Overtime(29)

“Bullshit! You don’t mean that. You rejected me and made me feel like I wasn’t worth anything!” she yelled, her eyes clouding with tears. She wouldn’t let them fall though. No matter what, she wouldn’t. He didn’t deserve her tears. It enraged her that he walked in here, assuming they would be cool after all he did. He ruined her.

Honestly broke her.

She knew she should have been smarter and not fallen as hard as she did, but she couldn’t control her heart. It did want what it wanted and she just followed it. For some reason, it always led to Jordie. Always.

“You’re right,” he said, his gaze burning into hers. “And there isn’t a day I don’t regret it.”

She didn’t expect that, but then again, that was Jordie. He was quick to say sorry but never owned up to his mistakes. If he meant any of what was coming from his lips, he wouldn’t have hurt her the way he did. He wouldn’t have let her walk away and ignored her for months. He would have been there for her like she had been for him when he was facedown, lying in his own puke, drunk. She was always there, cleaning up and believing that he would change. It was the injury, it had to be, that had had him so depressed. So she loved him extra hard, and yet, he still tossed her out on her ass.

Her lip started to wobble and she looked away, sucking in a deep breath. Looking back at him, her eyes in slits, she asked, “Really? Well, wanna know what I regret?”

His eyes didn’t stray, only stayed on hers as he said, “I’m sure I can guess.”

“Nope, it isn’t the regular, ‘I wish I’d never met you’ bullshit, because I don’t regret that. No matter how bad you hurt me, I loved you. But instead, it’s the ‘I wish we would have used condoms the whole time’ because, while you checked out on us, Jordie, I wasn’t allowed to. I hurt for you, over and over again, and then I found out I was pregnant.”

There was no sound once that last word left her lips. She could only hear her heart in her ears, beating ever so loudly as Jordie just stared at her. His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and he leaned against the kitchen island for support. He honestly looked as if she had hit him.

Lacey shrieked. “What!”

“Pregnant?” he gasped, his knuckles white from holding on to the counter so hard.

Lacey sputtered unintelligible things, coming toward her, but Kacey held up her hand, stopping her.

“But I lost our little bundle of joy three days after finding out,” she said, her chest rising and falling as her heart broke all over again.

And the tears started to fall.

When she’d found out she was pregnant two weeks after leaving Jordie’s cabin, she was elated and knew that he would be happy. He wanted a kid, and Lord knew she did. She was convinced that a baby would bring them together. That they could work stuff out. And she truly believed that, no matter how idiotic it made her sound. She knew that a baby shouldn’t force two people together, but maybe it was the push Jordie needed. Either way, she knew he’d be a good daddy. He loved kids.

But he’d never answered her calls for her to tell him.

No matter her pleas.

And then she’d started bleeding.

A part of her was grateful that it happened so early since it was all so new and she hadn’t already picked out names, put pillows under her shirt to see what she would look like, and stuff like that. She knew there were women who went full-term and lost their babies, but that didn’t mean her heart would ever be the same. Not only had she been rejected by the man she was convinced was her soul mate but she also lost their child. She felt like a failure on both counts and, honestly, she still didn’t know how she pulled it together to play in the Olympics. In a way, she was sure it was because she wasn’t even there half the time. Her heart, her soul, were with Jordie and their baby who had its own pair of wings, looking over both of them.

But only one of them cried over it.

Well, that is, until now. Because as the tears rolled down her cheeks, she sucked in a breath as Jordie’s eyes clouded with his own tears. It was quite a confusing thing to see. Jordie didn’t cry because Jordie felt nothing but the desire for sex and booze. Who was this man standing in front of her?

Clearing his throat, he looked down. For some reason, that made her indescribably mad because she felt she didn’t know this man. She had no clue who he was.

“Kacey—”

“No, no words,” she barked at him, her fiery gaze meeting his as she wiped away her traitorous tears. “Nothing you can say will fix how badly you f*cked me over. I trusted you. I loved you, and you left me high and dry. No reasons, no anything. I was nothing to you.”

“If I had known—”

“You would have if you’d called me back, I know.”

“I thought you were calling to beg me to come back,” he said simply. “I couldn’t handle it.”

“Couldn’t handle it?” she growled as her eyes went to slits. “Really? What about what I could handle? You never cared one bit about how I felt or anything. Instead, you just ignored me, threw me to the side. Thanks, it’s f*cking wonderful to know my worth to you. That it was all a f*cking lie.”

“Kacey, I was f*cked up—”

Glaring, she shook her head. “You’re always f*cked up, Jordie. Fucked up is your middle name, but I loved you anyway. I believed in the man you could be.”