Chapter 12
HANNAH
Mom has been talking for ten minutes about the new curtains she ordered and I haven't heard a word of it.
I sit across from her at the café on Second Street, pushing a piece of grilled chicken around my plate and trying not to breathe through my nose because the smell of the soup special is making my stomach roll.
"You're not eating," she says, and I can tell by her tone that she feels like hovering. Mom has this way of trying to micromanage my life at times with her concerns, and I discovered a long time ago that if I just ignore that, it gets worse.
"I'm eating." I stab the chicken and take a small bite to prove it, and my body immediately tells me it was a bad idea. I set the fork down and reach for my water instead. This nausea keeps getting worse every day. I think I'm losing weight from it now too.
"Hannah Marie, you've barely touched your food and you look like you haven't slept in a week." Mom leans forward and puts her hand on the table near mine, not quite touching, giving me the option. "What's going on with you?"
"Nothing's going on with me." I take a sip of water and press the cold glass against my temple for a second because it feels good.
After getting over the flu last month, I swear I just got more tired than ever.
But I can't shake the idea that I might have really screwed up by having sex with Luke.
"I'm just tired. It's been a long couple of weeks. "
"It's been a long couple of months, from what I can tell." She sits back and folds her arms. "You've been short with everyone. You missed book club last Tuesday, which you never do. And now you're sitting here looking green and pretending everything's fine."
I love my mother. I love her more than almost anyone on this earth. But the woman has a radar that could track a submarine through a hurricane, and right now, I need her to turn it off. I can't have her nosing around my private life and screwing things up.
"I've been dealing with Luke Maddox every single day for weeks," I tell her, and it's not a lie.
It's just not the whole truth. She knows how much I've hated Luke since Nick died.
"The festival is in four months and every conversation I have with that man turns into a fight.
He's difficult and stubborn, and he's got opinions about things he doesn't understand.
On top of all that, I have to look at him and remember what he did to our family every time he opens his mouth. "
Mom's expression softens at that and her hand slides the rest of the way toward mine, touching my fingers lightly. She lived this worse than I did. She better than anyone knows how I should be feeling right now.
"I know it's hard, sweetheart," she says quietly. "I know being around him brings it all back."
"It does." And it does, even if lately, it brings back other things too. Like the stupid teenage crush I swear I will never tell her about. It's none of her business, and I don't need half the town knowing I slept with him.
She takes a drink of her iced tea and dabs her lips with her napkin, and I can see her shifting gears. There's something else she wants to ask. "What about that handsome Mr. Dorsey?" she says, and there it is. "He seems to have taken quite an interest in the festival. And in you."
"Mom—"
"I'm just asking." She holds up her hands. "He's been around a lot. People notice these things."
"People notice everything in this town." I push my plate to the side because I'm done pretending I'm going to eat any of it. "Mr. Dorsey is helping with the festival because he donated a significant amount of money and that gives him a seat at the table. That's all it is."
The very thought of that man and me is gross. The more time I spend with him, the more he makes me cringe. I'm not really sure he's even good-looking anymore.
"He's very polished," Mom says, which is her way of saying she finds him attractive without actually pointing it out to me. She's trying to push me toward him.
"He's very involved," I say, and I don't mean it as a compliment.
Calvin Dorsey has been showing up to more and more planning meetings over the last few weeks, and every time he does, he has an opinion about something that wasn't his business yesterday.
He frames it all as suggestions, but they don't feel like suggestions.
They feel like instructions from a man who's used to people doing what he tells them.
I don't like it and I don't like him, and the more time I spend around him, the less I trust his reasons for being so generous.
"He's not a love interest, Mom," I say firmly. "So you can stop."
"I wasn't implying anything." Oh, God, she plays the innocent card so well, but I know her better than that. I refrain from rolling my eyes, but I don’t let her off the hook so easily.
"You were absolutely implying something."
She smiles at me over her iced tea, and I shake my head.
Under different circumstances, I'd laugh, but my stomach is doing that slow, queasy thing again and the smell from the kitchen is getting worse.
I take another drink of water and press my palm flat against my belly under the table where she can't see. This is getting so bad, I think I really will throw up right here if I don’t leave.
"I think I need to get going," I tell her. "I've got a call with the sound company at three and I still need to go over the vendor contracts."
"You work too hard," she says as I pull cash from my wallet and drop it on the table. She stands up and hugs me, and I let her because it feels good to be held right now, even if I can't explain why.
"I love you, Mom."
"I love you too." She pulls back and studies my face with those sharp eyes of hers. "You'd tell me if something was really wrong, wouldn't you?"
"Of course I would," I say. "I'm fine. Just tired." The plastic smile I force is wearing thin. Soon, I won't be able to fake these moments.
The nausea catches up with me in the parking lot.
It's been doing this for about a week and a half now, rolling in around mid-morning and just sitting there in my gut for a couple of hours before it finally backs off enough to let me function.
I sit in the driver's seat with the door cracked and my feet on the pavement, breathing through my mouth and waiting it out.
So incredible to have my own body attacking me like this.
I keep telling myself it's stress. I've been running on coffee and no sleep for months now, and that messes with your cycle.
Everybody knows that. It's a perfectly good explanation and I'd love to believe it, except the nausea shows up every morning between nine and eleven.
That's not stress. I know that's not stress.
I'm just not ready to say out loud what it actually is.
It's been six weeks since I had sex with him, and three since my period was due and never came. I'm an idiot. And I'm too afraid to go get the damn test to prove it. Doing that would just make this whole thing real and I'm not ready to face that yet.
The nausea passes, so I pull the door shut and head home.
When I turn onto Harborview, Luke's truck is in his driveway, and because the universe has a genuinely sick sense of humor, he's up on the roof.
And he might as well be shirtless for what this view is doing to me.
He's spreading pitch along the ridge line where the old shingles have been leaking.
There's just something sexy about a man working hard like that, even if I can't see the flesh I know is there, covered in dark ink.
But this is the man who killed my brother. That used to be the singular certainty in my life—that I hated Luke Maddox for what he did, and I will never forgive him. Falling for him isn't an option. He is Enemy Number One.
So why does my foot ease off the gas as I roll past, watching every fucking move he makes?
I have to steer clear of him. I've told myself that a hundred times already. But I keep feeling so drawn to him, and now this fear of being pregnant has me thinking about him all the time. What sort of father would he be like? Would he even want a baby? I'm going insane.
He sits up straighter and looks down, and I accelerate away, hoping he didn't see me, because sending him any sort of message that makes him think I'm interested would be a very bad idea.
This festival is the only reason I'm in contact with him.
And I'm hoping he will finish his job around here and go back to whatever rock he crawled out from under.
That’d make my life so much better.
Wouldn’t it?