Текст книги "Breakaway"

Автор книги: Kelly Jamieson

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

“No.” She shook her head. “The playoffs already started. I can’t imagine why he’d do that. But clearly, he got carried away, drank a bit too much, got arrested…” she rolled her eyes, “and was too embarrassed to tell me. But that doesn’t explain why he played so little tonight or why he got in that fight that cost the game.”

“I don’t know, Remi.”

“Something’s wrong.” After examining all the facts, she concluded that something was definitely wrong. Clammy-hands, heart-freezing, gut-churning wrong. And if he wasn’t going to tell her what it was, she was going to go to him and make him.

Except he was in another city. Dammit. And he wouldn’t be back in Chicago until Thursday.

* * *

Jason sat down in his coach’s office, his insides a mass of twisted nerves.

“Okay, Jase. What’s going on?”

He was getting tired of that question. Tired of hearing it, tired of trying to talk his way around it.

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. You go out and get wasted last weekend, act like an asshole, get arrested, show up for practice the next day so hungover your face was green and you could barely skate. Then you get in a stupid fight and take a dumbass penalty that cost us our first playoff game. Last night you didn’t play much better.”

Jason slumped in the chair, unable to meet Dan’s eyes.

“You’re saying that’s nothing?”

He shook his head.

Dan waited. “Fuck.” He shook his head, his mouth tight. “Okay, then. If nothing’s wrong, get your shit together and act like the professional you are. We’ve got another game tomorrow night, and if we lose, we only have one more chance. We need you, Jase, but I won’t hesitate to bench you if you aren’t able to get your head in the game. This is not the time to be out drinking and partying and acting like an irresponsible teenager.”

Jason winced.

He rubbed his forehead.

“You’re better than this, Jase,” Dan continued, his voice easing.

Shit. Jason’s stomach rolled over.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong? Maybe I can help.”

And that did it.

Jason leaned one elbow on the armrest of the chair and covered his eyes while he tried to get his tight throat to relax enough to speak. He tried and nothing came out. Cleared his throat. Swallowed.

“I found out on Saturday that my ex-girlfriend is pregnant.”

Silence. Then, “Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Jason took his hand away and met Dan’s eyes. “It’s not that…I don’t want…fuck.” He swallowed again. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been seeing someone else—someone I really care about. Christ! I don’t want to hurt her.”

Dan nodded and leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “Yeah, I guess I see the problem. So she’s pretty upset about this?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“Oh. Jesus, Jase. You gotta tell her.”

“I can’t tell her.” Anguish slammed into him like a body check. “I don’t know what to tell her, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Am I supposed to break up with her so I can be with Brianne? So we can get back together and be parents to this baby? Am I supposed to ask Brianne to marry me?” His voice cracked.

“Oh, man.” Dan rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know the answers to those questions, Jase. I can’t tell you what to do. But a couple things I can tell you. First of all—you have to deal with this. We’re in the playoffs. We need you here and present, mind and body and soul, every game, all sixty minutes. You can’t let your personal life interfere with your professional life.”

Jason nodded. “I know.” He felt like dog crap on the sidewalk about how unprofessional he’d been. He tightened his mouth.

“And I can tell you that you’re a good man. You’ve got a good, solid background—your parents brought you up right. Yeah, you’re young.”

“I’m twenty-nine.” Not a kid. Not like Remi’s younger brother wanting her to bail him out of missing an exam. Jason was old enough to be taking responsibility for his own mistakes, just like he’d urged Remi to make her brother do.

Dan waved a hand. “From where I’m at, you’re young. But you’re right. You’re a grown man and you need to figure this out. You need to do the right thing.”

“I don’t know what the right thing is. The right thing for me is different than the right thing for Brianne. And for our child. And for Remi.” He rubbed the ache in his chest. “I don’t want to be selfish, but…I just don’t know.”

“Go,” Dan said. “We’re done with our practice. You’ve got the rest of today and tomorrow to figure this out. Go do what you need to do, but I expect you here tomorrow night for the game, a hundred percent ready to play.”

Jason nodded and stood. He felt like a teenager in trouble for staying out past curfew, except this was a way worse infraction than that. He left Dan’s office, trying to keep his head up. He got what Dan was telling him. They paid him big bucks to play hockey, not to mope around with his head up his ass, pouting because things weren’t going his way.

