Page 49 of About that Fling (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #2)

“ J enna, wait!”

Adam was breathing hard by the time he caught up to her on a street corner three blocks from the restaurant. He watched her hesitate, then turn to see him chasing her down, determined to—what, exactly?

He didn’t know.

She froze, rooted in place, coiled with an energy that told him she was on the brink of running again. “Adam, stop.”

He halted beside her, breathless and caught somewhere between hurt and frustration. “What are you doing?”

Her eyes flashed in the hazy light of a street lamp, and she looked like she wanted to be anyplace but here with him. “Go back inside,” she whispered. “I just—I need a minute alone.”

“You could get a minute alone in the bathroom. You’re escaping. Running. In high heels, for God’s sake. You’re going to break an ankle, Jenna.”

She looked down at her boots as though noticing them for the first time. “So you chased me down the street to make fun of my shoes?”

“No.” He was still breathing hard, still baffled by what had unfolded back there. “I chased you down the street because I want to understand what just happened.”

He watched her throat move as she swallowed, her fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides. “You want answers. So does everyone in that room, Adam. I can’t give them to you.”

“Running away isn’t the answer. Hiding isn’t going to get you anywhere.” He cringed, hating the patronizing tone in his voice. Apparently, so did Jenna.

“So what are you, some sort of expert on coping strategies?”

“Kind of. It’s one of my areas of specialty, actually.”

Her jaw clenched and she looked away. “It figures. I’m sure you can plot out my behavior on a chart, figure out why I’m as fucked up as I am.

” Her gaze swung back to his and Adam was struck by how much she looked like a cornered animal.

“Go ahead, Adam. Judge me. Tell me all the psychological reasons I create this whole mixed-up mess of lies and deceit and cover-ups.”

“I’m not judging you, Jenna,” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice calm and even. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“You want to know why I didn’t tell you about the miscarriage.”

“You’re entitled to your privacy.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, hating the pain in her eyes.

“But yeah, I’m hurt. I thought we were getting somewhere, really opening up to each other.

I’ve been vulnerable with you. We spent an entire weekend together sharing family stories and intimate details.

You know the name of my grandparents’ dog and the poem my mother read at my wedding.

You didn’t feel like you could share with me? ”

A tear rolled down her cheek. She looked like she might bolt at any second. “So I owe you the story?”

“I’m not saying you owe me.” God, he wanted to shake her. “I’m just saying, I thought we were on the same page. As far as intimacy and truth and sharing and?—”

“It’s where I met Mia.”

“What?”

“In a support group for women who’d had a miscarriage.”

The air suddenly felt colder. “Mia had a miscarriage?”

“It happens, Adam. To one in four women. Did you know that?”

“No, I—I mean, I knew it was common, but I didn’t know the numbers.” Guilt sloshed in his gut. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

Still, something wasn’t adding up. He wanted to reach out and touch her, tell her they could get through this. That the half-truths and cover-ups could be over now, and they could start fresh.

She’d shut down again, he could see it in the stiffness of her posture. Gently, like he was coaxing a timid forest creature, he tried again.“So you had a miscarriage. Recently?”

She looked away. “Two years ago. Right after I broke off my engagement to Shawn.”

“I see,” he said, not entirely sure he did.

She looked back at him then, her eyes locked so tightly on his that he couldn’t look away, not even if he wanted to. “Shawn is sterile, Adam. His parents didn’t vaccinate him as a kid and he got measles and would up with complications that left him sterile. He can’t father children.”

All the air left his lungs. “What?”

“You heard me. My fiancé—the man I was supposed to marry—wasn’t the man who got me pregnant.”

He turned the words over in his head. They didn’t make sense, or maybe he just wasn’t grasping what she was trying to tell him. “What are you saying?”

Her hands were balled at her sides now, fingers clenched into tight fists.

“That I cheated on Shawn, okay? That I’m no better than your ex-wife.

Isn’t that what you’ve been braced for? To find out my skill for covering things up and pretending everything’s just peachy keen—that makes me just as untrustworthy as Mia. Congratulations on being right, Adam.”

He stood reeling in the torrent of words. He didn’t know whether to hug her or push her away or push her for answers, but a thick lump of dread had formed in his gut. She’d lied. Cheated. Hadn’t he expected this?

