Double Dare (Neighbor from Hell #6)(43)

Even if she managed to convince Darrin to forget about this dare, something that she’d never been able to do before, there was no way that she was going to be able to get him to forget about the “Incident,” as she now liked to think of it, until he’d avenged the Chinese food that she’d destroyed. Since she’d seen what happened when someone came between a Bradford and their food, it was understandable, at least in her mind, why she wasn’t in a rush to face Bradford justice.

They both just needed a few days to figure some things out and-

“I’m done,” Darrin said, startling a blood-curdling scream out of her as she jumped up, tripped over her bag and landed with a wince on the floor.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she managed to ask between gasps as she willed her racing heart to calm down when she spotted him leaning against the wall, staring out the large window.

“Apparently a lot of things,” he said, continuing to stare out the window instead of issuing a dare to get back at her for what she’d done to his precious food, letting her know that something was very wrong.

“How did you get in here?” she asked, realizing that her paranoia had been justified.

Then again, it usually was when a Bradford was involved.

“Devin overheard your phone call to the hotel and decided to give me a call,” he explained as she stood there, silently cursing his cousin to hell and back.

“That really doesn’t explain how you got in the room,” she pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said with a shrug.

“What’s going on, Darrin?” she asked, slowly pushing to her feet as a weariness that she couldn’t explain spread through her.

“Jake came to explain a few things to me,” he said, destroying her entire world in a matter of seconds.

Oh, God…

“What did he tell you?” she asked, placing her hand over the hollow ache in her stomach.

“Don’t play games with me, Marybeth. Not now,” he said, finally looking at her.

She nodded numbly as she sat down on the edge of the loveseat and buried her face in her hands. She took a shaky breath before she told him the reason why this had to end now.

“I can’t have children.”

*-*-*-*

Oh God, he was going to be sick.

Of all the things that he’d expected her to say, that hadn’t been one of them. He turned his back on her and gripped the windowsill until the backs of his knuckles turned white.

“There’s more to it,” he said tightly even as he prayed that was the end of it, because honestly, he wasn’t sure that he could handle anything else.

“What did Jake tell you?” she whispered after a slight hesitation.

That he should move on because Marybeth wasn’t interested in anything serious with him. As long as he was in the picture, Marybeth wasn’t going to be able to find someone that she could settle down with. Darrin needed to do the right thing and end things, because Marybeth deserved better than to be some guy’s f*ck buddy. If it had been any other guy looking out for his sister, Darrin would have felt like an *, but this was Jake, who couldn’t lie to save his life. He’d known the second that Jake opened his mouth that he was trying to bullshit him, but he hadn’t known why.

Until now.

For years he’d known that Marybeth was keeping something from him, but he’d convinced himself that as long as he had her in his arms, even with the conditions that she’d set, that it hadn’t mattered. Now he was regretting that decision as well as the one where he’d foolishly agreed to settle for f*ck buddy status.

“It doesn’t matter what Jake told me. I want to hear it from you,” he said softly, terrified that if he spoke any louder that he’d start yelling and wouldn’t be able to stop.

“I don’t know what else there is to say,” she said hoarsely.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” he suggested, telling himself that it would somehow make a difference, but he knew that nothing could change his mind now.

He was f*cking done.

“I was diagnosed with endometriosis, stage four, when I was fifteen,” she announced like he had some f*cking clue what that meant.

“What is that?” he asked, staring out the window that overlooked the busy parking lot.

“It basically means that the tissue that’s supposed to be growing inside my uterus is growing where it doesn’t belong. Normally it can be controlled with medicine, but-”

“Not in your case,” he guessed, finishing for her.

“No,” she said, sighing softly. “Not in my case.”

“When did you find out that you couldn’t have children?” he asked, needing to know just how long she’d kept this from him.

“How long?” he asked when she didn’t answer him right away.

“Since I was fifteen,” she finally admitted, making him shake his head in disgust, because everything made sense now.

“That was the real reason that you dropped out of school, wasn’t it?” he asked, already knowing the truth and realizing that there was one more lie that he could add to the list.

“I couldn’t keep up with the work after the first surgery and-”

“Surgery?” he snapped, cutting her off as he turned around to face her.