Yeah. He had to deal with this. He still didn’t know exactly what he was going to do, but one thing he knew—he had to tell Remi.

Chapter Fifteen

Usually Remi loved having kids visit her after class. Some of her current students stayed and some of her former students, now in grade seven or eight, often came after school to hang out in her classroom, sometimes helping her mark spelling tests or clean up, good kids who she enjoyed talking to and laughing with.

But today she had to get out of there, like now.

“Sorry, everyone,” she said, packing her briefcase. “I have to leave early today.”

Well, it wasn’t early, but it was early for her since she usually stayed late.

“Aw, Ms Buchanan. Not already.”

She smiled at them. “Go home. Go play video games and eat junk food or something. Go bug your parents.”

They all laughed, knowing she was kidding. Slowly they started to make a move to leave, but not fast enough for her. She tapped a foot and resisted the urge to get up and drag them out.

Then a big shadow appeared in the door of the class room and the kids all yipped. “Hey! Jase!”

Her heart stopped. Then thudded fast and hard, making her dizzy.

God, he looked rough. Dark beard shaded his jaw and tension drew down the corners of his mouth. He clearly hadn’t shaved since she’d last seen him. His tousled hair stuck up in all directions and he wore the most faded, ripped and ragged pair of jeans she’d ever seen, along with his expensive lamb-soft leather jacket. Most impressive of all was the black eye.

His eyes met hers, but he gave the kids smiles and talked to them for a minute.

“What? It’s not Wednesday?” he asked. “You mean I’m here on the wrong day?”

“Stars for Reading is over!” they told him.

“Oh no!”

They all laughed. His eyes met Remi’s across the room.

Thank god it was over. Dropping his pants in a restaurant and getting himself arrested wasn’t exactly being a good role model for the kids. They would have kicked him out if the program was still going.

“Hey, I need to talk to Ms Buchanan, so scram.” He grinned at them, a strained grin, but they listened to him better than they’d listened to her, which made her want to pout briefly, and in only seconds the classroom was empty and she and Jason were alone. They looked at each other. She had a hard time getting air into her lungs.

“You’re probably pissed off at me,” he finally said.

She debated how to play this. Like a mother whose child has disappeared while shopping, found safely moments later—should she be furious at the disappearance? Or happy and relieved he was okay? Emotions churned inside her.

“Should I be pissed off?” she asked, trying to hold his gaze, but he let his eyes drop.

“Yeah. You should.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a big, stupid jerk.”

She felt a fist squeezing her heart.

“No, you’re not.”

He moved toward her and put his hands on her waist and she let her briefcase drop to the floor. Then he bent his head and kissed her. Much as she wanted to kiss him back and never, ever stop, she couldn’t just pretend nothing had happened. She put her palm on his chest and pushed.

“What’s going on, Jase?”

He lifted his head and gazed down at her, his mouth a straight line of grimness, eyes dark.

“Nothing.”

She shoved harder at him and he took a step back. “Bullshit. Something’s obviously wrong.”

“I should have called you on Saturday,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets and elevating his shoulders like a little boy. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s it? You’re sorry?”

“Yeah.”

She stared at him. That wasn’t good enough for her. How could he think it was?

“Wanna get some dinner?” he asked.

She felt her eyebrows descend and put her fingers to her temples. “Dinner?”

“Sure. Something quick.” He moved toward her again and traced his fingers down the side of her neck and over her collarbone in the opening of her blouse. She shivered. “And then we can go back to your place and I’ll make it up to you that I didn’t call on Saturday.”

She lowered her chin and looked up at him through her lashes. He was going to do this—act like nothing big had happened.

Jennifer appeared in the door of the classroom with some papers in her hands. She stopped short upon seeing Jason. “Oh, hi Jason. I didn’t know you were here.”

He shot her his most charming grin, made especially bad-boy sexy by the shiner, and she smiled in return. Remi wanted to roll her eyes, but didn’t. “Just came to talk to Remi.”

She eyed them. “Well, I can talk to you about this tomorrow, Remi.”

“Okay. Thanks. We’re just leaving.”

This was not the place to be discussing Jason’s problems, whatever they may be, so she grabbed her coat and purse and briefcase and they walked out of the school together.

“Let’s just go to my place,” she suggested. “If you’re hungry, I’ll make you something, but I don’t want to be having this conversation in a restaurant.”

He frowned. Good. Just so he knew they were having a conversation.

