everything in my body liquid, as though every ounce of stress and anger that’s been holding me up is seeping out of me. Trent closes his eyes, and his hands clench at his sides.
It’s wrong, manipulative, even, but I curl into his side, resting my head on this chest. His hand sinks into my hair, but his eyes are still closed.
“You smell like lemons,” he whispers.
“Stress cleaning,” I say, keeping my voice quiet like his.
“Those chemicals can’t be good for the baby.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admit. Part of me has been trying to pretend I’m not pregnant because the idea of facing Trent felt too big, too ominous.
He draws me into a tight hug, and I sink into it, making fists in his shirt at the back, desperate for the contact, the scent of vanilla and motor oil swirling around my senses.
He sighs across the top of my head. “I love you,” he says it like it’s been ripped out of him. “God, I love you so much. It’s like, painful. And I’m sorry I can’t do what you want. But I’d always feel like I was ruining your life, and I can’t. I just can’t.”
I clutch onto him and push my face into his chest, willing myself not to cry. It doesn’t seem to matter what I say, and it’s the most painful and frustrating thing that’s ever happened to me.
“You didn’t ruin my life, Trent,” I say, as the roar of a truck echoes down the quiet street. “You healed it. You healed my heart.”
“I’ve never regretted what I did at nineteen more than I do right now.”
But I don’t need more of his regret and self-flagellation.
He needs to learn to let his past decisions go, to see that those don’t have to define this future.
That he has some choice in that, some agency, despite what’s happened this last week.
That it’s okay to want things in life and to move toward those desires with good intentions.
He’s so stuck in this warped sense of himself, of what he can offer. But he can’t see that the man he’s become more than makes up for the mistakes he once made. And I don’t know how to make him.
Brett climbs out of the truck with two coffees in his hands, and I step back from Trent.
“I want you in my life, and I want you in this baby’s life,” I say, making eye contact. “Maybe you should think about going to talk to someone.”
“Like who?” he asks, running a hand over the top of his head.
“A therapist?” I suggest as Brett gives us space by going into the front reception.
Trent grips the back of his neck, but he avoids making eye contact. “You don’t think I’m expressing myself very well?”
“I don’t think you’re seeing yourself very well.”
“I know who I am.”
“Do you?” I say, trying to get him to look at me. “Because to me, it seems like when you hold a mirror up to yourself, all you see are your mistakes and none of your accomplishments.”
“I know who I am,” he says again, his voice firmer.
I run my hands through my long hair in frustration, and I leave without another word. Right now, I’m not going to get through to him, and I don’t know what it’ll take to make him see reason.