Chapter Fourteen
The summer of last year
There was only one line.
Cassie stared at it, willing there to be a second line, however faint. A faint line was still a positive.
But there was only one line.
She’d bought a second test, so once again, she peed on a stick and waited the proper amount of time, her heart hammering.
Once again, she only saw one line.
She was not pregnant.
She burst into tears.
Not tears of relief. She ought to be relieved. She’d just turned twenty-four; she wasn’t in a relationship. She didn’t even know the full name of the man she’d slept with. Didn’t know where he lived, didn’t know how to find him.
But she wasn’t relieved.
Oh, it was lame, but she wanted to have his baby.
Still, even though she was several days late and the test ought to be accurate, she held out a bit of hope. If she didn’t get her period by the end of the week, she’d do another test.
But it had started the next day. And on the short walk home from work, she saw a man and a woman with a baby in a stroller. The baby was perhaps a year old—a boy, she assumed, based on the blue clothes. He was wailing at the top of his lungs.
It was one of those moments when she ought to be thinking, Thank God I don’t have to deal with that right now.
Instead, she envied the mother with circles under her eyes. She wished the next couple of months would be filled with morning sickness. Wished that in nine months, she’d be changing poopy diapers while Blaine sang a lullaby. When he heard she was pregnant, he would come back to her. They’d be the perfect family. Just her, Blaine, and their baby. It was all she wanted.
But it wasn’t going to happen.
And all because of that stupid single line on the pregnancy test.
…
Blaine’s eyes widened. He could do nothing but stare at Cassie.
She smiled grimly. “You heard correctly. I thought I was pregnant. You see, when a man and a woman—”
He didn’t need to hear the rest of her sarcastic comment. “We always used protection.”
“Yes. And the condom never broke. But I’ve always been quite regular, so when I was late, I couldn’t help but think…”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Then you took a test and it was negative, correct?”
“I didn’t take a test until I was almost a week late. Because I didn’t want to know the truth. I knew it was unlikely I was pregnant, but the idea that I could be…” She shook her head. “It made me so happy,” she whispered.
He ought to be freaked out by the idea of her getting pregnant when they weren’t even together. However, when he thought of her carrying a little bundle in her arms, he was slammed with a completely different emotion.
He’d always assumed he’d have children. It hadn’t been a major priority for him, but he’d always figured it would happen eventually. But now, he desperately wanted a couple of them. With Cassie. He pictured laying in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, a baby between them, crawling onto his chest.
“I didn’t try to find you,” she said. “Not when you’d made it clear you wanted nothing more to do with me and even refused to tell me your last name.” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth to tell her. “I know now—it’s Richards. I saw the diploma in your office.” She paused. “But if I’d been pregnant, I would have hired a private investigator. It probably wouldn’t have been too hard to find you. I had one crappy picture on my phone—”
“I don’t remember you taking a picture of me.”
“Yeah, you didn’t notice. I assumed you wouldn’t want me to, but one morning before you woke up, I took one because I wanted to remember you. So I had the picture, your first name, your career, and your license plate. You’d told me it was a rental car, but since it was actually your car, it should have been easy to track you down with the license plate number. Anyway, I would have found you somehow. You see, I couldn’t help but think that if you knew I was having your baby, you would change your mind. We’d be together, and it would be perfect.”
Oh God. He couldn’t take this. He ached for what had never come to pass.
“I’m not ready for a baby,” she said. “But I do want children, and I would have kept it. At the time, I saw it as a way to get you back. When I finally took the pregnancy test and it was negative, and then I got my period the next day…” She shut her eyes for a moment. “I was a wreck. I couldn’t sleep. I stopped eating proper meals. I didn’t want to let you destroy me, but I couldn’t seem to stop it from happening.” A sob escaped. “It was silly of me ever to hope. Just a stupid fantasy.”
