One week passes, and he remains in Texas.

Then a second week drifts by.

And a third.

A fourth.

By the time the middle of July rolls around, Mateo still hasn’t called, but I don’t expect him to. So I stop calling him. If he doesn’t want me to care, then I won’t. I’ll try not to. Because when you have a history of dating the wrong people—and my history is paved in awful men—you get over encounters with the dangerous, no-good sort fast. There are new babies in the NICU that occupy my time. New Bella moments that leave me rolling my eyes because even though she’s a bride-to-be, she’s still undeniably the wild Armstrong sister. Hell, there are even new ways to evade my friend Nicole at work as she tries to set me up with her and her husband’s friends.

“Robbie’s friend from college will be in town next week,” she says when she joins me during my dinner break one evening. There’s a look of distaste on her face as she opens her container of steamed chicken breast and veggies, and my stomach turns right along with hers. She wiggles the container around as if she hopes it will morph into something that’s not bland or wilted.

“Ugh, this low carb shit is for the birds,” she sighs then pops the lid back on and pushes her dinner aside. She leans forward and raps her fingertips against the table. “So, about Robbie’s friend—”

“No.” I turn my attention up to The Bachelorette on the break room TV even though I can care less who the leggy blonde chooses. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Nicole’s mouth start to open, so I jerk my head. “No.”

“You never know if you’ll like him unless you meet him,” she sings, and I roll my eyes up toward the ceiling before twisting in my seat to regard her with a forced smile.

“I said no because I’m not interested at all.” When she blinks at me, I sigh. “Look, Nicole, I appreciate that you want me to be happy and meet Robbie’s friends, but I’m also capable of meeting people on my own. Which, you know, might be a better idea since it would be awkward for all of us if things didn’t work out. Besides, I’m taking a sabbatical from dating right now.”

“A sabbatical,” she repeats, her eyes shifting to the vending machine behind me for a second. “Okay.”

I lift one shoulder. “I’m only twenty-nine, so there’s plenty of time.”

Nicole pokes her lip out. I’m almost sure she’s about to argue with me, but then she bobs her head, causing her sandy blonde hair to swish around her shoulders. “I can totally respect that,” she says, and my eyebrows shoot up. “I swear that’s not sarcasm. I met Robbie when I was”—she squints, tilting her head to one side as she pretends to remember a date that’s probably fresh in her mind even though it was a few years ago—“thirty-two.”

“So that means you’ll stop trying to introduce me to his friends for the next three years?” I ask dryly.

“He’s got some really good ones, though.” I press my lips together and give her a pointed look as she gets up and walks over to the vending machine. She peeks at me over her shoulder as she shoves money into the coin slot and crinkles her features. “Fine, fine.”

She returns to our table with a candy bar and a soda, promising that she’ll go back to the low-carb thing tomorrow. Or the next day. I tell her I don’t judge, but she doesn’t look convinced as she bites into the candy and squeezes her eyes shut like she’s experiencing her first big O.

“Whatever happened to that one guy?” she questions between bites. My spine stiffens because I know exactly who she’s referring to, but she doesn’t notice as she chews happily. When she extends the chocolate toward me, offering me a bite, I decline. “You know, the one who sent all the flowers?”

Four times. Twice here and twice to my home.

“He was just a friend.” But I still reach up to my chest, my fingertips closing around the necklace from Bailon. It was six weeks ago, but the memory of the night he gave it to me is still fresh in my mind. “The flowers were pretty, though.”

The bastard.

“His loss,” Nicole says, balling up her candy bar wrapper and taking a sip from her canned drink. She starts to shove the rest of the chocolate in her mouth but then she hesitates and arches her brows. “Or yours? Did you break things off with him?”

“Stop being nosy and finish your candy,” I say, attempting to keep my voice light and teasing as I leave my seat. I grab my untouched lunch and toss it out. Before I leave the break room, Nicole invites me out for girl’s night at her place sometime next week. She doesn’t have a date yet—she wants to coordinate our schedules—but she swears she won’t try to play matchmaker. Despite the churning in my chest and stomach from our conversation, I agree to go. Because when one, two, three, four weeks pass and you haven’t heard a single word, you move the hell on.