He followed her home and once the door had closed behind them, he reached for her again. His mouth was warm and delicious on hers, then he kissed his way over her cheek and jaw and the side of her neck, sending shivery delight over her body. It was so hard to resist his potent sexual charm, but she grabbed hold of his big biceps and tried to push him away.

“Stop, Jase.”

He muttered something against her neck and didn’t move. “You’re so sweet, Remi,” he murmured. “God, I missed you. I had to see you. Even…”

Even what? She ached for more of him, longed to arch against him and throw her arms around his neck. She almost did. Then she used some of the moves she hadn’t used for a while and slid out of his grip with a fast bend of her knees, then grabbed his arm and twisted it up behind his back sharply.

“Jesus Christ!”

She gave his arm a hard wrench, not to hurt him, just to remind him that just because he was big didn’t mean she couldn’t protect herself from him. Then she let him go and stepped away, putting space between them.

“Do not think you can just show up and get me all hot and bothered and I’ll just forget about whatever is going on,” she said, her jaw so tight it hurt. “Don’t think you can use sex to distract me from everything else.” Whoa. She was speaking up, standing up for herself. It was hard, but she knew it was important, important to their relationship and important for her own self-respect.

He stared at her, then rubbed his face. The lost look on his face almost did her in, but she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing to the arm chair. “And talk.”

“Uh…”

“Oh, god, Jase. I saw the newspaper article. You were arrested! You barely played half of the game Monday night and then you got in a fight and took a stupid penalty and cost your team the game.”

He winced.

She was just getting started. “So you didn’t call me. Fine. We don’t owe each other anything. Really. All I wanted to know was that you were okay. Then you call and don’t say a word about what happened. Then I see that in the paper and watch you blow the game—I was worried about you!”

She pushed her bangs off her forehead and blew out a long breath. That had actually felt pretty good. Except she was still worried sick about him.

Jason sat in the chair, not saying a word, hands on the armrests.

“What’s this all about? Tell me. Did you freak out after you asked me to move in with you?”

He stared at her.

“‘Cause if you did, that’s just crazy. We didn’t even talk about it. I don’t know if I even want to move in with you. It was no reason to go nuts.”

“That’s not it,” he said in a low voice.

His shoulders slumped and again she went all soft and warm inside, wanting to throw herself into his lap and hug him and make him feel better.

“Then what is it?”

“You were worried about me?”

“Of course I was!”

She stood there shaking her head.

His lips pressed together he nodded and sat forward, head bowed. Then he lifted his head. “I never thought you’d be worried about me.”

She sank down onto the couch, legs feeling woolly soft. “I love you, Jase. Of course I’d be worried about you.”

“Oh, god.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “Sorry, Remi. I should’ve called you, but I didn’t. I’m sorry you read about that in the paper. I was an idiot. But it’s done.”

She shook her head, not convinced this wasn’t some major crisis.

“That’s it,” she said slowly. “Were you celebrating that night? At Sage?”

“Celebrating?” His laugh cracked. “Hell. Yeah. Sure. Celebrating.”

All she could do was sit there and look at him.

“C’mere, Remi. Please.” He held out a hand and despite her practical, sane, sensible nature, she rose off the couch and went over to him. He tugged her down onto his lap and she snuggled in against him, so big and warm and strong. His hands tightened on her body and he buried his face against her hair. She felt his chest rise and fall with his breathing, faster than usual, felt his heart thudding beneath her palm.

“I need you,” he whispered. “So much.”

She nodded against him, then lifted her head. She didn’t realize she was crying until his mouth touched hers and they both felt the wetness. He groaned and used his fingertips to wipe away her tears as they kissed.

“Don’t cry, Remi. Please don’t cry. I’m not worth it.”

How could he say that? More tears squeezed out of her eyes, despite the kisses he laid on her mouth, his hands holding her face.

The kisses grew hotter, their need for each other accelerated. Their hands roamed over each other’s bodies, sliding beneath clothes to find skin, his finding her breasts, hers gliding over the satiny muscles of his back.

He shoved up her skirt and cursed at the black tights she wore beneath it, but he hooked his fingers into the waistband and dragged them along with her panties off over her hips and legs, leaving her bare to him. He unzipped and pulled out his erection, long and hard and then he groaned. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Need a condom…”

“It’s okay,” she whispered. With crazy wild thinking, she didn’t want him to use a condom. She wasn’t going to get pregnant, being on the Pill, but if she did…it’d be okay. She trusted him. She wanted his baby.