“Oh, Cassie.” He pulled her into his arms, agony swirling inside him. She let him hold her, let him run a hand through her hair and stroke her back. But it felt totally inadequate to convey his regret. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She lifted her head, her eyes red from her tears. “If I’d tracked you down and told you I was pregnant, what would you have done?”
“I would have asked you to marry me.”
“Because it seemed like the right thing to do? You didn’t truly want me then, right?”
Blaine didn’t really believe in signs. But if she’d gotten pregnant during their week-long affair, despite proper contraceptive use, he would have seen it as a sign that they should be together. He would have asked her to move to Ottawa to be with him—since there were no jobs for geotechnical engineers in Georgeville—and he would have hurried up his search for a house.
“You would have come to resent me,” she said.
He shook his head. “You’re wrong. I came back for you, didn’t I? And I do want to marry you. I said so yesterday, when Matthew and Sara were here.”
“Yeah, such a great way for me to find out about your intentions. Real smooth.”
“I panicked. It was an awkward situation.” Not that he regretted saying it.
She shifted away from him and studied the quilt. It was solid navy—there was no pattern to examine. “You don’t want kids, do you?”
“Yes, I do. And I want them with you.” He tried to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let him. “Maybe two. No more than three.”
“I saw you look at Victoria yesterday. It wasn’t an ‘Aw, isn’t she cute?’ look. It was an ‘Oh my God, what is this alien creature?’ look.”
He pushed a hand through his hair. “I haven’t been around new babies much. They freak me out a bit because they seem so fragile. But I would figure it out.”
He felt an ache in his chest as he thought of his father, who would never know his grandchildren. He remembered flying kites with his dad at the park. At the age of eight, Blaine had gone through a phase where he was obsessed with kites and trying to make them as aerodynamic as possible.
Yes, he wanted to be a father. Likely, he wouldn’t have a child who was interested in rocks and aerodynamics, but that was fine. He didn’t want a child who was just like him. He loved the idea of having a baby and watching his or her unique personality and interests develop.
“Well,” Cassie said, “it doesn’t matter. At the end of today, I’ll walk out of your life. You think I should be jumping to give you a second chance, but you just don’t get it.”
His heart felt heavy with all she’d told him. “I think I’m starting to.”
“When you came to Georgeville, you expected to find the woman you left behind. But it’s been a long time. I’m not the same person, and a lot of that is because of you, and that stupid pregnancy scare.”
God, he’d been such an idiot. He wished he could go back and do it over again.
Because now he might lose her, and the thought was unbearable.
“Come here,” he said, lifting his arms to her. She hesitated, but then she stepped toward him and sat between his legs. “I promise, I swear I won’t leave you this time.”
“I don’t see how I’m supposed to believe that, despite your talk of marriage.” She paused. “I know you were in a bad place because of your father’s death. I just wish you’d said something about it. You could have told me that you had shit happening in your life, and maybe now wasn’t a great time, but we could keep in touch and see how things were in a few months.”
He felt like a broken record, but it was the truth. “I wasn’t convinced it was really love. It felt like love the moment I saw you buying a donut, but love at first sight didn’t seem rational or logical to me.”
“Fine,” she said. “You couldn’t be certain if you loved me, even after we spent that week together. But there was obviously something between us. Why weren’t you willing to give it a chance and see what happened? It’s not like you actually live on the other side of the country. Two hours isn’t all that far. There are just so many things that could have happened that wouldn’t have led to me being a mess afterward. I tried to be strong. But I couldn’t help being heartbroken.”
Guilt and regret were like twin vises on his heart.
“Do you love me now?” he asked softly.
“No.”
As much as that hurt, he wasn’t surprised.
“You claim you love me,” she said. “Maybe that’s true, but how am I supposed to believe it’ll last?”
“Cassidy.” He wrapped his arms tightly around her. “I don’t have the words to tell you how sorry I am.”
“I believe you’re sorry. But I’m still going to leave you today.” In a much quieter voice, she added, “I think.”