Page 33 of Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake
Lizzie’s knees started bouncing under the table as she looked around, her eyes darting around the space.
“So,” Lizzie said, taking a sip of her iced tea. “You took the world’s longest flight to talk? Did you have a topic in mind?” She let out an awkward bubble of laughter that made his heart squeeze a bit.
Rake cleared his throat, ready to get down to business. But all his carefully planned speeches seemed to have evaporated straight from his brain, leaving a tangle in its place. He cleared his throat again. “I’d like to be involved,” he said at last. Because this was the one constant he didn’t want to compromise on.
Lizzie pursed her lips. “Sending a kid across the world every other weekend for visits isn’t particularly ideal,” she said, tracing the mosaic pieces of the table with her fingers.
“I—I’d like a bit more than every other weekend. I’d like to be involved on a daily basis or as close to that if we can arrange it.”
Lizzie gaped at him, then narrowed her eyes. “I’m not just giving you the baby, you weirdo.”
“No. No. That’s not what I mean. Obviously, I don’t want that. I… I mean—”
Lizzie stared at him, her eyebrows arching. Rake blew out a breath.
“I’d like for us to develop an agreed-upon plan of coparenting here in Philadelphia that offers us equal time with the child.”
Lizzie gaped at him again. “So, you’ll… what? Move here? Like it’s that easy? What about a job? What about, I don’t know,citizenship? I don’t—” She stopped, her shoulders slumping, and she buried her head in her hands.
“Don’t what?” Rake asked.
“I don’t even know what you do. What your job is,” she said with a humorless laugh, lifting her head to look at him.
“I’m in marketing,” he said. “I work on the creative team for a brand called Onism Swimwear. And I’ll figure the job thing out. That’s for me to worry about.”
Lizzie made a scoffing noise. “Well, isn’t that just wonderfully cavalier. You don’t want to sharehowyou’ll figure it out. And, again, isn’t there that tiny little thing ofyou living across the globe?”
“Are the details that important right now? Don’t we have bigger things to worry about?”
Something in Lizzie snapped, a small fire blazing in her eyes, as she propped her elbow on the table, jutting her finger at his chest. “The details matter the most,” she said, her brows puckering and eyes turning glossy in her anger. “You come here, tell me you want to be this idyllic father figure, but don’t care to sharehowyou’ll do it? I’m just supposed to have this blind…faithin you to magically make everything work?”
“Why are you getting mad?”
“I’m mad because you’re leaving me in the dark! I’m mad because how can you say that you want to help if I don’t know how you plan to even live in the same city?” She punctuated every other word with a jab to his chest.
Rake grabbed her finger, enclosing her hand in his. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to keep you in the dark.” Lizzie let out an indignant snort and tried to pull her hand away, but Rake placed more gentle pressure on his grip. “I’mnot. Listen, my dad is originally from California, so I have dual citizenship. I just have to look into the details of it. Let me worry about that. And seriously, I’ll figure out the job. I already have somethingin the works. You’re carrying a child. You don’t need the added burden of tiny details that I can handle.”
Her lips twitched. “You don’t get it. You’re asking for us to be partners in this. I need more than that.”
“On the subject of partners,” he said, resting their hands on the table and trying to make his touch reassuring as he stared at the spot their skin met, “I think we should get married.”
Lizzie jerked her hand from his, her whole body jolting back like his words were a punch, and she hit her head on the wood paneling behind her. She stared at him, open-mouthed, eyes blank, for what felt like ten minutes.
Without warning, her face crumpled like a wadded-up piece of paper, tears bursting from her as she buried her head in her hands.
“Why are you crying?” Rake asked, trying to mask his alarm. He was out of practice dealing with anyone else’s emotions, and Lizzie seemed to filter through the entire spectrum of them every few minutes.
“Why am Icrying?” she sobbed, fixing him with an anguished glare of disbelief. “I don’t know, you cyborg. Maybe because I’m pregnant and scared and throwing up nonstop, and my tits hurt so bad I want to rip them off, and my nipples look all weird already, and now some guy I don’t know tells me we should get married? Maybe because about ninety-six hours ago I realized I was pregnant, and then you show up here asking me to tie my life to you like I don’t have one trillion other thoughts crowding my brain? And to top it all off, you live halfway around the world but still expect me to have this blind confidence in you to secure some job here and all kinds of other shit that makes my brain want to melt straight out of my ears just thinking about it?”
“That certainly is… a lot to process.”
She let out another choked sob, curling her body around herself like she would lie down in the booth and never stop crying.Something about it fissured through Rake’s sternum. He hadn’t known her long, but the Lizzie he did know had seemed like an indomitable force. A woman of fire and steel and energy.
But now, she looked afraid. And soft. And scared.
And it did funny things to the organ in Rake’s chest.
Acting on impulse, he moved to her side of the table. She tried to scoot away from him, but he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to his chest, anchoring her to him.