You forget.

You forget until you’re driving home from work and you’re sucking a breath through your teeth because your sister texted that she’s trying to plan her wedding around her period of all the fucking things. You forget about him until you count back days and weeks and you realize just how badly you’ve messed up.

You forget until you get the one thing you thought you wanted—you thought you needed—and it becomes impossible to move on.

* * *

“My mom is getting married,” Lucy tells me when we meet over the weekend for paint night at a tavern in Cambridge. She leans away from the canvas, frowning at one of her misshapen palm trees. “Shit, I suck at this.”

Cocking my head to one side, I glance at her painting and allow a whisper of a smile to break my features. “I’ve always been a fan of abstract art.” When her lips gradually purse together, I laugh. It feels good to laugh, and I grip the end of my paintbrush as I pivot around to my own canvas. “Is Susie excited?”

“What do you think? She was scared to death to tell me, but I’m happy for her. I told her it’s what my dad would have wanted.”

“I think so too.”

She dips her brush in the water and works her bottom lip between her teeth. “I really am awful at this.” She tilts her head back, peers at the painting that Gina—our perky instructor—is completing at the front of the room, then grabs her wine and tips it to her lips. She places the glass next to her artwork then nods to my glass of water.

“I’m going to blame my shitty painting on the alcohol and tell myself yours looks so good because you have an H2O advantage.”

An advantage. I suck in my cheeks because I don’t have an advantage at all. “I’m pregnant, Luce.”

Lucy’s still going on about her bumpy palm trees, but then she freezes. She drops her brush in the cup of murky paint water and faces me. Her eyes dart around to make sure nobody else is paying attention then she scoots closer to me. “I’m sorry, did I—”

“Yes,” I say and drag in a breath that squeezes my ribcage. “I’m pregnant.”

“You’re serious … aren’t you?”

The hardest thing to admit to myself is that I wish I wasn’t. After reading Bella’s text a few mornings ago, I had gone home, convincing myself that being a little late is normal. I had slept in restless fifteen-minute bursts before pulling up the calendar on my phone. I had even laughed and called myself irrational as I bought the test an hour later.

I’m not laughing now because I hate that I don’t want this to be real. It’s something that I desired, and yet I don’t want it to be a reality. How fucked up am I?

“B?” Lucy asks gently, her brows tugging together. I push my brush so roughly against the canvas that black paint drips from my palm tree to the indigo and violet skyline. “You’re pregnant with B’s baby?”

“Or one of the truck drivers I’ve done in bathrooms over the last two months,” I say wryly. “Don’t worry, I’ve already gotten in touch with Maury.”

“Jamie,” she whispers, her tone half-admonishing, half-soothing. She drags her hand through her long black hair and blows out an exhale. “How did this…”

When her words trickle off, a panicked sound hitches in the back of my throat. “Do you want the medical explanation or do you want a play-by-play of every time I fucked the guy?” Because the truth is, I’ve taken the last few days to replay every second, every minute, I spent with Mateo, wondering where we went so wrong. We had used condoms. I thought we were careful. Smart.

Obviously, I thought wrong.

“I saw my doctor yesterday morning.” Skimming my tongue between my teeth, I pretend I’m more interested in dabbing the extra paint off my canvas than looking at my best friend. “It looks like he gave me an extra birthday gift this year—yay me. I’m due in February.”

Fuck Bailon. Fuck him and his dick and his distractions.

“Have you told your mom and dad and Bella?” she asks. When she asks her next question—the one I’m already expecting, her tone is hushed. “Have you told B?”

“He’s still in Texas.” And he hasn’t answered my texts asking him to get in touch with me. Hell, he hasn’t even read them if delivery receipts can be trusted. The bastard. “I’ll tell Bella and my parents after I let him know.”

Lucy’s quiet for a moment, and I feel her stare burning into my profile. “You should do that. Soon.”

