Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(30)
“Why are you getting mad?”
“I’m mad because you’re leaving me in the dark! I’m mad because how can you say that you want to help if I don’t know how you plan to even live in the same city?” She punctuated every other word with a jab to his chest.
Rake grabbed her finger, enclosing her hand in his. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to keep you in the dark.” Lizzie let out an indignant snort and tried to pull her hand away, but Rake placed more gentle pressure on his grip. “I’m not. Listen, my dad is originally from California, so I have dual citizenship. I just have to look into the details of it. Let me worry about that. And seriously, I’ll figure out the job. I already have something in the works. You’re carrying a child. You don’t need the added burden of tiny details that I can handle.”
Her lips twitched. “You don’t get it. You’re asking for us to be partners in this. I need more than that.”
“On the subject of partners,” he said, resting their hands on the table and trying to make his touch reassuring as he stared at the spot their skin met, “I think we should get married.”
Lizzie jerked her hand from his, her whole body jolting back like his words were a punch, and she hit her head on the wood paneling behind her. She stared at him, open-mouthed, eyes blank, for what felt like ten minutes.
Without warning, her face crumpled like a wadded-up piece of paper, tears bursting from her as she buried her head in her hands.
“Why are you crying?” Rake asked, trying to mask his alarm. He was out of practice dealing with anyone else’s emotions, and Lizzie seemed to filter through the entire spectrum of them every few minutes.
“Why am I crying?” she sobbed, fixing him with an anguished glare of disbelief. “I don’t know, you cyborg. Maybe because I’m pregnant and scared and throwing up nonstop, and my tits hurt so bad I want to rip them off, and my nipples look all weird already, and now some guy I don’t know tells me we should get married? Maybe because about ninety-six hours ago I realized I was pregnant, and then you show up here asking me to tie my life to you like I don’t have one trillion other thoughts crowding my brain? And to top it all off, you live halfway around the world but still expect me to have this blind confidence in you to secure some job here and all kinds of other shit that makes my brain want to melt straight out of my ears just thinking about it?”
“That certainly is … a lot to process.”
She let out another choked sob, curling her body around herself like she would lie down in the booth and never stop crying. Something about it fissured through Rake’s sternum. He hadn’t known her long, but the Lizzie he did know had seemed like an indomitable force. A woman of fire and steel and energy.
But now, she looked afraid. And soft. And scared.
And it did funny things to the organ in Rake’s chest.
Acting on impulse, he moved to her side of the table. She tried to scoot away from him, but he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to his chest, anchoring her to him.
Her body was stiff and tense, but all at once every muscle seemed to relax, and she went boneless against him. She continued to cry, her sobs slowly turning into soft whimpers until her breathing steadied. She let out the tiniest sigh, one Rake felt right in the hollow at the base of his throat. It made his chest tighten uncomfortably.
“I’m scared,” she whispered at last.
Although it seemed impossible, Rake hugged her even tighter. “Me too.”
“I don’t want to get married,” she said. “I don’t know you.”
Rake nodded, trying to swallow that down. It was true. They didn’t know each other. Not much, anyway. But that didn’t stop his intense impulse to take care of her. To take care of their child in the way his own parents had. Two parents, one house. As few confusing variables as possible. It was old and antiquated, but he felt so embarrassingly useless, it was the best solution he could come up with.
“I don’t want to be shut out,” he admitted softly. “I want to be part of my kid’s life.”
She pulled back, fixing him with an intense stare. “You say that now, but what if you change your mind? What if tomorrow you meet the love of your life and want to start a family with them? Or five years from now? What if you don’t like being a dad? What if you don’t like the baby?”
“None of those things will happen,” he said. He wouldn’t let them.
“How do you know?”
He stared into her red-rimmed eyes. “Because some things I just know,” he said with finality. Turning away from her gaze—her searching look that felt like she wanted to crack his head open and read all his thoughts, see all his secrets—he sipped his coffee.
“Tell me your plan,” she said after a minute. “With details.”
Rake took a deep breath. “I’m working on getting a transfer out here. My company is looking to branch into East Coast markets, and I was offered the position shortly before the trip over here, when we met, but I turned it down initially. Now it seems rather fortuitous.”
Lizzie chewed on her bottom lip while tapping a spoon on the table, lost in some train of thought.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. He wasn’t sure why, but something about her made him want to know every vibrant thought that swirled through her colorful mind. She fascinated him in a way no one else ever had before. He wanted to understand her.