But he lifted his hips off the couch and shoved a hand into his pocket. He quickly sheathed up and then, still dressed, he pushed inside her and she loved it.

He buried his face against her hair as his big body jerked and heaved over her, filling her, stretching her. She tightened her thighs on his hips, squeezing him inside her, every thrust pushing the air out of her lungs and leaving her breathless. She gripped his shoulders and hung on tight, he rode her so hard, just how she liked it, hard and fierce and fervent.

She cried out, holding on tighter, lifting into each push of his body, her clit bumping against his pubic bone, each drive pushing her higher and a long, low noise escaped her as she came, holding herself against him. He groaned too and she felt him come inside her.

She wrapped her arms around his big body and they held each other for long moments, their labored breathing the only sound in the room.

“Now are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Chapter Sixteen

She loved being held by Jason in bed after sex, his arms around her, sinking into his voluptuous body heat, her legs twined with his, her cheek on his chest. But they weren’t in bed and their clothes separated them in a way that was more than just fabric.

“Yeah,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I do have something to tell you.”

“Okay.”

He paused and she waited, playing with his chest hair.

“You remember Brianne?”

Her stomach clenched and her fingers stilled. “Your old girlfriend Brianne?”

“Yes.”

She waited again.

“She’s pregnant.”

Jason’s heart thudded steadily beneath her cheek. Her heart, on the other hand, had stopped. Her body felt hot and tight. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Her thoughts blurred and the room shifted around her, closed in on her, then faded out.

She wanted to say, so what? Who cares about her anymore? What’s the big deal?

But she knew what the big deal was. Jason wouldn’t be telling her this if it didn’t matter hugely to him. And it could only matter to him for two reasons—either he was still in love with Brianne and this fact devastated him or…he was the father.

And she knew which one of those it was.

She knew.

Her heart probably started beating again, she didn’t know, but it hurt. It hurt so bad she almost cried out with the agony of it.

She rolled away from Jason and sat up on the edge of the couch, her back to him. Her eyes burned, but no tears came. Her stomach tightened so much she felt nausea rolling over her. She still fought for oxygen, the room shifting around her as if she was on a slow moving merry-go-round.

“It happened just before we broke up,” Jason continued in that low, barely audible voice. “Before I met you. I haven’t been with her since, Remi. It’s not like that.”

She gave a jerky nod, but although that did take care of the foremost question in her head, that assurance did not make her anguish any better. Not at all.

She stood, but her knees were like butter and her vision went dark and she had to sit back down quickly. She sucked a breath into constricted lungs.

Then questions flooded her brain, clogging up and confusing her. She couldn’t get words out. “What…” She swallowed, tried again. “How did you…”

“Remi, come here. Please.” He tugged on her arm, trying to pull her back to him, but she twisted out of his grasp. Fury blazed inside her suddenly, fury at him for doing this to her.

“Get out,” she snapped at him. “Get out of my house.”

“Remi, we have to talk.”

“I can’t. Not right now.” She couldn’t look at him. She pressed a hand to her eyes. “I just can’t.”

He was still and silent. Then he stood. She still couldn’t look at him. She heard him putting himself back into his pants, the rasp of the zipper. The crushing pressure in her chest had her gasping.

“Remi, I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“Just go! Leave me alone! I can’t talk about this right now.”

“Should I come over tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Remi…”

She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know if she’d want to see him tomorrow or the next day or ever, for that matter. She felt the weight of his gaze on her, even though she sat with her back turned to him, sticky and wet between her legs. She listened for the clap of the door closing behind him. And then she fell apart.

* * *

She had never called in sick when she wasn’t sick, but Friday morning she did. Well, she did feel sick. She hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours and that sleep had been restless and disturbed. She could not function in the classroom and it was better that she’d found a substitute teacher and just stayed home. She had three whole days to try to deal with the mess her life had suddenly become.

It was almost too painful to even think about, but she made herself do it, like picking at a scab or worrying a sore tooth.

Brianne was pregnant. With Jason’s baby. The baby Remi had always wanted, with the man she loved, the man she now wanted to have babies with. She stood and kicked a chair. Hard. Ow.

She sat on her bed and buried her face in her hands.

She was in love with Jason. She’d actually been considering moving in with him. She thought she’d met the man she wanted to be with forever and he loved her too. Their future had stretched ahead of them, bright and shining and forever, maybe with…babies. Children. A family of their own.

