“Will you shut up already?” Caleb hissed angrily.

“I’m not going to shut up,” Stefan countered. “You shut up.”

The two men currently standing inside the tiny curtained-off space that was supposed to be my room were going to drive me to murder.

I sided with Caleb, obviously. There was something seriously screwy with Stefan’s head. But if the two of them didn’t stop bickering like teenage girls I was going to lose my mind. My arm burned like a mother, and the stiches I had to get didn’t make it any better.

I exhaled slowly through my nose, dropping my head back to look at the ceiling to silently ask God for patience.

“If you two can’t stop arguing, I’m going to ask you to leave,” the nurse said to Caleb and Stefan in a stern voice.

I could have kissed her right on the mouth. “Actually, feel free to kick out the one who looks like a PGA reject,” I told her. “He’s not welcome. The other one can stay.” I shot Caleb a look. “If he promises to be quiet.”

Just then the doctor threw the curtain back and stepped in. “What’s going on here?”

The nurse pointed at Stefan and answered, “I was just about to call security to escort that one out. He’s distressing the patient.”

All eyes turned to an affronted Stefan as the doctor spoke. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I have to administer a tetanus shot for Ms. King, and if she doesn’t wish for you to be present, then you’ll have to step out into the waiting room.”

“Or out of the hospital altogether,” Caleb grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. “Hell, while we’re at it, why don’t you just get the fuck out of Seattle completely?”

Oblivious to most everything that was just said, Stefan looked from me to the doctor. “A tetanus shot? Is that safe for the baby?”

Oh shit. Oh fuck, oh shit, oh damn.

Caleb’s back went stiff. “Wait… baby? What baby?”

“I’m sorry, sir, who are you to Ms. King?” the doctor asked the bane of my existence.

“What baby?” Caleb repeated.

“I’m her fiancé,” Stefan answered.

“Ex-fiancé!” I snapped. “And we’ve been apart for seven years. He’s pretty much stalking me now.” I was going to kill him. I was going to watch as I slowly choked the life from his stupid freaking body!

“What. Baby?” Caleb barked.

I looked to the man I’d fallen completely and madly in love with despite my best efforts not to. “Caleb, honey, please. If you’ll just give me a minute to get him out of here, I promise I’ll explain everything.”

“Let me guess,” Stefan snorted snidely. “You’re the asshole who knocked her up. Well, you’ll be happy to know that when she realizes you’re not worth the dirt beneath her feet and comes back to me, I’ll raise the child as my own and give it the kind of life a scumbag like you never could.”

“Oh my god!” I shrieked. “Someone get him out of here!”

But it was too late. With a ferocious roar and a bellowed “I’m going to kill you!” Caleb lunged.

* * *

My temples throbbed beneath my fingers as I attempted to massage the massive pain in my skull.

“So you’re saying that this man has been following you around, refusing to leave you alone even though you’ve asked him repeatedly?”

I looked up at the two police officers who’d been called by the hospital when the fight broke out between Caleb and Stefan.

“Yes,” I answered the one who was holding the notepad, taking my statement.

“This is ridiculous!” Stefan exclaimed loudly, rattling the handcuffs that were holding his wrists behind his back. “I’m not stalking her! I’m just trying to help.”

“By stalking her,” the second officer deadpanned.

“I’m not—”

The nurse who had been witness to the entire debacle decided to wade in at that point. “Officer, I haven’t been witness to all the encounters she described, but I will say that she demanded he leave countless times, and instead of doing as she asked, he instigated a fight with the gentleman who’d brought her in. He was defending his girlfriend from a man who was continuously harassing her.”

That was it. I was kissing her as soon as this whole disaster was over. Unless that offended her. In that case, I’d write her a big fat check.

“Oh,” she continued. “And she’s also pregnant, so she doesn’t need that kind of stress.”

Right, could have done without that little reminder. Especially since Caleb had refused to look at me since several of the hospital staff pulled him off my ex.

“Okay, sir.” The first officer slapped his notepad shut and glared at Stefan. “We’re going to need you to come with us.”

“This is ludicrous!” he declared as the cops pulled him from his chair. “Okay. Okay, I’ll leave her alone. I promise. I’ll leave her alone!”

“Too late,” Officer Number Two stated. “When a woman tells you to leave her alone, it’s time to get a clue, man.” He looked to me as Officer Number One began pulling Stefan away. “And I’d suggest you come down to the station soon to file a restraining order against that guy. There’s a couple screws loose with that one.”

They left shortly after. With my arm stitched up and bandaged, and my tetanus shot administered, I’d been cleared to leave, but the whole police thing had kept us at the hospital longer than necessary.

“So….” I turned to Caleb once we were all alone. “I guess we should probably head out, huh?”

He barely looked at me as he stood up and started for the door. Even though he was so clearly pissed at me, he still made sure to open the doors and stay close to my side like he was waiting to see if I needed anything.

I couldn’t take the silence filling the car during the drive. It was slowly crushing me. “Caleb—”

He cut me off. “No. You don’t get to talk right now. I’m so fucking pissed at you I can’t think straight.”

