One Moment Please (Wait With Me #3)(85)

“Watch me.” I cram toiletries into my bag, willing my tears to stop. He doesn’t deserve my tears. He doesn’t deserve me.

Josh stands, clutching the doorframe like a lifeline. “Where will you go? Your parents’?”

“I’ll go to Dean’s.” I relish the sting that answer will provide. “He’s a good friend. He’s supportive. He actually loves me.”

Josh’s grip tightens on the wood trim, a crack echoing off the bathroom walls. “Of all the people you could go to…it has to be him?”

I shrug defiantly. “I want it to be him. I need someone who’s going to love what’s going on inside me. Someone who won’t treat me and this baby like a patient or a mistake. Dean’s never treated me like that. His initial reaction to this was ten times better than yours.”

“So that’s it? You’re just done with me?” he growls, his eyes growing red around the edges. “Never mind the fact that we’re engaged and that child you’re carrying is half mine?”

I plant a sick smile on my face while my spirit crumples inside me. I wish I could stay. I wish I could let him take care of me and be what he is and not need anything more from him. But it’s not enough. And it never will be.

With shaky hands, I remove the ring from my finger, and it’s like I’m stripping off a mask that I was a fool to think I could wear in the first place. I set it on the bathroom counter and move to stand in front of him, bag on my shoulder, chin raised high. “Josh, I was willing to marry you because I thought there was potential here. I thought you could grow to love me, and crazy enough, I assumed you’d love this baby. But I realize now that you’re not going to change because you can’t let go of your past. I’ve been delusional in thinking you could because all I’ve ever been…all this baby has ever been…is an obligation to you, not a new beginning. And we deserve better.”

“Fuck that,” Josh says, pulling his hand off the doorway long enough to rear back and punch the wall beside it. He steps forward and gently cradles my face, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, his lips trembling as he says, “I fucking care about you, Lynsey. I care about this baby. I’ve told you that countless times.”

“What you’re giving me is not enough.” I clutch my belly protectively, feeling like I need to hold this baby as I do this. “And it’s cruel to pretend it is.”

“I won’t let you go,” he growls, his jaw taut with barely contained emotion as his guard drops to reveal the broken, ruined man who hides inside. He releases my face and crosses his arms over his chest, blocking the door. His face is hard and raw and difficult to look at.

“You will let me go…what you won’t let go of is the past.” I inhale sharply through my nose, knowing that I have to hurt him to get him to see. I have to hurt him the way he’s hurt me. “If you actually care about me and this baby, you will let me leave because forcing me into a loveless life with you is just as bad as what happened to Julian.”

His face falls, and his eyes spill over with tears. “No.”

I push him aside easily, his face stricken with horror as I move past him, out the door and out of this fucked-up arrangement that I never should have agreed to in the first place.

Away from his pain.

Away from my pain.





“I need another,” I state, clunking my hurricane glass on top of Kate’s kitchen table. Or Miles’s kitchen table. Well, I suppose since they’re engaged now, it’s her kitchen table too.

I was engaged once—wasn’t that fun.

Dean cuts me a look from across the table. “I think you’ve had enough, Lyns.”

I scoff. “They’re nonalcoholic beverages!”

“Still, these mocktails are full of sugar,” Kate agrees with her sympathetic eyes on me. “You’re going to pop any day now, and you don’t want the baby coming out with a goiter on its neck or something.”

My eyes widen. “Can that really happen?”

Kate shrugs. “Hell if I know.”

“Well, don’t say scary medical things just willy-nilly like that. My mind is anxious enough!” I exclaim and then sulk because if Josh were here, I could ask him if sugar goiters are a thing.

“I’ll get you some water.” Dean heads to the refrigerator.

“Remember when Dr. Dick turned my Birds and Bees cocktail order into a water that night at the bar?” I turn to Dean while he brings me a bottle of water “Oh, my God, I was drinking Birds and Bees cocktails that night. No wonder I got knocked up. My parents never sat me down to tell me about the birds and the bees. They just always said Jesus was watching.”

“Jesus should have taken the wheel when you gave Dr. Dick one of my old-ass swag condoms,” Kate murmurs under her breath.

I jut my chin and shake my head. “Jesus should have taken the wheel when Dean let me get in an Uber with Josh that night.”

Dean exhales heavily and hands me the water. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that about fourteen thousand times? I was such a dick that night for letting you leave with that…dick.”

“I have way too much dick in my life.” Of course…I don’t have any dick in my life now. That thought stings because, dammit, I miss him.