Breakaway

Chapter Sixteen

She loved being held by Jason in bed after sex, his arms around her, sinking into his voluptuous body heat, her legs twined with his, her cheek on his chest. But they weren’t in bed and their clothes separated them in a way that was more than just fabric.

“Yeah,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I do have something to tell you.”

“Okay.”

He paused and she waited, playing with his chest hair.

“You remember Brianne?”

Her stomach clenched and her fingers stilled. “Your old girlfriend Brianne?”

“Yes.”

She waited again.

“She’s pregnant.”

Jason’s heart thudded steadily beneath her cheek. Her heart, on the other hand, had stopped. Her body felt hot and tight. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Her thoughts blurred and the room shifted around her, closed in on her, then faded out.

She wanted to say, so what? Who cares about her anymore? What’s the big deal?

But she knew what the big deal was. Jason wouldn’t be telling her this if it didn’t matter hugely to him. And it could only matter to him for two reasons—either he was still in love with Brianne and this fact devastated him or…he was the father.

And she knew which one of those it was.

She knew.

Her heart probably started beating again, she didn’t know, but it hurt. It hurt so bad she almost cried out with the agony of it.

She rolled away from Jason and sat up on the edge of the couch, her back to him. Her eyes burned, but no tears came. Her stomach tightened so much she felt nausea rolling over her. She still fought for oxygen, the room shifting around her as if she was on a slow moving merry-go-round.

“It happened just before we broke up,” Jason continued in that low, barely audible voice. “Before I met you. I haven’t been with her since, Remi. It’s not like that.”

She gave a jerky nod, but although that did take care of the foremost question in her head, that assurance did not make her anguish any better. Not at all.

She stood, but her knees were like butter and her vision went dark and she had to sit back down quickly. She sucked a breath into constricted lungs.

Then questions flooded her brain, clogging up and confusing her. She couldn’t get words out. “What…” She swallowed, tried again. “How did you…”

“Remi, come here. Please.” He tugged on her arm, trying to pull her back to him, but she twisted out of his grasp. Fury blazed inside her suddenly, fury at him for doing this to her.

“Get out,” she snapped at him. “Get out of my house.”

“Remi, we have to talk.”

“I can’t. Not right now.” She couldn’t look at him. She pressed a hand to her eyes. “I just can’t.”

He was still and silent. Then he stood. She still couldn’t look at him. She heard him putting himself back into his pants, the rasp of the zipper. The crushing pressure in her chest had her gasping.

“Remi, I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“Just go! Leave me alone! I can’t talk about this right now.”

“Should I come over tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Remi…”

She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know if she’d want to see him tomorrow or the next day or ever, for that matter. She felt the weight of his gaze on her, even though she sat with her back turned to him, sticky and wet between her legs. She listened for the clap of the door closing behind him. And then she fell apart.

She had never called in sick when she wasn’t sick, but Friday morning she did. Well, she did feel sick. She hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours and that sleep had been restless and disturbed. She could not function in the classroom and it was better that she’d found a substitute teacher and just stayed home. She had three whole days to try to deal with the mess her life had suddenly become.

It was almost too painful to even think about, but she made herself do it, like picking at a scab or worrying a sore tooth.

Brianne was pregnant. With Jason’s baby. The baby Remi had always wanted, with the man she loved, the man she now wanted to have babies with. She stood and kicked a chair. Hard. Ow.

She sat on her bed and buried her face in her hands.

She was in love with Jason. She’d actually been considering moving in with him. She thought she’d met the man she wanted to be with forever and he loved her too. Their future had stretched ahead of them, bright and shining and forever, maybe with…babies. Children. A family of their own.

And now this. She and Jason were done. How could she be with a man who’d gotten another woman pregnant? She started to cry yet again. You’d think the tears would have dried her right out, but somewhere, somehow her body was able to produce more and she cried and cried again until she lay down, exhausted.

She hated how she felt after a big crying jag. She hadn’t had one for so long, not since her parents had died. She hated the stuffy nose, the swollen, stinging eyes, the puffy lips, the feeling of being on the edge of starting all over again.

She sat up slowly on her bed and dragged her hands over her cheeks, shaking her head. The pregnancy had happened before she and Jason had met. It wasn’t as if he’d cheated on her.

So he said.

No, Jason wouldn’t lie. She knew him better than that. He hadn’t cheated on her, hadn’t planned this. When she thought about it logically, she realized it was just an awful mistake that happened to people sometimes.

Only she’d never thought someone else’s unplanned pregnancy would affect her.

She was responsible, used birth control. Why hadn’t Brianne? Why hadn’t Jason? It was both their responsibility. Anger at both of them flared up in her so hot and furious she couldn’t breathe. How could they have been so stupid and irresponsible? How many lives had been impacted by something so careless?

