Until You Loved Me (Silver Springs #3)(80)

“Ellie? You’re not sleeping yet, are you?”

“No,” came her response.

“Any chance you’d like to watch a movie?”

“Not tonight.”

She hadn’t even taken a second to think about it.

“What about getting in the pool? Pregnant women can swim, can’t they?”

“This time of year? The water will be freezing.”

“It’s heated. Not like a hot tub, but enough to take the edge off. I swim a lot. It isn’t as hard on my joints as some other workouts. It’d be good for you, too. You should come out with me.”

“You go ahead,” she said. “Maybe I’ll swim tomorrow.”

He bit back a curse. What else could he suggest?

She’d eaten, and he doubted she knew how to play billiards. “Okay,” he said at length. “I’ll leave you alone.”

He started to walk away, but turned back almost immediately. “Ellie?”

This time it took longer to get a response. “What?”

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier.”

“It’s fine. I made a stupid offer to begin with. I’m sure you can hire a professional masseuse if you need a massage. You don’t need me.”

He was trying hard not to need her. That was the problem. He couldn’t imagine a world where needing her, coming to depend on her, would turn out to be a good thing. “I was just...in a bad mood.”

“We all have days like that. Hope you feel better in the morning.”

He shook his head. Sometimes he was his own worst enemy. He’d had more than one foster parent tell him that, hadn’t he? As a matter of fact, he’d heard every damn thing that was wrong with him—over and over. He was too aloof, too detached, too difficult to reach.

But he was who he was, and he didn’t know how to change. He needed to stop caring so much about other people and what they thought of him.

If only he could...

“’Night,” he murmured.

*

Ellie sat on her bed, staring at the door while she listened to Hudson’s footsteps recede. She almost got up and went after him. She knew he felt bad for what he’d said. She could tell by the tone of his voice and how hard he’d tried to get her to come out again. But he had her twisted up in knots. One minute she was determined to offer him the love he so desperately needed—and consistently shoved away—and the next she was asking herself if she was crazy to think she could actually reach him. He was like a wounded animal, and wounded animals were dangerous.

She looked down at her phone. She missed Miami and her work. It used to be that she could throw herself into her research and let her work distract her if she was upset, lose herself for hours in something that could make a huge difference to the world. In the lab, her life was about so much more than her own problems. But now that she didn’t have the BDC, every emotional bump felt like an earthquake.

Had she made a mistake in coming here?

Hudson had asked if she was going back to Miami. Maybe relocating had been a bad decision. She was falling in love with him when she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. Should she pack up and leave before she could lose any more of her heart? They could work out custody issues like so many other parents who lived apart—because if she stayed, she had a feeling Hudson would devastate her in ways she couldn’t even begin to imagine.

But she hadn’t moved here for her own sake. She’d moved here for the sake of her baby. She kept coming back to that.

When the clock showed ten, she allowed herself to call her parents. Although it was early in France, she hoped they’d be getting up. She needed to talk to her father in particular, needed to remind herself how important he was and had always been in her life.

“Ellie?”

She smiled in relief at the sound of his voice, cheerful as ever. “Hi, Dad.”

“How’s my girl?”

Tears stung her eyes. She wanted to tell him about the baby and Hudson and ask for his advice. Should she give up and leave? Or should she stick it out in Silver Springs and do the best she could—for both her child and the child’s father?

She almost blurted out the whole story—the surprise pregnancy and everything—but stopped herself. It was too soon to reveal news of the baby. Her parents would fly home immediately if they thought she needed them, and she couldn’t be that selfish. She wanted to give them a couple more months in Europe. She also knew she couldn’t handle the complications that having them back would create for her and Hudson if she stayed in California. She needed to get to know him better first.

“Good.” She cleared her throat, hoping to ease the terrible tightness. “How are you?”

“Fantastic! There’s so much to see and do here. I know you’re busy with work, and that what you do is important, but you’ve got to come across the pond before we head home.”

She wiped an errant tear. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your time there.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Have you cured diabetes yet?”

“No.” She wouldn’t even be able to keep trying, not for probably a year. She felt certain the BDC would take her back if they could. They’d been sorry to see her leave in the first place. But she had no idea if there would be an opening when she was ready, and they didn’t know that, either.