And now this. She and Jason were done. How could she be with a man who’d gotten another woman pregnant? She started to cry yet again. You’d think the tears would have dried her right out, but somewhere, somehow her body was able to produce more and she cried and cried again until she lay down, exhausted.

She hated how she felt after a big crying jag. She hadn’t had one for so long, not since her parents had died. She hated the stuffy nose, the swollen, stinging eyes, the puffy lips, the feeling of being on the edge of starting all over again.

She sat up slowly on her bed and dragged her hands over her cheeks, shaking her head. The pregnancy had happened before she and Jason had met. It wasn’t as if he’d cheated on her.

So he said.

No, Jason wouldn’t lie. She knew him better than that. He hadn’t cheated on her, hadn’t planned this. When she thought about it logically, she realized it was just an awful mistake that happened to people sometimes.

Only she’d never thought someone else’s unplanned pregnancy would affect her.

She was responsible, used birth control. Why hadn’t Brianne? Why hadn’t Jason? It was both their responsibility. Anger at both of them flared up in her so hot and furious she couldn’t breathe. How could they have been so stupid and irresponsible? How many lives had been impacted by something so careless?

With a small burn of shame, she recalled how she’d been willing to forego a condom the last time they’d had sex, how she’d been willing to take the risk. And the burn turned into a shaft of agony remembering how she’d almost hoped she’d get pregnant.

When Jasmine called to see if she’d done anything about selling the house, Remi wanted to yell at her. Didn’t she know she had other bigger problems right now? But she bit her tongue and quietly told Jasmine she would have to talk to Kyle about it. It was his home too and he needed to be part of the decision. The school year was almost done for him. He’d want to come home for the summer.

“I want to go to Australia for the summer,” Kyle told her when she called him a while later. She sat down heavily on a chair. “A bunch of buddies are going and I want to go with them.”

She stared across the living room, the phone to her ear. “How will you pay for that?”

“Well, I thought you might help me out. But we’re going to work when we’re there. Some odd jobs or something.”

“But Kyle, I don’t have a lot of extra money for that. What about tuition for next year?”

“I’ll try to save enough when I’m working to help pay for that. Come on, Remi, I really want to do this.”

She told him about Jasmine and her wanting to sell the house.

“That would be perfect!” Kyle said, excitement coloring his voice. “I could use my share of the money for the trip and there’d be enough to pay for the rest of my college. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

True.

“But you’d have no home to come home to,” she managed to say. For some reason that seemed so important to her—to have a place her brother and sister could come home to if they needed. To be there for them if they needed her. Thinking of them floundering, in need, made her heart hurt.

“I know. But I’m older now, Remi, I’ll find a place in the summers. I’ll have enough money for that.”

Apparently she was the only one who wanted to hold onto the house.

Was she being overly emotional about it? Perhaps she was.

So she called a realtor and arranged for him to come over and look at the house. She might as well do it all—sell the house, give up their home, find some crappy apartment to live in by herself for the rest of her life. She even got so agitated, she started packing things in boxes, decorative things that served no purpose, clothes that were out of season, anything left behind in Kyle and Jasmine’s bedrooms.

She might as well do it all. Nobody cared about her or what she wanted, not Kyle, not Jasmine, and God, not Jason. Pain stabbed through her like a knife as she threw stuff into boxes, blinded by stinging tears.

And wasn’t that just the way it always was. Her sacrificing everything for everyone else. Fine. She’d do it. Just like she always had.

Oh for heaven’s sake. She paused over one of the boxes she was filling. She sounded like the biggest martyr in the world, all sorry for herself. Get over it, Remi. She rolled her eyes at herself and straightened her shoulders, then went to find the newspaper. She had a life to get on with.

She scanned the classifieds for apartment listings, looking for something near the school. Two bedrooms would be good, in case Kyle or Jasmine did in fact need a place to stay. But she bit her lip when she saw prices in the neighborhoods she’d like to live in. Eep. She’d had it pretty good, living rent-free in a house that was paid for. Maybe it was going to have to be one bedroom. If Kyle or Jasmine needed a place to stay, they’d have to figure things out.

The next day, the realtor was enthusiastic about the house. Remi knew it would sell easily. Her parents had bought the house many years ago and since then the neighborhood had become very desirable and house prices had escalated to the moon. They’d get good money for it. So she signed the papers and the For Sale sign went up in the front yard.