I clamped my mouth shut for the rest of the ride. It wasn’t until we were back at my house that I found the nerve to speak again.

“I was going to tell you. I was just looking for the right time.”

“The right time?” he asked in a low, ominous voice, looking at me from the across the expanse of my living room. “The right time would have been when you found out you were fucking pregnant, Daphne!”

“I was going to,” I cried, tears stinging my nose. “I wanted to, I swear. But when I was going to tell you, you made that comment about not wanting kids and thinking you’d be a bad father, and I just—”

“Wait. That was… Jesus, Daph! That was two months ago! You’ve known for that long and didn’t say a goddamn thing?” He began pacing agitatedly. “Didn’t you think I had a right to know you were having my baby? Christ!” he thundered so loud I jumped and lost my hold on my tears.

“I kn-know,” I stuttered. “I know what I did was w-wrong. I’m so sorry. I just… I was so scared of how you’d take it when you found out, and I… I care about you so much. I was afraid you’d hate me when you found out.”

“Do you realize how fucked up that sounds?” he asked in bewilderment. “You purposefully kept a massive, life-changing secret from me because you thought I’d hate you? What were you hoping for, Daphne? Were you thinking I just wouldn’t fucking notice the further along you got?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, moving closer. “There’s nothing I can say to make what I did right. I can’t excuse keeping it from you for so long. I was wrong, I know that, and you have every right to be angry. If you want to hold this against me, I wouldn’t blame you, but you have to know that I wasn’t going to keep this from you forever, Caleb. I was going to tell you tonight.”

He stopped moving, turning his gaze to me, and what I saw in his eyes froze me to the core—pain, anger, but the worst of all was betrayal. “You know what hurts the most? That you would tell that fucking guy before me. Were you so sure that I’d be a deadbeat father to my own child that you’d set a backup plan in place before telling me?”

“God, no! No, Caleb. It wasn’t like that.” I rushed to him, grabbing hold of his face and forcing him to meet my eyes, praying he could see the sincerity in them. “He showed up at Hart Tower a few days ago. He wouldn’t leave. I told him I was pregnant by someone else to try and make him see that I was never taking him back. I wasn’t trying to find a backup plan. I would never do something like that to you. Never.”

His fingers wrapped around my wrists, holding on to me while I held on to him, like we were the only lifeline the other had. “Why didn’t you tell me you were engaged to that guy, Daphne?”

That was a story I would have been happy to keep to myself for the rest of my life, but I knew if I had any shot at getting him to trust me again, I was going to have to tell him everything. “Can we sit?”

He pulled my hands from his face and walked around the couch, taking a seat on the far left side. I followed suit, wanting to sit as close to him as possible but understanding that he needed that bit of distance.

“I was engaged to Stefan over seven years ago. We were only about a month away from the wedding when I walked into the apartment we shared together and found him and my mother having sex.”

Caleb made a choking sound in the back of his throat while his eyes bugged out. “He… Holy shit. That douchebag and your mother.”

I nodded. “And I haven’t spoken to either of them since that day. Not until they both showed up in Seattle.”

After several seconds of quiet, he finally scrubbed at his face and blew out a breath before asking, “Do you still have feelings for him?”

“God, no!” I declared. “No. Whatever I might have felt for him died the moment I saw them together.” I knew where he was going with his line of questioning, and I wanted to cut him off at the pass. Scooting closer, I placed my hand on top on his. “But even if that hadn’t happened, it still would have ended the same way.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can. Caleb, it took hindsight for me to realize the truth, but I didn’t like who I was back when I was with him. I was this insecure girl desperate for someone to love me. The only parent I ever had growing up treated life with me like it was a competition. She had to be better than me in every way. I never felt like I was good enough because she made sure of it. When I met Stefan, all I wanted was for someone to take care of me the way my mother never did. I wanted someone who looked at me like I was everything, not just a runner-up to Connie King. But even he couldn’t do that. I was just too blinded by my own desperation to see it.”

Lacing his fingers with mine, I continued. “I’m not the same person I was back then. I’m so much stronger now. I can look back on my time with Stefan and admit that I never loved him the way a woman is supposed to love the man she’s going to marry. I was more in love with the idea of him than anything else. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a single thing about how we ended. Please believe me when I say that I don’t feel a single thing for him anymore. I haven’t in a very long time. What I feel when I’m with you is so much stronger than anything I ever shared with Stefan. You make me happy in a way he never could. It never could have worked because I never loved him the way I love you.”

His entire body went completely stiff at my admission of love, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d just made everything worse.

The look he gave me was like a knife to the chest. “But it still wasn’t enough to have faith that I’d do the right thing, was it?” His tone was cold, and even though I deserved every bit of his derision, it still hurt like hell.

He stood from the couch and headed for the front door. My stomach knotted in panic as I got to my feet. My knees trembled, threatening to give out. “Where are you going?”

“I need to think,” Caleb answered, not bothering to turn around. “You gave yourself two whole months to come to terms with all of this. Now it’s my turn.”

Then he was gone. And I was left feeling like the lowest form of scum on the planet.