I want to scream at her and tell her that I’ve tried. I want to say so many things, but instead, I release a tremulous sigh. Let her wrap her arms around my shoulders. I move my head up and down. “I will.”

* * *

I feel like I'm back where I started, where this mess all began when the elevator opens at Mateo's office on Monday morning. Sonora’s mouth drops open at the sight of me in my scrubs, but she recovers quickly, speaking in low tones with the attorney standing by her desk. She holds up one finger, so I bob my head and take a seat close to her desk. I wring my fingers together—so tightly that it feels like my fingers are close to falling off when the man finally walks away, and Sonora focuses on me.

“Jamie … it's good to see you again.” Her blue eyes crinkling at the corners, she casts a helpless look from me to the direction of his office. “He isn’t back yet.”

“Do you know when he’ll return?”

“Oh, Jamie...” She shuffles around her desk and takes a seat next to me, the scent of her perfume making it difficult to breathe. “His grandmother passed away last week.”

“Oh,” I whisper. As much as I want to hate the man, my heart sinks at the news. I don't want him to hurt. I don't want him to feel any pain. He loved his grandmother and I already know her loss will only make him a harder man. I swallow, hoping to wash down the dryness in my throat. “Is he coming back soon?”

Sonora starts to speak, but then she hesitates. “I don't know. I spoke to him a few days ago, and he said a few more weeks, max, so he has time to settle his grandmother’s estate. I tried calling yesterday, but you know how B can be.” She forces a chuckle, but I don’t follow suit.

“What about his clients?” I can’t imagine the people he represents are very patient.

“He’s handled a lot of business from Texas, but his associates have been a godsend.” She pinches her upper lip, her immaculate pink nails moving back and forth as she cocks her head to one side. “Maybe you can come back when he gets home in August?”

Despite her gentle voice, I hate those words because they’re so hesitant. The kind of words someone speaks when they know there’s no hope, but they don’t want to be the bearer of shit news. Still, there are things that need to be said to Mateo Bailon.

“If I went to him, what would happen?”

She arches away from me, her features gradually melting into a look of shock. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because I want to get on with my life.” I'm not running—I refuse to say I'm running—but I've already started considering a move to be closer to my parents after I give them the … exciting news. I’m only nine weeks, which means I have plenty of time to get settled in a new hospital. A new life. “Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”

“I mean … I have his sister's address.” Sonora cups her cheek and shakes her head. “You can't just call him?”

“I've tried.” I've tried to call Bailon, but I'm not going to keep trying because it just makes me look pathetic. I have struggled—between feeling like I’m selfish for wanting to get this over with while he’s dealing with so much and feeling angry because all it takes is for him to pick up the phone and listen. Anger won that struggle, hands down. But as pissed off as I am, he deserves to know. I can't count the number of times a mother has been in the NICU, unable to get in touch with the father of her child or unwilling to tell him he has a child. Once I see him, it doesn't matter what he says, but at least he’ll know.

“I've tried,” I say again. “But some things are better said in person.”

“That you love him?”

I snort and turn my attention to a streak on the floor to ceiling windows across the room. “You and I both know it’s stupid to set myself up for that kind of failure. What I have to say is different.” I return my dark eyes to hers, only to find that her sight is lowered to my waist. She’s watching as I lightly drum my fingertips over my abdomen—something I didn't even realize I was doing. It’s still flat, but I immediately stop, crossing my arms over my chest.

“If I ask you the real reason why you need to see him,” she starts, her blue irises never lifting, “would you tell me the truth?”

“It’s probably best to talk to Bailon first.”

Finally, she wrenches her stare from my stomach and looks me directly in the eye. “I’ll get Marisol’s address for you.” Her back is stiff as she returns to her desk. Rising slowly, I slide one hand into the front pocket of my scrub top, waiting while she searches through her contacts and scribbles the information on a Post-It. Her fingers shake when she hands me the note and so do mine.

“Thank you, Sonora. I mean it. Thank you.”

She nods. She waits until I reach the elevator to wish me luck. On the way down, the angry tears start again.