With a small burn of shame, she recalled how she’d been willing to forego a condom the last time they’d had sex, how she’d been willing to take the risk. And the burn turned into a shaft of agony remembering how she’d almost hoped she’d get pregnant.

When Jasmine called to see if she’d done anything about selling the house, Remi wanted to yell at her. Didn’t she know she had other bigger problems right now? But she bit her tongue and quietly told Jasmine she would have to talk to Kyle about it. It was his home too and he needed to be part of the decision. The school year was almost done for him. He’d want to come home for the summer.

“I want to go to Australia for the summer,” Kyle told her when she called him a while later. She sat down heavily on a chair. “A bunch of buddies are going and I want to go with them.”

She stared across the living room, the phone to her ear. “How will you pay for that?”

“Well, I thought you might help me out. But we’re going to work when we’re there. Some odd jobs or something.”

“But Kyle, I don’t have a lot of extra money for that. What about tuition for next year?”

“I’ll try to save enough when I’m working to help pay for that. Come on, Remi, I really want to do this.”

She told him about Jasmine and her wanting to sell the house.

“That would be perfect!” Kyle said, excitement coloring his voice. “I could use my share of the money for the trip and there’d be enough to pay for the rest of my college. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

True.

“But you’d have no home to come home to,” she managed to say. For some reason that seemed so important to her—to have a place her brother and sister could come home to if they needed. To be there for them if they needed her. Thinking of them floundering, in need, made her heart hurt.

“I know. But I’m older now, Remi, I’ll find a place in the summers. I’ll have enough money for that.”

Apparently she was the only one who wanted to hold onto the house.

Was she being overly emotional about it? Perhaps she was.

So she called a realtor and arranged for him to come over and look at the house. She might as well do it all—sell the house, give up their home, find some crappy apartment to live in by herself for the rest of her life. She even got so agitated, she started packing things in boxes, decorative things that served no purpose, clothes that were out of season, anything left behind in Kyle and Jasmine’s bedrooms.

She might as well do it all. Nobody cared about her or what she wanted, not Kyle, not Jasmine, and God, not Jason. Pain stabbed through her like a knife as she threw stuff into boxes, blinded by stinging tears.

And wasn’t that just the way it always was. Her sacrificing everything for everyone else. Fine. She’d do it. Just like she always had.

Oh for heaven’s sake. She paused over one of the boxes she was filling. She sounded like the biggest martyr in the world, all sorry for herself. Get over it, Remi. She rolled her eyes at herself and straightened her shoulders, then went to find the newspaper. She had a life to get on with.

She scanned the classifieds for apartment listings, looking for something near the school. Two bedrooms would be good, in case Kyle or Jasmine did in fact need a place to stay. But she bit her lip when she saw prices in the neighborhoods she’d like to live in. Eep. She’d had it pretty good, living rent-free in a house that was paid for. Maybe it was going to have to be one bedroom. If Kyle or Jasmine needed a place to stay, they’d have to figure things out.

The next day, the realtor was enthusiastic about the house. Remi knew it would sell easily. Her parents had bought the house many years ago and since then the neighborhood had become very desirable and house prices had escalated to the moon. They’d get good money for it. So she signed the papers and the For Sale sign went up in the front yard.

She cried when she looked at it, her emotions all ragged and shaky. But she swiped the tears away and pressed her lips together and returned to shoving stuff heedlessly into boxes. And while she did that she tried not to think about Jason.

Then the doorbell rang.

She froze with her hands in a box of sweaters, tears dripping down her cheeks.

It was Jason.

He eyed her face, which she knew only too well looked atrocious, then her baggy yoga pants and faded T-shirt. “Hi.”

She stood aside and held the door open for him to come in.

“I have a game tonight,” he said.

Oh, yeah. Life did go on. And he had to go play a game while their lives fell apart.

Then a hot wave of shame swept over her. That wasn’t fair. Jason’s career may be a game, but he was talented and dedicated and serious about it. So were a lot of other people, including a lot of fans who counted on him being there and winning. It really was a big business, despite being just a game.

“Oh. Okay.”

They walked into the living room and stood there on the carpet, facing each other. He actually didn’t look much better than she did. His face too was tight, with lines grooved around his mouth and eyes. He still had greenish and yellow bruises around one eye, still hadn’t shaved and now had dark circles under both eyes.

“Can we talk about this now?” he asked in a scratchy voice.

She nodded and put her hand out for him to sit on the couch.

“I want to tell you what happened,” he said, sitting. She sat at the far end from him and picked up a cushion to hug against her like a shield.

“Okay.” She needed to hear it. Painful as it was, she needed to hear it, needed the answers to her questions, like, how could you be so fucking stupid? She bit her lip.

