One More Time - Ali Parker Page 0,69

away. I’m done hiding. I don’t know why exactly you’re walking away, but I don’t think you should either.”

“It’s not that simple, Caleb,” Kelly said, her eyes growing moist and her hands clenched around her knees, but she couldn’t hide that they were shaking.

Everything about this talk was setting me on edge. There was something going on here that had Kelly pulling back from me, something that she was obviously afraid to tell me. My own hands started shaking a bit as I considered the possibilities.

“Why isn’t it that simple? We were happy together. We were good for each other. Weren’t we? Did I do something to scare you away? Is it my life in the band?” Surely, it couldn’t be that. Not again. Kelly met me in Destitute. She was in the industry. She’d known exactly who I was.

Kelly’s eyes flew open as she watched me react, her hands dropping from her knees as she reached for me. Then she dropped them when she saw I wasn’t moving. Pain was seeping through every pore, like that old wound had been slashed wide open.

But she didn’t deny it. Kelly didn’t jump up and run to me. She didn’t tell me that it wasn’t that. Fuck, it was. She couldn’t deal with it either. Buzzing started in my ears, and I turned to leave, feeling defeated for the first time ever.

I was a fucking fool to have believed things could end any differently. All I wanted was—

“Don’t leave, Caleb, please. Don’t leave.” She implored me, but I couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t look at her. I needed to get out of here. My fingers were itching for the comfort of my guitar. I needed to tear things up for a while. A long fucking while.

“It’s okay, I get it.” I bit out, reaching for the door. “Goodbye, Kelly.”

Before I could open it, I heard her take a deep breath, so deep I could hear it over the buzzing in my ears.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out then. My world went still. The buzzing ceased, and my hand fell to my side.

Air wouldn’t reach my lungs. My whole body going as still as the world around me had gone. For the first time in my life, I was completely and utterly stunned into silence. I tried to search for words. There were things that I should’ve been saying, questions I should’ve asked, but I couldn’t find the words.

I was still starting at the door, still inches away from it when Kelly started rambling. “I promise you I wasn’t lying. I really am on birth control. Or I was. I stopped taking it a couple of days ago. But until then, I took it religiously, every day. At the exact same time. I promise. This wasn’t a trick. I wasn’t trying to catch you or keep you. I didn’t lie to you.”

Her voice cracked with emotion, and when I finally managed to turn toward her, I saw that tears were streaming down her face, her shoulders were slumped, and her eyes were trained on the carpet in front of the bed. Chest expanding on another deep breath, she still didn’t look at me as she continued.

“I wanted to tell you. I’ve only known for a couple of days, but I was scared of how you would react if I told you that you were going to be a father. You looked so happy. I couldn’t take that away from you.”

Those last words broke through the shock. Kelly was pregnant with my child, and she thought I wouldn’t be happy? That she was taking something away from me?

My feet carried me to her without my brain having to send the signal to do it. I crossed the room in a couple of strides and pulled her into my arms. Her legs wrapped around my hips as she burrowed her face into my neck. Warm tears rolled onto my skin, and her chest heaved on a sob.

I sat down on the bed with her in my lap, stroking her hair and her back as I tried to find the words that were tumbling around in my skull, escaping as soon as I reached them. I tightened my hold on her and breathed her in.

“I’m going to be a father,” I muttered, to myself as much as to her. A balloon opened in my chest, my heart suddenly released from the vise it’d been in since I thought she wanted to leave me because of my lifestyle. It