Chapter Thirty-Five
Michael
I couldn't believe I had told Paige that I loved her. I had been so careful, the previous night, to disguise my feelings. To tell her that I wanted her to move in with me but that it was just a matter of getting her out of her place with Erica. To tell her we didn't have to have a normal relationship. To make it seem like it was all about sex and taking care of her.
And then, I had to go and tell her I loved her. The thing was, it wasn't untrue. I did love her. I had known for a while that I had feelings for her. But those feelings had gone beyond lust. I loved her. And I didn't mind admitting that, I realized.
But Paige clearly hadn't wanted to hear it.
I frowned, thinking back to her reaction. She had looked practically shell-shocked, and although surprise had been expected, I hadn't expected her to simply shut the door in my face. She had barely even managed to say goodbye. She hadn't said she was looking forward to seeing me again. She hadn't said anything.
She hadn't said that she loved me too. Not that I had expected that.
I sighed and rubbed at my temples, feeling a headache coming on. I didn't know what to think, and I didn't know what to do next. Should I show up at her apartment again? But I didn't know how to face her, on her own ground. In the same place I had told her I loved her. It set up too many expectations, carried too much weight.
Instead, I headed to The Shift. If nothing else, maybe I could talk to Erica. Tell her what had happened and ask her for advice. I felt silly doing that, but then again, Erica was Paige's best friend. If anyone might know what to do, it was her.
At the bar, though, Erica was nowhere to be seen. Paige was there, though. There, and flatly ignoring me. She avoided serving me, even when I sat down on her end of the bar. Instead, she served everyone around me and then got one of her coworkers to help me. I frowned, wondering what I was supposed to do.
In the end, I waited until she went on break, and then as she slipped away from behind the bar and headed for the back storeroom, I caught her wrist and pulled her into a shadowed alcove, where it would be just the two of us, and we would have some semblance of privacy.
I remembered what had happened the last time I was at The Shift, and I felt shame flush through me again. I knew that guy had deserved all the punches that I had been able to throw, but at the same time, I couldn't help thinking about Paige's fury, how she'd rebuked me for causing a scene at her work. I didn't want to make the same mistake again.
“Paige, I don't understand what's going on,” I said, not even able to bother with pleasantries. It was as though now that I'd acknowledged my feelings for her, they were all spilling over, unable to be contained. The worry, the love, the confusion, all of it was right there in the forefront of my mind, unable to be forgotten or pushed aside.
Paige raised an eyebrow at me. “What do you mean, you don't understand what's going on?” she asked. “I'm at work, and I'm treating you like I would any other customer.”
“Except you're not,” I said impatiently, about to point out the way that she had been avoiding even looking at me. But then I realized how futile that was. She undoubtedly knew exactly what she was doing, and my reminding her of it wasn't going to help anything.
I frowned. “I want to know how you feel about me,” I finally told her softly. “It's driving me nuts, guessing. One moment, it seems almost as though you have feelings for me. Like you're afraid to go through with this because you're scared of getting hurt. Like you don't want to be friends because you don't want to be just friends with me. But then you start avoiding me, and it's like you really don't have feelings for me. Like you'd be perfectly happy to have nothing to do with me ever again.”
“That's impossible,” Paige snapped. “I'm pregnant, remember, and there's that stupid contract.”
“That stupid contract,” I agreed, sighing. “I wish I'd never come up with this plan to start with. Only remember, it was you who came up with it.”
“I didn't mean for this to happen,” Paige said, but for the first time, she didn't seem impatient. Didn't seem angry. If anything, she seemed at a loss, as though she didn't know what to do.
I wanted to pull her into my arms and tell her that I was sorry. To take her home and slowly make love to her and make sure she knew that I was telling the truth, that I wasn't lying, that I really did want her, and so badly.
But she still hadn't admitted how she was feeling.
She bit her lower lip, staring at the floor. “I don't know how I feel,” she finally told me.
“Bullshit,” I said before I could stop myself. But when I thought about it, that was exactly what I wanted to say. “You know exactly how you feel for me,” I maintained, thinking of all the avoidance that she'd been doing over the past weeks. If I thought of it as her having feelings for me and being uncertain as to how to deal with them, it suddenly all made sense. I had a feeling she knew exactly how she felt about me.
She just didn't want to say it.
I felt a flash of anger at that. Here I was, having gone out on a limb and declared that I loved her. And she apparently couldn't do the same for me.
But that wasn't fair, I knew. I couldn't be angry at her for being scared or confused. Especially not with hormones raging through her. Especially not when morning sickness had been making her feel so disgusting. Especially not when she must be feeling so confused.
Even if she was the one who had come up with the idea in the first place, I was the one who had made up the contract and asked her to sign. I might have told her the other day that I loved her, but she had probably been dealing with confusing feelings for just as long as I had been, and I didn't doubt she was feeling confused.
Still.
“I think you know exactly how you feel,” I told her quietly, earnestly. “I need you to tell me, though, so I knew where we go from here.”
Paige stared up at me, her lips slightly parted, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss her. I held back, though, knowing better than to pressure her. I had a feeling that if I did, in fact, pressure her, the only thing it would do was make her pull away from me even more.
“I'll give you 24 hours,” I told her, even though I wasn't sure that was the best way to go about it. Still, I couldn't hang in limbo forever, and I knew, with the way she'd been avoiding me, that she wasn't exactly forthcoming with her feelings. 24 hours, this ultimatum, might be just what she needed to realize what she really felt about me.
“What happens if I don't tell you I love you in 24 hours?” she asked, her voice sneering, even though I could see only desperation in her eyes.
I shrugged. “I stop trying,” I told her. “I can only try so hard. If you don't tell me how you feel? I have to walk away.”
I hated saying the words, and to be honest, they surprised me as much as they surprised her. But every word was true. I loved her, but if she didn't love me, I needed to move on.
“What about the baby?” she asked, looking scared. “If I don't tell you I love you and you walk away, what happens to the baby?”
I stared at her for a moment, trying to appear impassive even though really, I felt as though my heart was breaking. If she was even considering the alternative, I had to recognize that she probably wasn't going to just admit that she loved me. And she wasn't going to move in with me, even if it meant that she was living in my spare bedroom. Even if it meant that she got out of her cramped studio apartment.
I looked away from her, hoping that she couldn't see the pain in my face. “We have a contract,” I reminded her, even though I wasn't sure I would be able to enforce that contract, not with everything that had happened between us.
If she wanted to keep the baby, I couldn't fight her on it. Not having met her parents and seen how her family interacted together. Not having heard how scared she was of losing the child. Not when I loved her more deeply than I'd ever loved anyone before.
When it came down to it, if she couldn't say that she loved me, I would truly have to walk away from it all. Her, the baby, the contract, all of it. I would go back to being alone.
Paige stared up at me for a moment and then nodded weakly, folding her arms around herself. “Okay,” she said softly, and for a moment, I didn't remember specifically what she was responding to. Suddenly, I had the horrible thought she might claim she loved me just because she thought it was the only way that she could keep her baby.
But before I could clarify, she had disappeared into the back room, and I knew better than to follow her there.