“Brianne came to see me a couple of weeks ago to tell me. I didn’t believe her. She’s been phoning me ever since we broke up and I thought she was making this up so we would get back together.”

Hope flared in her as she listened. Maybe that was true!

But he extinguished that hope with his next words. “She got something from her doctor to prove how far along she is.” He bent his head. “The timing worked out. It must have happened the last time we were together.”

Shit.

“I told you, Remi, I haven’t seen her since we broke up. Other than that night at Rouge. We were done.”

“Birth control?” She managed to squeeze the words out between tight lips.

“She was on the Pill.” He looked at her, anguish in his eyes, and she believed him. “She doesn’t know what happened either. It just…did. She’s not happy about this either, Remi. She’d just been offered a job by Victoria’s Secret and now she won’t be able to do it.”

Oh, that was really too bad. But again, a hot wave of shame washed over her. Modeling was also a perfectly legitimate career choice.

“So she’s going to have the baby.”

“Yes.” Jason nodded. “She wants to have the baby. I can’t…I…”

“What do you want?”

He lifted shiny eyes to hers. “I don’t know, Remi. This messes up my life so bad, but…it’s a baby. I can’t tell her to have an abortion.”

“It’s her right to choose,” she murmured. “Whatever her choice is.”

“Yes.”

“But it affects you too,” she said. “You’ll be a father, Jase.”

“I know.” He groaned and tipped his head back. “God, I know. I’ve been thinking about this so much.”

“So Saturday you found out, you…what? Went out and got drunk?”

“Yeah.” He bowed his head, hands on his knees. “I did. Not proud of that. Not proud of how I acted. All I can say is, I was hurting. Like I’ve never hurt before.”

“It’s not that bad,” she snapped, surprising herself. “Most people become a parent at some point, Jase. It’s not like you’re fifteen or something.”

He frowned. “It’s not that. Well, it’s partly that. Being a father scares the hell out of me. I don’t know if I can do it. But I was more upset because…well, because of you.”

Her eyes went wide. Her insides knotted. She clutched her pillow tighter. “Me.”

“Yes.” Again, agony filled his dark eyes as he stared at her. His hand moved on his knees, like he wanted to reach for her, but held back. “I just found you, Remi. I love you. After what we went through—I was so happy. Yeah, I was afraid of commitment and marriage—until I met you. When you’re with the right woman it’s not scary anymore. You’re the right one. I love you. And I was fucking dying thinking about telling you about this, knowing how hurt you were going to be. This is the worst thing in the world that could have happened.”

Oh. She stared back at him, her stomach flipping around inside.

He rubbed his eyes. “I should have just come and told you right away. I acted like an idiot and I’m sorry. My coach is pissed off at me, the team’s pissed off at me, my parents are pissed off at me, you’re pissed off at me. Shit.”

She nodded, but was softening inside, her heart thawing just a little.

But fear still held her in an icy grip.

“What are you going to do?” she asked him, voice shaky.

“I don’t know.” He swallowed. “I knew I had to tell you about it. That’s why I came to see you the other day. But I still don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Do you still care about Brianne?”

“No. Well…” His hesitation was like a slap in the face and she flinched. “I care about her as a friend. We were together a long time. But I don’t love her, Remi. I love you. Please, please believe that.”

She drew in a long shaky breath, and nodded.

“But I do care about my child,” he continued, his voice so low and deep she had to listen carefully. “I know I have to do the right thing for my child. I just don’t know what that is. Is it being with Brianne?”

She jerked and blinked. He shrugged his big shoulders.

“I just don’t know.” His voice caught, and wonderingly, she watched the big brute hockey player’s eyes grow glossy. “I want to be with you, Remi, more than anything in the world, but I have an obligation now to someone else that I have to live up to. I have to be a man. I have to be responsible.”

She understood that. She truly did, because she’d had to be responsible her whole life and she knew what that felt like. She nodded as her heart splintered and cracked inside her rib cage.

“I don’t want to keep you hanging while I figure it out,” he continued. “That’s not fair to you.”

She would wait. She wanted to say it, but held the words in. Tears blurred her vision yet again.

“I love you, Remi,” he said hoarsely. He shifted along the couch cushions and she put out a hand to push him away because if he touched her, she’d be done, but he just moved her hand aside and pulled her onto his lap. She held onto him, wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his neck and inhaled the warm, male scent of his skin. For the last time. She dug her fingers into the softness of his hair. Tears wet her cheeks and his neck and his arms wrapped around her too, squeezing her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. She felt his big body shudder and knew…he was crying too. “I love you, Remi. But I can’t be with you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to do this to you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut at the pain, like a knife dragged from her sternum down through her intestines. She knew. She couldn’t speak to say the words, but she knew.