Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RUBY
As soon as I woke up, I told Max we were spending the day at the beach.
So that’s where we are.
I’d also sent Shay a text to meet me here, giving her only a summed-up version of what happened.
I thought about texting Grace or Brooke, but I needed someone who has known me longer and better.
I need someone who knew me back when I was living with Colt.
My relationship with Shay is different from my brothers’ spouses. Shay went to the same college I did before she moved back to Lovers. We’d find time to meet between classes and become good friends.
But by the time I’d moved back last summer, she and Luca had their own thing going, and he sucked up all her time.
I don’t blame her for picking him over me, but right now, I could really use one of my closest friends.
Max is running across the beach with a soccer ball by the time Shay lowers herself to sit next to me in the sand.
She lets out a breath.
“Declan’s really going to leave?” she asks.
Word travels fast in a small town.
“Yeah, he is.”
“You can’t make it work?”
“He thinks we can, but you know how it goes with long distance and there are kids involved. Maybe if it was just me …”
I’d thought about it a lot last night after Declan finally made his way to his room.
Would my choice be different if it were just me?
Had I not uprooted my life once before for someone, would I be saying yes?
If I weren’t so worried about what people would say about me following another man out of town, would I have said yes?
“I think I’m broken,” I say quietly.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because my heart hurts and I want him to stay, but I could never live with myself if he gave up anything in his life to stay with me. Here. To pick me. Like, what makes me so important that he should change all his goals in life for me?”
Shay blows out a breath. “That one is tricky. I think it’s different because you love him.”
I do.
“I’m going to miss him so much,” I say and then suck in a breath to keep myself from crying. “Max is going to miss Susie, too, and I just don’t want to be sad again. I don’t want to feel broken again. Like I still wasn’t good enough for someone.”
The crazy part is that he was about to pick me. He was about to say he’d stay. I could have just let him, and he would have never known about the offer from Colt’s dad. But I couldn’t let him pick me.
And that’s what makes me feel broken. I had everything I wanted right then, and I didn’t take it.
Silence settles over us, and then I hear her sniffle.
Her color is off and she looks tired.
Is she that worried about me?
“Hey,” I say and scoot closer to her. “Don’t cry. I cried enough for both of us last night, alright?”
She nods and then blurts out, “I’m pregnant.”
I gasp.
“What?”
“Yeah, like super fucking pregnant.”
“Shay! That’s wonderful.” I wrap my arms around her as she begins to sob.
“No, no, why are we crying?”
I try to wipe her tears away, but it’s no use.
“Because you’re sitting here heartbroken and I’m … stupid happy right now.”
I stick my bottom lip out and my eyes well with tears to match hers.
“And we are going to be extra stupid happy for a long, long time together.”
She burst into tears again.
“And I’ve been sick a lot. I can’t eat, but I just want cookie dough, and I … I want to make this all better for you and I can’t, and everything makes me cry.”
I let out a small laugh while sniffling right along with her.
“You’re making me an aunt—you’ve already made my day better.”
“I think I made it worse.”
“Nope. You did not. I choose to be happy for the rest of the day because of this news.”
She leans into me, and I hug her tight.
I’ll go back to being sad when I’m alone.
“Hey, Ruby?”
“Yeah?
“You know how you said that you’d never forgive yourself if you let him give up his goals?”
“Yes,” I say and attempt to clean my tear-stricken face.
“Well, I think you’re forgetting something very important about all that.”
“What?”
“What if being with you was one of his goals?”
And just like that, I start crying all over again.
“The things we want in life change when we change, Ruby. It’s just a matter of how you accept that change and what you’re going to do about it.”
I let her words sink in as we sit there hugging in the sand.
She’s right.
The past few months have changed me in more ways than I ever knew possible.
Now, I just need to decide which direction to go with it.