Chapter 29

Adrian leans back in his chair and whips the pen in his hand across the room. It hits the corner of his desk and boomerangs back at him, landing right on top of a stack of papers. Figures. He can’t even get that shit right today. He picks up an envelope, angrily shreds it into twenty little pieces, and throws them all in the direction of the wastepaper basket. Half wind up on the floor.

He’s been in the office for over four hours and he’s only managed to get about five minutes of work done. He can’t fucking concentrate. Because he can’t shake the feeling that something is off with Beth.

He sensed it when he kissed her at the wedding, the way she'd stiffened ever so slightly. But he’d chalked it up to her being taken aback by the kiss. It was the first time they’d kissed like that in front of an audience.

Yesterday he texted to ask if she wanted to catch lunch, and she didn’t respond until long after she was home, claiming she’d been swamped at work. Now today, he can see she read his message, and yet an hour later, still no response.

Against his better judgment, he walks out of his office and takes the elevator down to the marketing floor.

Beth is standing while talking on the phone when their eyes meet. The change in her expression confirms his suspicion that something is off. She hangs up just as he enters and closes the door behind him. “I don’t like to come over here because I don’t want to make things difficult for you at work.”

She forces a smile. “I appreciate that.”

“But you leave me no choice when you avoid me.”

“I’m not avoiding you.”

He makes a face that says she’s full of shit.

She sighs and sits down. “Fine. Maybe I am”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t want to get into it here.”

His brows draw together. “Was it something that happened at the wedding?”

Her gaze shifts and she nods.

He lets out a breath. He needs to know what’s bothering her. Why she’s refusing to speak to him. She’s barely looking at him. “Okay. We’re leaving.”

“What?” Her face shoots up.

“I'm taking you home with me. Now.”

“But… but… work,” she says waving her hands around the office with exasperation.

“I’m the boss so it doesn’t matter,” he says. “Please, Beth. I need you to talk to me.”

She finally stands. “Okay. But just this once. Don’t ever interrupt me at the office again.”

He raises his hands. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

****

They’re seated on Adrian’s terrace and Beth is looking toward the sky, the sun bouncing off her hair. She hasn’t spoken a word since they left her office. He’s been waiting for her to start the conversation but it doesn’t seem like she’ll be saying anything without him prompting her.

He doesn’t know how to begin the conversation. If he knew exactly what she was upset about, he’d fare better, but he has no idea what happened at the wedding that got her so upset. Whatever it is, he has to figure out how to make things right.

“What’s wrong, Beth?

There’s a long pause before she turns to him and speaks. “I spoke to your cousin, Mollie. Why didn’t you tell me that you were once engaged?” she asks, her tone neutral, implying that she doesn’t want a fight. Just answers.

Adrian closes his eyes. Goddamn it, Mollie and her chronic verbal diarrhea. A million questions flood his mind—how much does Beth know? How the hell can he fix this? Is he going to lose her?

He knows it was stupid of him to take her to the wedding and not consider that someone would spill the truth. He’d wanted it to come from him but he could never bring himself to tell her. He has no desire to think of Mia whenever he was around Beth. With every woman he’d been with since Mia, he’d wanted that constant reminder—wanted to remember why he needed to keep his distance.

But with Beth, he wanted to forget it and move on.

It occurs to him that the best move might be to come clean about everything. But first he needs to know just how much she knows. He keeps his voice low, hoping his desperation isn’t transparent. “What exactly did she tell you?”

“I already told you. She told me you were engaged and then you weren’t.” She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. “Honestly, Adrian, I understand that we all have a past and that’s fine. But this…” she trails off, shaking her head. “This feels like something you should have mentioned.”

He runs his hands through his hair. “You’re right.” Adrian’s jaw flexes. He looks away for a minute and then stares down when he finally starts to speak. “What Mollie said is true. I was engaged eight years ago but we never got married.”

“Were you in love with her?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. I cared about her in a way that I’d never cared about anyone else. We were high school sweethearts and we kind of stayed together after even though I went to a college abroad while she stayed back. When I returned home after graduation, it was just expected that we would settle down together. So that was what we did. We got engaged. Both our parents were delighted about the match. But I wasn’t the same person I’d been in high school. Mia also wasn’t. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was only with her out of some sense of obligation.”

He takes a break and spares a glance at Beth. She hasn’t said a word but her gaze hasn’t left his face.

After a deep breath, he continues. “At some point I was ready to call the whole thing off. We weren’t happy. I guess we both knew we were making a mistake. But then she lost both her parents in a terrible accident. After that, she sort of lost herself. I couldn’t bring myself to call the engagement off.”

“So you stayed?”

“Yes. She needed me and I still cared about her deeply. Maybe not in a way that meant that I wanted to get married to her but I’d known her pretty much my entire life. I cared about her as much as I did my family.”

Beth nods then angles her face away from his. He wonders what she’s thinking. Hearing him talk about how much he cared about another woman. She returns her gaze to him.