Part of him didn’t want to hear another word. Part of him wanted to hear the whole damn story. He took a deep breath. “What happened?”

She shook her head. “Shawn and I dated for about three years. We always had this on-again, off-again relationship, but we kept coming back to each other. We talked about getting married, about having three kids and a dog and a house in Lake Oswego.”

Adam nodded, trying to take it all in. He didn’t know what to say, so he was grateful she kept going with no prompting from him.

“We used to break up for a few weeks or months even. We’d get back together and then break up again.

It was a stupid cycle, really hurtful.” She took a shaky breath and kept going.

“During one of the splits, I reconnected with an old college boyfriend. Technically, Shawn and I weren’t together anymore, and I was lonely.

It was a one-time thing, a stupid, casual fling.

” She gave a dry little laugh that sounded hollow.

“It was the only time in my life I’d ever had a one-night stand. ”

“Until me.”

“Until you,” she repeated, her voice shaky.

“I was on the pill, but it’s only ninety-eight percent effective.

I guess I was one of the two percent.” She took another breath, looking weary and worn down.

“Anyway, Shawn and I got back together a few weeks later, and I found out I was pregnant right after that. I didn’t know what to do, but I figured odds were still pretty good he was the father.

We hadn’t been apart that long, right? I was still figuring out how to tell him when he proposed. ”

“Out of the blue?”

“It wasn’t totally out of the blue. Like I said, we’d talked about it for a while.” Her voice sounded shaky and he watched her hand lift to dash tears from her eyes. “I knew he wanted kids, and we’d looked at rings before, talked about a future together. It seemed like a sign, you know?”

“So you said yes.” His voice sounded flat, but not judgmental. He hoped, anyway.

“I said yes.” She sighed. “I was scared, and I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to marry him. The relationship felt like it was already on its last legs, and part of me knew that. But I didn’t think I could say no.”

“Did Shawn know you were pregnant?”

She shook her head. “No. I was still figuring out what to do, whether to say anything about the hookup with the other guy, or just?—”

“Cover it up.”

He heard the hollowness in his own voice. The unspoken accusation. The sight of tears welling in her eyes told him she’d heard it, too.

“We started planning our wedding,” she said.

“He wanted to do it quickly, even went ahead and ordered these stupid invitations without telling me. I was only seven or eight weeks pregnant at that point, and I’d only known for about ten days.

But I made up my mind I was going to tell him over dinner. ”

“Let me guess,” Adam said, nodding at the gaudy neon sign behind them. “Rigatelli’s?”

She nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “It was our special place. We had our first date here, had our first anniversary celebration. I thought—” she stopped, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

Adam wished he had a tissue to offer, but had nothing.

Not even a napkin. “I thought I could just ease into the story, you know? Gauge his response to being a father and go from there.”

“How did that work out?”

She shook her head. “The whole thing didn’t go like I expected.

” She closed her eyes as though forcing herself to revisit that night.

“As soon as we ordered, he said there was something he needed to tell me. That he felt guilty about hiding the truth for so long, but that he felt like I needed to know. He started talking about adoption, about the US foster-care system and babies overseas, and at first I couldn’t figure out what he was saying. ”

“He couldn’t have gotten you pregnant.”

Jenna nodded and opened her eyes. “The baby wasn’t his.”

“Jesus.”

“So I broke up with him.”

Adam blinked, wondering if he’d heard her wrong. “What?”

She closed her eyes again, the guilt etched plainly in her face.

“I broke up with him. I said I didn’t want to get married and that we needed to call off the engagement.

I said it wasn’t about having kids or not having kids or anything to do with that.

I just knew I didn’t want to marry him. I knew it before I said yes, and I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt right then. ”

“I see.” His chest ached for her, even as he struggled to understand.

“The thing is, it was true. I didn’t want to marry him.

He wasn’t the one.” She closed her eyes, her face so creased in pain that Adam felt his own throat tightening.

“That evening, I went home and started having cramps. I wasn’t sure at first—it was so early in the pregnancy, and it can be hard to tell. ”

“You had a miscarriage that same night ?” Of all the horrible timing.

She nodded and opened her eyes to look at him. “Part of me wondered if I made it happen. The lying, the cheating, the deceit.”