One missed connection, two delays, and fifteen hours later, I landed in London late that night. So much for having some time to catch up on work. I was so jet lagged I felt sick. The line for taxis was a mile long. Even better, my phone was broken. I’d dropped it in line at security, and apparently that was enough of a fatal blow to keep the damn thing from even turning on.

But I still smiled like an idiot as I waited in that damn line. Scenes and sights and sounds from the weekend came back to me in bright flashes, making my heart light up like a light bulb each time. Rob looking me in the eye and telling me he wanted to be with me. Rob kissing me. Rob touching me in the shower and in my bed.

I was high on the romance of it all.

I was so freaking excited that he was mine and I was his I could literally not stand still, despite the ache in my legs. I couldn’t wait to see him; over the weekend he’d asked me out to dinner at a swanky Chinese restaurant in Soho tomorrow night.

It was two in the morning by the time I got home. My exhaustion finally beat out my excitement. I’d promised Rob that I’d text him, but since that was not a possibility at the moment, I figured I’d shoot him an email. Which, in my state of delirium, seemed like an enormous task.

I mean, wasn’t he supposed to take off at six P.M. Eastern time? Which meant he was in the air right now, probably drooling on himself somewhere over the Atlantic. No way he’d be checking emails. Texts? Sure. But emails…I doubted it.

Didn’t take much to convince me to save the email for the morning. I had to be up early anyway—I had a full day tomorrow at the office.

And then after that, a dinner date with Rob. Just the two of us on a real date, flirting over martinis and dim sum.

I was still smiling when I peeled off my clothes and fell into bed.

* * *

The buzzer would. Not. Stop.

It was the swans from Emilia Wickstead. It was a neighbor.

It wouldn’t stop ringing.

I opened my eyes. It was still dark. I was in my bed, lying on top of the covers.

My body rung with the particular misery of being hungover, jet-lagged, and enormously hungry all at once.

The buzzer was going off. It hadn’t been a dream. Someone was at my front door.

I reached for my phone, but then I remembered it was broken. I glanced at my alarm clock, a leftover artifact from a failed experiment to banish devices from my bedroom. 6:30 A.M.

Who the hell was at my door at 6:30 in the morning?

The room spun when I sat up in bed. I could still hear the hum of the plane engines in my ears. My legs ached.

The only thing that would get me through today was the fact that I’d see Rob at the end of it. I smiled again—seriously, would I ever stop smiling?—when I thought about him.

Shuffling to the front door, I flicked on the hall light and pressed on the intercom button.

“Hello?”

“Aly.” It was Rob. My heart leapt. “Thank God. Why didn’t you pick up any of my calls?”

“Hi!” I said, my smile now splitting my face. I didn’t have to wait until tonight to see him. “Sorry, my phone broke. Here, come on up.”

I buzzed him in, smoothing my hair while I waited. Maybe he’d come for a quickie before work. Or maybe he’d brought coffee. He could definitely be thoughtful like that when he wanted to be.

I lunged for my door at his knock. Rob stood in the hall. He looked like he’d come straight from the airport. There were dark thumbprints underneath his eyes. His hair was a mess, and his scruff was one day too scruffy.

He had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He wasn’t smiling the way I was.

My heart sunk the tiniest bit.

“Can I come in?” he asked, putting a hand in the front pocket of his rumpled jeans.

I opened the door a little more. “Yes! Of course. I’m so happy to see you.”

He stepped inside. I closed the door behind him.

Rob leaned in and pressed a kiss to my cheek. It was chaste and quick and serious. Not at all Rob’s style.

My heart sunk some more as I my eyes moved over his face. The guy looked like hell. He was being quiet. He’d shown up at my door at the crack of dawn. No quickie. No coffee in hand.

Shit. Was this relationship over before it’d even begun?

Was he mad? Upset? But about what? The only thing I could think of was Em. I knew how much it’d hurt Rob to be left out of the loop on her engagement to Kit. Had he somehow found out I hadn’t told him about her pregnancy?

I promised Emily I wouldn’t tell anyone. And I didn’t know—maybe Kit wanted to tell his brother himself or something. It wasn’t really my news to share.

I shivered. “Everything okay?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Anything you want to tell me?”

“What do you mean?” I said carefully.

“I asked you if there was anything you wanted to tell me,” he replied.

I pulled back. “Rob. No offense, but I’m not in the mood for games this morning.” I put a hand on my stomach. “I’m really not feeling well.”

His eyes went to my hand. They softened.

“How could you not tell me?” he said.

My heart turned over. So this was about Em. He was obviously upset—hurt—about being left in the dark.

