We started browsing the racks. “But you want it to be.”
“No, I don’t. I know Nash is not looking to settle down. He doesn’t want a girlfriend or a kid. He wants to pop in on occasion when he has the time. I’m okay with that. It works. I’m not trying to force him into a relationship he doesn’t want. That will only end badly for both of us.”
She nodded and pulled a shirt from the rack before putting it back. “Do you think it might evolve into something?”
“No.”
“Liar,” she said with a laugh. “At least be honest.”
“I won’t let it,” I insisted.
“It is going to be next to impossible not to develop strong feelings for the man who fathered your son. He’s back in your life and offering to help Jace. Any mom would naturally be thrilled with that. It would be silly to think you wouldn’t begin to fantasize about being together as a real family.”
She wasn’t entirely wrong, but she wasn’t all right either. “I think I would fantasize about that if I didn’t know what I did about him. He hurt me. It was the kind of hurt you never forget. I can’t let myself get back to that point with him. I’m spending time with him because I think it’s best for Jace. I don’t exactly have a lot of guy friends. In fact, I have zero male friends. I want someone to help me carry this burden, even if it’s only for a few months.”
“What exactly did he do?” she asked. “You’ve never really said.”
I shook my head, thinking about that time. “He dumped me.”
“When you were pregnant?”
“He didn’t know I was pregnant. I never got the chance to tell him.”
“Did he move?” she pressed.
“Nope. He got married.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Like right away?”
I nodded. “Pretty much. We’d only been officially seeing each other for a few weeks. A month at the most. I was one of the lucky women to start feeling morning sickness almost the moment I got pregnant. I didn’t know for sure if I was, but I had a feeling it could be the problem.”
“So you took a test?”
I shook my head. “At that point, no. I was going to tell him I thought I might be, but he dumped me before I could even get a word out. He said he knew I wanted to settle down and have a family. He didn’t. He was absolutely against the idea. I didn’t want to tell him I thought I was pregnant because he would think I was trying to trap him. We broke up and that was that. I don’t even know if you could call us going out. He didn’t want to see me. Two months later, I knew for sure I was pregnant. At that point, I was still going to tell him. I was going to assure him I expected nothing from him, but I wanted him to know.”
“But you never did tell him?” she said.
“No.” The exact moment I read his engagement announcement in the paper was still burned into my heart. “I just happened to be reading the social living section in the newspaper one day at work. That’s when I read his engagement announcement. There was a picture of him with his lovely wife-to-be. It made me sick. Two months. Two months after he told me he didn’t want a family, he was getting married. I did a little stalking and realized it wasn’t marriage that scared him off. It was me. I wasn’t connected. I wasn’t model pretty. I figured it would only cause a lot of drama. There was no point putting my child in the middle of a mess. I didn’t think Nash would want anything to do with the child anyway.”
“Wow,” she said. “That had to have been rough.”
“It was, but that’s why I know I will not let myself fall for him again. I know him. He does this. He’s going to play house for a bit and he’ll move on.”
“What if he doesn’t?” she asked. “What if he does want to settle down now?”
I snorted. “Trust me, he doesn’t.”
“Hypothetically speaking, what if he does? You guys have been getting along very well. What if he decides he needs to move to California to open another business? Will you uproot your life for him?”
“What? Why would you even ask that?”
“Because I know you and I can see you do care deeply about him. More importantly, now that Jace