She cried when she looked at it, her emotions all ragged and shaky. But she swiped the tears away and pressed her lips together and returned to shoving stuff heedlessly into boxes. And while she did that she tried not to think about Jason.

Then the doorbell rang.

She froze with her hands in a box of sweaters, tears dripping down her cheeks.

It was Jason.

He eyed her face, which she knew only too well looked atrocious, then her baggy yoga pants and faded T-shirt. “Hi.”

She stood aside and held the door open for him to come in.

“I have a game tonight,” he said.

Oh, yeah. Life did go on. And he had to go play a game while their lives fell apart.

Then a hot wave of shame swept over her. That wasn’t fair. Jason’s career may be a game, but he was talented and dedicated and serious about it. So were a lot of other people, including a lot of fans who counted on him being there and winning. It really was a big business, despite being just a game.

“Oh. Okay.”

They walked into the living room and stood there on the carpet, facing each other. He actually didn’t look much better than she did. His face too was tight, with lines grooved around his mouth and eyes. He still had greenish and yellow bruises around one eye, still hadn’t shaved and now had dark circles under both eyes.

“Can we talk about this now?” he asked in a scratchy voice.

She nodded and put her hand out for him to sit on the couch.

“I want to tell you what happened,” he said, sitting. She sat at the far end from him and picked up a cushion to hug against her like a shield.

“Okay.” She needed to hear it. Painful as it was, she needed to hear it, needed the answers to her questions, like, how could you be so fucking stupid? She bit her lip.

“Brianne came to see me a couple of weeks ago to tell me. I didn’t believe her. She’s been phoning me ever since we broke up and I thought she was making this up so we would get back together.”

Hope flared in her as she listened. Maybe that was true!

But he extinguished that hope with his next words. “She got something from her doctor to prove how far along she is.” He bent his head. “The timing worked out. It must have happened the last time we were together.”

Shit.

“I told you, Remi, I haven’t seen her since we broke up. Other than that night at Rouge. We were done.”

“Birth control?” She managed to squeeze the words out between tight lips.

“She was on the Pill.” He looked at her, anguish in his eyes, and she believed him. “She doesn’t know what happened either. It just…did. She’s not happy about this either, Remi. She’d just been offered a job by Victoria’s Secret and now she won’t be able to do it.”

Oh, that was really too bad. But again, a hot wave of shame washed over her. Modeling was also a perfectly legitimate career choice.

“So she’s going to have the baby.”

“Yes.” Jason nodded. “She wants to have the baby. I can’t…I…”

“What do you want?”

He lifted shiny eyes to hers. “I don’t know, Remi. This messes up my life so bad, but…it’s a baby. I can’t tell her to have an abortion.”

“It’s her right to choose,” she murmured. “Whatever her choice is.”

“Yes.”

“But it affects you too,” she said. “You’ll be a father, Jase.”

“I know.” He groaned and tipped his head back. “God, I know. I’ve been thinking about this so much.”

“So Saturday you found out, you…what? Went out and got drunk?”

“Yeah.” He bowed his head, hands on his knees. “I did. Not proud of that. Not proud of how I acted. All I can say is, I was hurting. Like I’ve never hurt before.”

“It’s not that bad,” she snapped, surprising herself. “Most people become a parent at some point, Jase. It’s not like you’re fifteen or something.”

He frowned. “It’s not that. Well, it’s partly that. Being a father scares the hell out of me. I don’t know if I can do it. But I was more upset because…well, because of you.”

Her eyes went wide. Her insides knotted. She clutched her pillow tighter. “Me.”

“Yes.” Again, agony filled his dark eyes as he stared at her. His hand moved on his knees, like he wanted to reach for her, but held back. “I just found you, Remi. I love you. After what we went through—I was so happy. Yeah, I was afraid of commitment and marriage—until I met you. When you’re with the right woman it’s not scary anymore. You’re the right one. I love you. And I was fucking dying thinking about telling you about this, knowing how hurt you were going to be. This is the worst thing in the world that could have happened.”

Oh. She stared back at him, her stomach flipping around inside.

He rubbed his eyes. “I should have just come and told you right away. I acted like an idiot and I’m sorry. My coach is pissed off at me, the team’s pissed off at me, my parents are pissed off at me, you’re pissed off at me. Shit.”