I didn’t want to break my promise to my best friend. But Rob was Kit’s family. He’d find out eventually, wouldn’t he? And I didn’t want him to be mad at me. He was clearly upset about this.

Plus, I really wanted this conversation to be over so I could go make a pot of coffee. I was going to need a few of those just to make it to lunch.

I crossed my arms. “This is about the pregnancy, isn’t it?”

The duffel dropped from his hand to the floor. His eyes—they changed again. Got a little wet, even. He speared a hand through his hair.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

“Look,” I said, eyeing him. I knew he was hurt, and maybe surprised, but I hadn’t expected this reaction. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I mean, the timing of the whole thing isn’t great, obviously. Just didn’t seem right to share it with you yet.”

He rushed forward, grabbing my hand from my stomach. “Didn’t seem right to share it with me? Aly, this is my family we’re talking about.”

“It is family I guess. Yeah,” I said, still eyeing him. Was it just my jet lag, or was Rob acting really weird?

Before I knew what he was doing, Rob was getting down on one knee, my hand still in his. Right there on the parquet floor of my apartment. My pulse blared, a warning.

“Rob,” I said slowly. “What are you doing?”

He looked up at me, the blue in his eyes washed out to pale green in the grubby hall light.

“You’re right, Aly. The timing of this isn’t great. But I’m determined to make the best of it. I know you’re going to be a spectacular mum. And I’d like to think I’d make an all right dad.”

Now my pulse was blaring inside my head. My heart was turning over inside my chest, over and over and over, making me feel woozy.

“Seriously, Rob—”

“Please let me finish, sweetheart. What I’m trying to say is, I want to do right by you. And this is the right thing. The honorable thing. We can do the wedding before the baby comes, or after—we could even do something small if you’d prefer that. But I want to give our baby the family I never had. The family James never had.” He squeezed the bottom knuckle of my fourth finger between his thumb and index finger. “Alison Mason, I’m asking you to marry me.”

I was so stunned I swore my heart stopped beating. I couldn’t comprehend what was going on. One minute, I was sleeping in my bed, and the next I was getting proposed to by my boyfriend of three days because he thought I was pregnant with his kid.

Rob thought I was pregnant.

He was proposing to me. In the hall of my apartment. At six A.M. Because he thought I was pregnant.

“I didn’t have time to get a ring, obviously,” he said. “But we can get that sorted later. At least this way you’ll be able to pick out exactly what you want.”

My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. My head pounded. I was in so much pain.

Maybe that’s why I felt like crying. That, or the fact that the romance—the fairy tale—I thought I could find with Rob was dissolving right before my eyes.

He thought I was pregnant. So he’d proposed. He hadn’t talked to me about it. Hadn’t asked me how I felt. Hadn’t considered that a proposal like this wasn’t at all what I’d wanted or dreamed of.

He was proposing because he thought he had to. It was honorable. It was right.

Which made it all wrong. Where was the romance? The meaningful, thoughtful proposal?

Never mind all that. Where the hell was the whole I-love-you-so-much-I-want-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-you bit? That was the most important part.

I mean, this was about as far away from the fairy tale as it got. He wasn’t actively, enthusiastically choosing me.

He was choosing me because he had to. The way you had to choose between tooth polish flavors at the dentist’s office. All the options sucked.

“We can move you into Primrose Palace,” he was saying. “My place is a bit cozy, but I imagine the Queen would allow us to move to a bigger apartment. One with room for a nursery—”

“Stop,” I said.

Rob looked at me. “Please, Aly. Say yes.”

“I’m not pregnant,” I blurted, pulling away my hand.

He blinked. “What?”

“Rob, I have no clue what made you think that I am. But I’m not.”

“Then whose pregnancy tests did I find in the bin in your bathroom?”

“You were digging through my trash? They were Emily’s,” I said. “She wasn’t feeling well all weekend. She thought there was a possibility she could be pregnant. So while you and Kit were out riding jet skis or whatever, she came to my room with the tests. Said she didn’t want to take them alone.”

Rob’s brow puckered. “So you’re not pregnant.”

“No. Emily is. And she didn’t want me to tell anyone until she and Kit had time to digest the news.” I crossed my arms over my chest again. “Can you please get up?”

I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. Watched as the realization sunk in. He got up, slowly, like it hurt.

“Are you in love with me?” I asked.

We were eye to eye now. His flicked over my face. He hesitated.

“I like you, Aly. Quite a lot. Love…it will come eventually, won’t it?”

I scoffed, rolling my eyes so he wouldn’t see the tears in them. “So you’d propose to me even though you don’t love me.”

He was shaking his head.