“I should have realised she needed more than I could give her. We were still young then, both twenty-two. She got into a really dark place—partying, drugs, and I didn’t understand then just how bad it was. I was too busy trying to distract her from her grief and I couldn’t come to terms with who she’d become. I could only see what I wanted to.”

“I’m sorry. That’s tough,” Beth whispers.

Adrian is quiet for a moment, and then looks up at her. “Yeah. But I guess it worked for a while. That is before she got pregnant.”

Her eyes widen. She takes in a shuddering breath. “You have a child?”

He looks over her shoulder at the sky and swallows before his eyes meet hers again. He shakes his head. “She lost the baby at three months. Likely from the drinking and drugs she’d consumed early on. We’d gone to the ER when her water had broken way before the scheduled date. There, an ultrasound had failed to find the fetus’ heartbeat. The doctors guessed it had passed sometime two weeks before. Mia was admitted to the obstetrics ward. Labor continued naturally, and a few hours later, she’d delivered. It was a boy.”

Beth clutches her chest. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

He glances at her and knows from the way she’s watching him that she means it. He’s feeling the devastation of that period now, as if the loss has just happened but he also feels lighter now that he’s opened up to Beth. He looks at the turbulent sky again. “I specifically didn’t do anything to confirm paternity when Mia said the child belonged to me. It never mattered to me anyway. I wanted the child. I’d begun to look forward to the whole thing with surprising enthusiasm. I was going to be a father. It didn’t matter whether or not it was biologically mine. Because I’d claimed it, it was mine in every way that would ever matter.”

“I’m so, so sorry. So very sorry.” Her tears start to flow and his stomach tightens. She wraps her arms around herself, and more than anything, he wishes it were him wrapped around her.

It takes everything in him to continue his story. “I’ve never really spoken about this to anyone before. Connor and Vincent have an idea of what happened but they’re the only ones. Mia insisted on moving away after the death of her parents. So no one knew she was pregnant and I couldn’t bring myself to tell my family after we lost…” Adrian shuts his eyes. “My mom especially, it would have devastated her.”

“Where is Mia now?”

“Mia blamed herself for losing the pregnancy. It broke her. She had to be admitted in a mental hospital. And she’s been there since then.”

“And you blame yourself?” Beth asks, her eyes filled with compassion.

He closes his eyes, unsure how to answer. He’s never admitted his guilt out loud. He’s not sure how he can explain why he feels the way he does. Why he has stayed away from relationships ever since. He opens his eyes and nods. “I should have… I should have insisted that she get the help she needed. I should have done more to keep her safe while she was pregnant.”

Beth stands and moves to him, settling her hands on his shoulders. “Adrian, it wasn’t your fault. It was an unforeseen tragedy. You did nothing wrong.”

He pulls her down into his lap and she rests her head on his chest. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses his collar bone. He turns his eyes to her for a few seconds, studying her with unfiltered relief.

“I know it was hard to say all that,” she whispers into his chest.

He gazes at her another few seconds before leaning in to kiss her lips. “Not as hard as it could’ve been.”

She sighs. “Sometimes people don’t allow themselves to forgive because they’re afraid they’ll forget—forgive and forget. But you’ll never forget him. There’s room in your heart for more than one person.”

Her words reach deep inside him, through his skin, into his bones, and he hears her. Really hears her. She’s voicing an idea he’s played with since he met her. He lets out the breath he’s been holding and brushes a tear from her eye. “When I’m with you, it’s easy to believe that.”

“That just means you need to spend more time with me.”

That almost makes him laugh. He can’t believe he almost allowed himself fuck this up. Beth is afraid to be with him because he has given her no reason to feel secure. The best he’s offered is that he isn’t sure what he’s capable of. If it isn’t him pulling back, it’s her. They’re both playing a game of perpetual chicken, and it’s time for him to either get the hell off the road or say fuck it and crash into her and hang on.

He reaches for her chin, lifting it up so their eyes meet. “I’m crazy about you, Beth. I’m sorry for making you doubt. I know I’ve done that. But I want to make it work with you. I haven’t wanted to make any relationship work for so many years. I care about you more than I’ve ever cared about another woman. I think about you at eleven a.m. when I’m busy in a meeting. Before you, I only thought about women at eleven p.m. when I was lonely. There’s a big fucking difference.”

Her eyes start to water again. “I want it to work, too.”

He smiles. “So let’s do that, sweetheart. Let’s just let it work.”

She takes a minute, then she smiles, giving him a look that makes his heart swell. “Okay.”

For so long, he’s had no problem with that suffocating weight in his chest. It's just been something he carries with him every day. He accepted it. It kept him accustomed to pain. But now that he knows what lightness feels like, it's all he ever wants. It feels better than anything he’s ever known and he’s pretty sure he can never go back.

He doesn’t want this whole situation with Mia hanging over his head anymore. He wants to move past it, and most importantly, he wants to move forward with Beth.

Looking at her beautiful face, resting against him, he knows what he has to do.