Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(71)

“Then, one day, I get home from work and I flip through the mail on the table, and I see a clinic bill sitting there for a termination of pregnancy. It was this bizarre flood of confusion. I was instantly worried, but also didn’t fully understand. She hadn’t said a thing to me. We’d never even talked about kids … Isn’t that weird? I was with her all that time, and I never even asked how she felt…”

Rake dragged his knuckles along the edge of his jaw. “So, I asked Shannon about it. And the same moment I was told she’d been pregnant was the same moment I was told she wasn’t. I didn’t know I could feel so many things at once. It was this weird mix of relief and confusion and sadness and one hundred other things that muddled my brain.”

He was silent for a moment, eyes somewhere far away.

“I would have gone along with whatever Shannon wanted. It was always her choice to make—and I respect her decision—but I wanted to be there for her. I wanted the chance to be the partner I was supposed to be in her life. I always thought that us not fighting meant we had this perfect relationship of communication and openness. But, in reality, I guess we were just going through the motions of it. Together, but alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Lizzie whispered. And she was. Having recently been in the position, she knew how hard the decisions that come with an unexpected pregnancy can be for some, but she also could understand the pain of having no idea about a partner’s situation at all.

“But when I pushed her, when I asked why she didn’t tell me she’d been pregnant. Why she didn’t want us to go through the termination together, she admitted she’d been cheating.”

Something sharp and acidic dropped into the pit of Lizzie’s stomach and pulsed through her veins. An odd sense of protectiveness, of indignation that anyone would cheat on Rake—put him through that type of hurt—made her blood sting and skin itch.

“She told me she didn’t know who the father was,” Rake continued in a soft whisper. “And it’s strange. It might not … I don’t know … it might not even have been mine, but I still felt this sense of loss. Maybe it was more for the relationship or the future I’d thought we’d have. Maybe the loss of Shannon … Even now I can’t really parse it out.”

He was quiet for a moment, and Lizzie watched as the ghosts crept in from the corners of his memory. “All I do know is that it physically hurt to find out we weren’t this partnership I thought we were. We weren’t a unit. I wasn’t … worthy of that, I guess. I don’t know. It’s probably stupid to feel like I lost something I never really had.”

Lizzie’s heart ached and squeezed as she watched the pain play out across his features. “I never would have expected it to hurt that much,” he said at last. The words were almost inaudible, not meant for Lizzie. Not even meant for Rake. But for the universe. For whatever grand entity coordinated pain and loss and mourning like puppets on strings.

“We broke up after that. Obviously,” he said, giving Lizzie a sad smile that she couldn’t muster up the ability to return. “Shannon told me I was too obsessed with work. Never did enough to notice her at home. I’m sure she was right,” Rake said with a sigh, dragging a hand through his hair. “I was a shit boyfriend. I never realized … It sounds so stupid, but I never realized she even wanted me home as much as she did. She was rather serious and dedicated to work herself, and I didn’t think. I…”

He looked up at the sky, waves of blame and self-loathing radiating off his skin.

“She’s actually married now,” Rake said. “Happy.” He said that last word with whispered reverence. Like it was some elusive, magical concept he would never fully understand. “And I’m happy for her. I really am. It took me a while to arrive there, but I mean it.

“I kind of … I don’t know, shut down after it all happened. I never wanted to be in that situation again. I didn’t want to fail someone in a relationship or go through the pain of being cheated on like that, and I…” He swallowed, his eyes tracing over Lizzie’s features in a gaze that felt like a caress.

“So when you told me you were having the baby,” he continued, “I decided I wanted to do whatever I could. Be here however you would let me. Because I didn’t want to miss my second chance to be someone’s partner.”

Lizzie wanted to hold him. Soothe his aches. Take away that pain. But she also knew she couldn’t. It was his to bear. His to work through.

She lay back down on the quilt, gently tugging at his shoulder until he followed her. She turned on her side, looking at him, and he mirrored the motion.

“We aren’t—” Lizzie paused, trying to find the right words, sifting through them. “We aren’t a partnership in the traditional sense. Or the romantic sense. We probably don’t make any sense,” Lizzie said, dragging the pads of her fingers along the bridge of his nose. “But we’re in this together. And I’m glad you’re doing this with me.”

Rake reached out, grabbing her hand and bringing it to his chest. He stared at her for a moment before saying, “I’m glad too.”





Chapter 36




LIZZIE and Rake had done the unthinkable: They’d fucked each other out of their systems.