“I was trying to do the right thing. I’m not a bad man, Aly. I wanted you to see that.”

“You’re not a bad man,” I said, the words tumbling off my lips. “But you are a stupid one. You’re telling me you’d do this very serious thing for such a stupid reason?”

His eyes widened. “Getting my girlfriend pregnant is not a stupid reason to me. Knowing what you do about my family, you have to see that.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “I do. But how can you not see how a proposal like this is not only a very bad, very impulsive idea, it also goes against everything I’ve ever told you I wanted? Jesus, Rob!” I was really crying now. “Is this what you think a happily ever after looks like? No romance. No planning. Are you really okay with this being our story—that you knocked me up three days after we’d started dating and then we got married? That’s one hell of a meet cute.”

Rob looked stricken. “What’s a meet cute?”

“Of course you don’t know what a meet cute is,” I spat. I turned and stormed into my kitchen. I needed coffee. A new boyfriend.

A new life.

Rob followed me into the kitchen. I took down the coffee, slamming the cabinet. Filled the carafe with water and poured it into the coffee maker, spilling half of it on the counter.

If Rob could propose to me without loving me, what did that say about him? What did it say about us?

My exhaustion lit up my anger like lighter fluid. He didn’t know me. At all. Worse, he didn’t give a shit about the things I wanted. The things that were important to me.

He was so fucking immature to think this was a good idea. To think I’d actually agree to something so ludicrous. Why would he think barging into my apartment and proposing like this was a better idea than sitting down and having a real conversation? Than talking things through and carefully considering our future together and coming up with a plan that suited us both?

Did I really want to be with a guy who acted like this? Who thought this was the best option?

My hand shook as I measured the coffee into the filter.

“Need some help?” Rob asked.

“No.”

“Look, I know that wasn’t the most romantic proposal ever. But my intentions are good, Aly.”

I whirled around. “I don’t want good. Good is not good enough. I get that my standards are high. But this is not my story. It can’t be. Where’s the romance? I want the adorkable meet-cute, and I want the passion, and god damn it, I want to love the man I marry.”

“Okay,” he said after a beat. “You can still have all that. We’ve got the passion thing down. Let’s just press the restart button, yeah? Let’s start over.”

I stared at him. Immature. Thoughtless.

He was just proving my point. Did he know how problematic all this was?

“Start over?” I asked.

“Yeah. Pretend like this never happened.”

I felt like he’d smacked me.

“So what if I’d really been pregnant?” I said. “And what if, in some alternate universe, I’d said yes to your proposal? And a year from now, we were married, and we had a baby, and we were absolutely miserable together? What then?”

Rob shrugged. “I don’t know. We’d, uh, work it out, I guess?”

I kept staring at him. I wanted to be angry with him. Anger was a much easier emotion to deal with than disappointment. But I didn’t even know where to start with Rob. How to explain to him why his plan was awful, and childish, and ill-considered.

How to tell him he wasn’t ready for me without sounding like a self-important twat.

I sagged against the counter.

“This is over,” I said.

Rob stepped forward. “This conversation you mean?”

“No, Rob. Us. We’re over,” I said, and shook my head.

His eyes were wide again. “What? Why?”

“You’re a good guy.” I put a hand on his chest. “But you and me…we’re just too different. You don’t want the same things I do.”

He stepped forward. A familiar red flush crept up his neck. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course I want the same things. You want the wedding. The…the kid in the back of the Volvo.” His words stumbled over one another in his panic. He held out an arm. “I was just offering you all that.”

“You were offering it for the wrong reasons,” I said, wiping my nose on my shoulder. “Which shows you’re not ready for that stuff yet. You don’t understand it. I think you will one day. But right now…” I looked at the ceiling. Tears leaked out of my eyes and down my throat. “I need you to go.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m serious. I have to get ready for work.”

Rob reached for me—reached for my face so he could wipe away my tears—but I dodged his hand.

“But you’ll call me, right?” he said. “I can see you later?”

I shook my head. I knew if Rob and I stayed in contact at all, I’d be tempted to let him back in. Tempted to give him another chance, even though I’d already given him one too many.

But that was our relationship in a nutshell, wasn’t it? The back and forth. Hot and cold. The two of us coming together, Rob fucking up and pulling us apart. Making up with great little speeches and better sex. Rob pulling us apart again.

Rinse and repeat.

That was what I had to look forward to if I stayed with Rob.

“No. No calls. Please.”

The hurt in his eyes I saw then—the very real, very raw pain—made me hurt, too.

I didn’t want to hurt anymore.

“If that’s really what you want,” he said.

“It is,” I replied. “I’m begging you, Rob. Please go.”

And he did.