Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(91)

My nerves were frayed. By the time we pulled up to my parents’ house, the gnawing in the pit of my stomach was starting to make me feel sick. I was getting overheated and sweaty. I kept wiping my palms on my pants. I had to check three times that I’d put the truck in park. I couldn’t remember.

“Okay,” she said, finally putting down her phone, pivoting in her seat to face me. “So here’s your catchphrase of the day. Ready?”

I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t concentrate. “Yeah.”

“‘In this economy?’” She smiled. “That’s it. That’s the phrase.”

I just stared at her. “Okay.”

She eyed me. “It’s a good phrase, Jacob.”

“Yeah.”

She tilted her head. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

I wasn’t. I was feeling dizzy. I felt like my brain was detaching from my body. I couldn’t breathe right.

I wanted to tell her she couldn’t go to Levi’s next week. I wanted her to stop texting him. I wanted the phone to stop silently going off.

More than that, I wanted her to want me back. I wanted us to be real. I wanted this to be different and it wasn’t going to be different and I felt like I was collapsing from the outside in.

It was hard enough to deal with the reality of Briana’s non-feelings for me. But at least I had these few months. At least I got to be close to her, even if it was just going to be for a little while. But that safe space had been breached now, and water was spilling in, and I was drowning.

“Jacob?”

I blinked at her.

She was looking at me weird. “You don’t have to go to this.”

“What?”

“The bachelor party. You can just say you don’t feel well or something. We can go home.”

“I’m…I’m fine.”

She studied me. “You look nervous.”

“I’m not.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, but I got out before she could press me. My legs felt like Jell-O. It was all I could do to pretend to be normal. Walk normal. Breathe normal.

Lieutenant Dan was walking next to me, pushing his head under my hand.

When we got in the house, I couldn’t focus. The twins jumped on me. Jafar was strutting through the hallway squawking obscenities, Grandpa was harassing Briana, who was harassing him back, and the whole thing felt like it was happening underwater. Time felt elastic. I couldn’t tell how long we’d been here. A minute? An hour? Did the limo get here yet? No. I would have remembered. Would I have remembered?

Then I was in the living room, sitting on the sofa with everyone.

Amy and Jeremiah were there and about twenty other people for the parties.

Briana was holding my hand, but I swear I could hear her phone going off, even though I knew the sound was down. My heart rate was up and my mouth was dry and Lieutenant Dan was shoving his head under my arm, and I had the realization that I was having a panic attack.

Amy and Jeremiah were making some sort of announcement. I was in a fish tank.

I could see Amy’s mouth moving. “We’re having a baby.”

And then I was conscious of everyone’s eyes darting to me and I said the only thing I could think of saying because I had to get the hell out of there. “In this economy?”

Then I fled from the room while I could still make my legs carry me.





Chapter 39

Briana



As soon as Amy made the announcement, Jacob disintegrated. The shift was palpable. The tipping of a teetering glass on the edge of a table. Shattered.

His anxiety had been high all day. Probably because he knew he had this bachelor party and was already worn out from dinner with my family last night. He’d been sort of moody and detached from the minute he woke up. I’d been trying to give him space since he was people’d out, so I’d spent the day watching TikTok videos and texting Alexis so I stayed out of his hair. But now I wished I’d gotten him to stay home instead. He wasn’t in a good place to hear this news on his best day.

He used his escape phrase and practically ran to the steps leading to the basement. By the time I got down there, he was sitting on the little futon sofa in the room with the pool table, crying and breathing into his hands.

He was having a panic attack. Like, an actual panic attack. Because Amy was pregnant.

My heart broke.

I stood in front of him, watching him have a breakdown on this futon, and I couldn’t begin to describe the way it felt seeing him like this. Watching him live the moment he realized that it was really over because there was going to be a baby now and they might have figured it out before that, but now it was real.

She wasn’t leaving Jeremiah for him.

Amy and Jeremiah were going to be a family.

It was over.

All his hopes were over. He was heartbroken, and so was I.

I was right here. I was right here and I was in love with him and he didn’t care because he couldn’t even see me past her. I had fallen completely and utterly in love with him and he had stayed completely and utterly in love with someone else.

I started to cry too.

I just stood there in front of him, my shoulders slumped, tears starting to roll down my face.

Lieutenant Dan was almost frantic, trying to crawl into the space between Jacob’s stomach and the hands he had cupped over his mouth. And I wanted to crawl into that space too.