She went to the railing before she stopped and turned to look at him. Somehow she managed to speak first. “I had no idea you were going to be here.”
“Funnily enough, I guessed that.” His eyes moved over her face, like he was seeing her for the first time. Like he didn’t know her. And at the end of it all, they didn’t know each other…not really.
Case in point, he was Liam James.
The country musician. The country musician whose albums she had. The country musician who wrote the songs “It Ain’t Me, It’s You”; “Buckle Up”; and “Mother Trucker.” Songs that she’d sang along to quite loudly more times than she could possibly count.
She knew his music, so how was it possible that she hadn’t made the connection? She’d even had her own private show.
Maybe it was because when he was around her she couldn’t think straight to save her life. Maybe that was the reason.
“I owe you an explanation.” She started to run her hands up and down her bare arms.
The sun had only gone down about an hour ago, the temperature dropping to the mid-seventies. It was still warm, even with the breeze coming from the water, but it didn’t matter, she suddenly found herself very cold.
“You mean for leaving and not saying good-bye?”
“Yes.” She nodded slowly. “For that.”
“By all means.” He gestured to the space between them. “The floor is yours.”
Her mouth went dry and she regretted downing the last of her ginger ale. “I’ve thought about this more times than I can count. Gone over what to say to you. But now that you’re here, and I’m looking at you, none of it seems right. I don’t know where to start…I didn’t expect it to be this hard.”
“Did you think it was going to be easy?”
“No…” She shook her head. “No, I didn’t think it was going to be anywhere near easy. Nothing about you has been easy. Not from the moment I met you. I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have imagined you. Couldn’t have predicted that weekend. What it was like to be with you. It was unreal. Everything that happened…I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“But it was real, Harper.” He took a step toward her, closing the gap between them. “And you walked away.”
“I was scared.”
“That’s a bullshit excuse. Everyone gets scared.” She couldn’t help but flinch at the harshness of his words. “You don’t think it freaked me out?” he asked, taking another step toward her, their shoes almost touching.
He was only about an inch or two taller than her with her heels on, but she still had to tilt her head back to look up into his face. His expression was fierce, his eyes so intense that she was desperate to look away, but she couldn’t. Not for the life of her.
“You don’t think it was scary for me, too? That’s never happened to me before. Meeting someone, and having this…I don’t even know what it was, but it was something powerful. Something real.” He reached out, his hands landing on hers and stopping her palms from constantly moving up and down her arms.
Her next breath was sharp, the contact of his skin on hers overwhelming her beyond anything else. How was it possible to miss something so much? Something she’d only known for such a short amount of time?
“You think a single second of it was easy for me?”
“No.” The word fell from her mouth on a whisper.
“And then you were gone.” His hands disappeared from her body and he took a step back from her. “Dammit,” he all but shouted as he turned away from her, his hands going to his hair as he walked a few steps to the side. He leaned against the half wall that ran around the balcony, resting his forearms on the top and looking out to the city below them.
She came up next to him, placing her palms flat on the concrete wall. She watched the twinkling lights of the cars and buildings below them for a few moments before she spoke. “It wasn’t easy you know. Leaving you.”
He turned at her words, his hair falling across his forehead and into his eyes. She wanted to reach over and push it back.
Not appropriate.
She pressed her hands down onto the concrete, the grit digging into her skin. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
“Yet you did it anyway. Why?”
“I thought it was safer.”
“Safer?”
“Liam, I’d just gotten out of the most serious relationship that I’d been in. Ever. Brad, my ex, he broke me. I’m not over-exaggerating, either. He really did, and that was after being with him for a year and a half. I knew you for less than forty-eight hours, and somehow you had more of that power than he did.” Her throat tightened, the corner of her eyes prickling as tears started to brim. “I’ve never done anything like that before.” She tried not to wince as her voice cracked on the last word.
God no, you are not doing this. Pull yourself together and do not cry.
He straightened, turning toward her and focusing on her face. “I know. You don’t go home with men you just met.” He repeated her words from that morning after. The first time she’d tried to leave.
“But it isn’t just that, Liam. I don’t sleep with guys on a first date, or the fifth date, or the twelfth date. It takes a lot of time for me to get to that point. But with you, there was no time. It just…happened. And it’s never been like that before…the sex I mean, because that wasn’t just sex. That was something else entirely. Especially that last time…it…it terrified me. So I ran.” She blinked, and the prickling in her eyes turned to a burn, the tears falling. “I’m sorry, Liam. I really am,” she said as she reached up and wiped at her cheeks, running her fingers under her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve regretted a decision more in my life.”
“Yet you didn’t do anything to fix it.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I was going to? I think I’ve stared at your number on my phone, my finger hovering over the Dial button, almost every night since I left.”
“So you do still have my number.” His breath came out on an aggravated sigh as he shook his head. “Do you have any idea how incredibly frustrating the last few weeks have been? After meeting you, I’ve second-guessed everything. I can understand you being scared. And I might be able to understand you running. But what I can’t understand is that after all this time you still have done nothing, even though you’ve regretted your decision. So no, I don’t know if I believe you, Harper. I don’t know if I believe you were really going to do anything.”
“I deserve that.”
The full ramifications of the whole situation didn’t hit home until that moment. Okay sure, she wasn’t expecting him to get over everything that had happened and just forgive her for walking out. She wasn’t that delusional.
In the end though, not only was this man the father of her child, but she was most definitely in love with him. And now he might not want anything to do with her.
What had she done?
He turned away from her again, bracing his hands on the wall as he dropped his head between his shoulders and looked down at the city. “I don’t know what to do with any of this. Where to go from here.”
“I don’t, either. But…but there’s something else you should know…something that you need to know,” she amended.
He straightened, pulling his head up and looking at her. “And what’s that?”
“Liam, I…” The words caught in her throat.
Say it, Harper.
Say. It.
Tell him now.
NOW!
“I’m pregnant.”
For a moment nothing was registering on his face. It was blank, frozen, like the rest of him. He’d even stopped breathing.