Ink Enduring (Montgomery Ink #5)(66)

“Maya,” Border whispered. “Take deep breaths, honey.” He knelt in front of her, taking the tests from her and handing them to Jake.

“I peed on those.”

Oh, yes, classy. Of all the things to say in this situation, mentioning her urine ranked right up there with a lobotomy.

Jesus, she needed to get her mind in the game or she’d break. Though she wasn’t sure she hadn’t broken yet.

“I think that’s how these things work,” Jake croaked. “You got her?” He seemed to be talking to Border just then, but Maya wasn’t sure what she was seeing. In fact, she couldn’t see through her tears at all.

Border nudged at her ankle, and she sighed so she could slip on her panties. Classy, she thought again. Oh, so classy. He slid his arm under her knees and around her shoulders before picking her up to his chest. She let out a squeak and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I’m too heavy,” she rasped.

“It seems you might be getting a bit heavier shortly.” He said the damn words so calmly that she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. That was the case with Border, though. She was never sure what he was thinking. Why weren’t the guys freaking the hell out as she was?

That thought dried up her tears, and she was finally able to focus on what was actually going on around her. Jake stood in her living room, her tests clutched in his hands. The veins in his forearm stood out, and on any other day, she’d have thought that was sexy. Yet right then, all she could see was the strain.

Border remained silent as he set her down on her feet. When he’d done that in the past, he’d always wrapped an arm around her waist and held her close. This time, however, he took two steps backward, the distance between them as cavernous as the emotional break within her heart.

They were looking at her but not seeing anything. No one spoke, the tension in the room rising with each passing moment. She was finally able to catch her breath, the numbness she felt over the way they were acting spreading throughout her body. That blessed drugged-like feeling allowed her to think about what she had to do next.

When Jake took a step, not toward her but to Border, she knew exactly what she had to do.

It would always be them against her. She would always be the interloper. She’d known that when she came to Jake in the first place. She’d thought she’d be fine, broken or not, in her friendship with Jake when she thought he would marry Holly. But this was so much different. Different to the point that she knew she’d never fully be whole again.

With that one movement between them and their silence, she knew that while they would want her, would perhaps even need her with them, she’d never be to them what they were to each other. They had a history she could only brush against, one she could never fully be a part of.

A tiny part of her knew this was the emotions—and perhaps the hormones—talking, but the rest of her knew that to protect herself, to protect what was growing inside of her at that very moment, she had to be strong.

To be the Maya Montgomery she used to be before she’d fallen for Jake Gallagher. Before she’d then fallen for Border Gentry.

“I’m pregnant,” she said simply.

Nothing was ever less simple than that, though.

Border looked down at the tests in Jake’s hands and remained silent. Jake cleared his throat.

“I can see that,” he croaked.

She blinked quickly. She needed to get this over with before she broke once more. “I know we didn’t plan this, but it happened. These things do, I suppose.”

“I guess,” Jake added. Border didn’t say a thing. Of course.

“I know we didn’t talk about this, but it’s okay. I get it. We’ll work things out because it’s what we do, but I know we did this a little too fast.” She gave a manic laugh. “I mean, we were supposed to fall in love with each other first, you know?”

Neither of them said a thing, and she forced herself not to take a step back from the blow. Holy hell…

They didn’t love her.

They didn’t say anything, they wouldn’t. After all this time, after everything they’d been through, they didn’t love her. She might have told herself she’d walk away from them so they could be what they needed to be, but that small part of her had always thought they’d love her as she loved them.

She’d been so horribly wrong.

Maya rolled her shoulders, putting on the fa?ade that had let her become the Maya Montgomery others knew. She’d only let it fade for these two, and yet, she needed that shield once again.

“As I said, this moved a little too fast, and I know we’ll have to discuss what we’re doing later, but I need some time.” Her voice threatened to break, and she paused to gather herself once more. She’d be damned if she’d fall apart in front of them when they refused to say a thing. “This is all a little too much right now with everything going on, so…yeah.” She looked at them once more, begging them to say a single word, yet they didn’t.

They wouldn’t.

“I’m out,” she whispered. “It’s always been the two of you,” she began. “And I understood that. I did. But then I didn’t. So, yeah, I’m going to go and let you do you. We’ll figure out the details later, but, yeah, this is a little too much right now.”