Page 134 of Love Unwritten
Breathing becomes an impossible task, and my lungs burn as if I just inhaled a bucket of water. The knee-jerk reaction to speak hits me, but I press my lips together and sit quietly while he takes a few more breaths.
His laugh is rough and bitter. “I was already screwed up before, but that made a bad situation ten times worse.” He pauses before speaking again. “But despite the surprise, I felt…happy.”
He looks through me rather than at me, clearly lost in a memory from the past. “I was twenty-two and scared as hell, obviously. It wasn’t like I had a fancy future at an Ivy League university like Julian and Dahlia, and I was fine with that because I never bothered applying to college in the first place, but I still had dreams. The small paychecks I earned while working for my uncle’s construction company were enough when I was only worried about myself, but everything changed after that positive test.”
“Did you want to be a dad?”
“I hadn’t given much thought to it before, but once Hillary told me the news, I realized how much I wanted it. The pregnancy wasn’t planned, obviously, but it didn’t matter to me because I knew from the moment I heard that heartbeat that Nico would change my life forever, and I was right.”
“That you were.” I can’t help my smile.
He tries and fails to match it. “Hillary seemed excited about becoming a mother too, but I eventually realized her reasons were different from mine.”
An eerie chill slithers down my spine. “What do you mean?”
“Before she got pregnant, things were…tense between us.”
Shock steals my ability to speak, so I stare at his face and wait for him to continue.
“We had already broken up twice before—both times because she wanted to—so our relationship wasn’t exactly solid and ready for the next step. If anything, I was the one who was questioning if we could make it long-term.”
“Do you think…”
“That she got pregnant on purpose?”
I nod.
“I had my suspicions, but I never voiced them because it didn’t seem worth the trouble. What was done was done, and I had Nico because of it, so getting angry at her seemed hypocritical when I was so damn excited.”
“You didn’t think it was worth the trouble to find out if the mother of your child tricked you into having one?”
He shrugs, but I can tell the idea bothers him, whether he wants to admit it or not. “She said she forgot to take her pill for a few days, and I took her word for it.” He shakes his head. “Mistake number one, but whatever. We were going to be parents, whether she really thought out her choices or not.”
“But why did you marry her?”
He makes a face.
“What?” I ask.
A flush crawls up his neck and bleeds into his cheeks. “Her parents insisted.”
“What century were they born in again?”
“The one where they would disown her and liquidate her trust if I didn’t do what they wanted. It wasn’t a huge sum of money, but she had enough that getting cut off financially would hurt.”
“What about your uncle’s construction company?” I forgot the name before Julian rebranded it as Lopez Luxury.
“My aunt was struggling with depression after my uncle died so suddenly, and Julian was trying to help her and run a whole company at twenty years old with hardly any experience. I helped as much as I could, but the business was going under.”
“Sounds like a nightmare.”
“Marrying her was a temporary solution anyway. I never wanted a handout, especially from her parents, but with Julian struggling to make the construction company profitable and my first few app ideas being massive failures, it was either accept her parents’ help or become exactly like my parents.”
“That’s…”
“My worst nightmare.” His gaze falls to his empty hands. “Even though I knew I’d never turn to drugs or other vices like them, the idea of struggling with money and bills like they had pushed me to make a desperate decision that I’m not proud of.”
“That’s not fair.” My voice cracks.