Page 48 of The Homemaker (The Chain of Lakes #1)
Chapter Forty-Six
Murphy
If life were easy, what would be the point?
Marry her and love me?
What kind of advice was that?
Had Alice not reappeared in my life, I would marry Blair, have a family, and live a beautiful life. No questions. No doubt.
This is where there’s an all caps BUT.
Alice is back in my life, and my heart has not forgotten about her, nor has it stopped loving her.
When I met Blair, I was attracted to her talent, her beauty, and how she felt like a breath of fresh air when I desperately needed one. I felt confident and cool. My game was on point. My charm turned way up.
However, when I met Alice that day in the backyard of my rental, I was nervous, fumbling my words, blushing, and for two weeks she had me acting and feeling like a young boy crushing on the prettiest, most talented girl in school.
Eight years later, she makes me feel like that young boy again. Maybe it’s because she’s been a mystery. But I don’t know if I can solve her, and that’s why I can’t completely trust her. So I’m spying on her like I did when she was my renter.
Where is she going?
What is she doing?
And why?
While Blair splits her time between visiting her dad, finalizing wedding plans, and overseeing the construction of her gallery via video calls, I obsess over Alice’s every move.
Yesterday, she sat on a park bench, reading a book while kids played on the equipment and kicked soccer balls in the grass, and Canadian geese shit all over the concrete walking path that led to a fishing pond.
I didn’t stay the whole time like a bona fide stalker.
After satiating my curiosity, I went back to work.
Today, she’s meeting with a realtor to tour a house for sale in Edina, where the housing is not exactly cheap.
Is she moving? Quitting her job?
Why a house? Why here? If she quits her job, can she afford to live here?
This all should get filed under “It’s None of My Fucking Business,” but having sex with her, a few days ago, felt like I was making her my business.
I don’t stick around and risk her seeing me when she leaves the house. Instead, I message Blair. We need to talk.
When I arrive at the restaurant, Blair waves me over to a table on the patio.
“This is such an unexpected surprise,” she says before kissing me.
I hold out her chair for her to sit down again. “A lot has been going on, and I thought we should call a time-out, slow down, and talk.”
She releases a sigh that’s so big her shoulders drop an inch. Then she reaches for my hand, giving it a squeeze. Her glossed lips tip into a soft smile. “I took a pregnancy test.”
I’ve only had a handful of defining moments stand out in my life. The last one was eight years ago when my car hydroplaned after dinner with the most mesmerizing woman I’ve ever known. I thought nothing would change the course of my life more than that.
Until now.
Blair continues. “Waiting for the result was excruciating. I was scared out of my mind. I know we’ve discussed having kids—soon even—but Dad just had a heart attack, and the wedding isn’t for six more weeks.
What if I’m nauseous and miserable? And what about my gallery?
And moving to New York? I didn’t want to do any of this while carrying a baby.
The stress wouldn’t be good for me or our baby.
” Again, she sighs. “Then I realized nothing else matters. I was like … we’re having a baby.
We can do this. I can do this. And a year from now, ten years from now, it won’t matter if the timing is a little off. ”
I swallow hard, feeling a war in my fucking soul, the boundaries of my heart reaching their limits. With a smile, I slowly nod, lacing my fingers with hers because sometimes we make decisions, and sometimes decisions make us.
She focuses on the server delivering food a few tables away, and her smile fades. “The longest two minutes of my life took me to hell and back. And just when I allowed myself to feel a spark of excitement, a sunrise of new possibilities, it was negative.”
It takes a moment, several long blinks, before her words make sense.
She wipes her tears as soon as they slide down her face. “It’s so stupid. How can I feel brokenhearted over something I didn’t want?” She sniffles. “But then I did. And now it hurts.”
I scoot my chair closer to hers and pull her into my arms. “I’m sorry,” I say. And I am. I’m sorry for a million different reasons, even if I don’t regret all of them. Does that make me a bad person? Flawed beyond redemption?
Can I be sorry for hurting her without regretting the love I have for Alice? Our time together? Does the heart always walk a righteous path? Or is it the one thing that makes humans inescapably fallible?
“You make everything better,” she whispers, hugging me like I’m the only thing holding her together. “I’ve never been so sure about anything or anyone in my life as I am about you.”
Blair— my proverbial pregnancy test—was everything I thought I wanted until life presented another option.
And now I can’t reconcile any of this. Every decision feels wrong and cruel.
If I break Blair’s heart, I don’t know if I can live with myself, and now I don’t know if I can ever feel deserving of happiness that involves Alice.