“You said all of this to me the day you left. Years separate that moment from now, but I can honestly say I can’t handle hearing it again.”
“No. Wait.” Stone leans back, his corded arms tensing as he grips the table, too. “I’m not trying to make you relive my shitty, selfish self. What I’m saying is, I was a shitty, selfish kid who panicked. I rationalized my way out of Falcon Haven in order to make my real life a little less real.”
“You saw me as a trap.” My brows come down. My head still won’t rise. “I was a trap to you, chaining you to this town, preventing you from reaching your dreams. Don’t you get it? I’ve run through this all in my head a thousand times over. I know why you left, Stone. You don’t have to … I don’twantyou to keep?—”
“You were supposed to come with me!”
Stone shouts it, drawing the attention of the other patrons.
I scan the crowded space through lowered brows, silently pleading that everyone go back to their lunch and ignore Stone’s uncharacteristic outburst.
But that’s impossible. Mr. Knox and his wife are by the window, frowning and murmuring their displeasure at the interruption. Stone’s fan club titters at another table close by, one raising her phone to capture the uncomfortable moment until Stone’s terrifying glance makes her friend smack the phone out of her hands.
High school kids on their lunch period eagerly feast on the rare moment of witnessing a public figure without his professional smile. The order line consists of Miss Amy, Luanne Smith, Priscilla DeWitt, Randy Berkins … farmers, teachers,shop owners, residents of Falcon Haven who know me as well as they know each other.
My shoulders droop. I’m trembling in my chair.
And there’s Maisy, standing by the magazine stand with Stone’s handsome face taking up prime real estate on the front page, his arm wrapped around his ex as he enters the Met Gala withIS IT BACK ON??as the headline.
I can’t escape him. I can’t run away from this moment. I was a fool to think I ever could.
I lift my head and stare straight into the eyes of the boy who broke my heart and the man who keeps on squeezing the pieces between his fists. “You don’t get to say that word.”
“What word?”
I tear past the open confusion on his face, snarling, “Baby. You have no idea what it was like for me to wake up one day, after weeks of feeling little flutters in my belly, of perfectly normal ultrasounds where I heard her heart, and feel nothing. Not a kick. Not a turn.”
Stone grimaces. He rubs his face as if my words are hurtling toward him for a bull’s-eye.
Good. I hope my aim is accurate.
“When the doctors told me I lost her, my hope ended. Do you understand that kind of world-ending hurt? Maybe you do now, because of your mother, but back then, I was nineteen. She was—that little baby was—” I choke on a sob that turns into a hiccup of sorrow.
It’s hard to breathe.
“Hey.” Stone’s harsh, broken whisper reaches my ears.
I register his movement next to me, the way his arm slides around my back and pulls me in.
“Noa.” My name is a hot exhale over my scalp. “I’m—I can’t defend my actions. To know that I did this you…” He trails off, burying his face in my hair.
Then he jerks back, scraping his thumb under my eyes and scanning the Merc like he’s suddenly conscious of where we are.
“I waited for you at the station,” he says, resuming his seat across from me, his expression more haggard than before. “I texted you. Called you. You didn’t have to go through that alone. I wanted youwithme in New York and then LA. You and the bab—her.I needed an answer why you never came, Noa, and I deserve one now.”
I bristle. “Which answer would satisfy you the most? The one where I tell you that what you wanted was impossible, that we had no money, no plans, a baby in my belly, and no home to give her? Or how about the one where you expected me to leave mydreams behind and adopt yours, living under your shadow and raising our baby while you pursued your career?”
“That’s not fair.” Stone’s expression darkens. He lowers his voice so I’m the only one who can hear. “We were in love. We were young, dumb, and fucking obsessed with each other, and I didn’t want to leave you. Ididn’t.”
“You couldn’t have both,” I say flatly. “You had to choose, and you did.”
“Is that why you didn’t come?”
“No.”
I was ready and packed, willing to toss my carefully crafted future out the window and start a new and reckless one with Stone. Anything for him. I had fantasies of us living in one of those open apartments with a courtyard in the center, exactly likeMelrose Place, where we’d meet our neighbors of a similar age and they’d become ourF.R.I.E.N.D.S.,just like the show. Our baby would be celebrated. Loved. She’d grow up with both of us, whether Stone made it to fame or not.
Until my mother walked into my bedroom.
