Page 46 of This Time Around (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #3)

A llie’s pulse pounded so hard she thought her brain might explode. Her hands started shaking, so she pressed her palms together and slid them between her knees. She couldn’t look at Jack. Couldn’t meet his eyes at all if she wanted to get these words out.

“Allie?” he said. “What is it? What did you need to tell me?”

Something about his tone told her he already knew it would be bad. She just had to say the words. Just had to put them out there so he could know everything and they could put it behind them and move on.

She wasn’t sure where to start, so she took a deep breath and dove in.

“Back in college, I was thinking about ending things between us for three or four months before I actually did it.” She spoke the words slowly, her gaze still fixed on her knees.

“I just kept thinking we were in different places in our lives and it didn’t feel right.

I’d start to get up the nerve to do it, but then you’d go and do something sweet like putting together one of your treasure hunts, and I’d start thinking things would work out okay. ”

Jack didn’t say anything, but reached over and rested a hand on her thigh. It was a comforting gesture; one she probably didn’t deserve. She dared a glance at him, and saw his expression was guarded.

“You cheated on me.” His voice was flat.

Allie sat up straighter and shook her head. “No. No, that’s not it.”

“I can handle it if that’s what happened, Allie. I mean, it was a long time ago, and I always wondered about you and that guy from your chem lab?—”

“No!” Her voice sounded sharp, and she took a few deep breaths to soften it before she spoke again. “I swear, Jack. There was never anyone else.”

“Then what?”

Allie took a shaky breath. She had to just say it. It was time to put it out there, to stop keeping secrets. Honesty and trust and open communication . Isn’t that what he’d said?

“So six or seven weeks before we broke up, I realized I was a few days late. My cycle was always like clockwork, so I knew something was up. I thought it was stress at first. We had midterms and I was having doubts about us, so I guess I tried to convince myself it was nothing.”

“Oh.” A stunned silence followed, and she knew he was putting the pieces together. “It wasn’t nothing.”

The words weren’t a question, and Allie knew he’d already figured it out.

Part of it anyway. She pressed on, needing to tell him the whole story.

“It wasn’t nothing,” she confirmed. “Still, I waited a few more weeks. I guess I thought—well, I suppose I was in denial. I just kept thinking things would turn out fine, that it was just stress or a side effect of being new to birth control pills. I spent almost a month trying to pretend nothing was wrong. That it was all going to be okay.”

She waited for him to point out that’s what she’d always done. Just buried her head in the sand and hoped for the happily-ever-after that never came. He didn’t say it. He didn’t say anything at all.

Allie took a shaky breath and continued. “Anyway, I bought a test at that drugstore by our apartment. The one with the?—”

“It came up positive.”

She nodded, squeezing her fingers together. “Yes.”

He fell silent again, and Allie finally got up the courage to look at him.

Her heart squeezed tight in her chest like someone had wrapped a rubber band around it.

Jack’s expression was blank, but a tiny muscle twitched along his jaw.

She wanted to reach up and smooth it with the tips of her fingers, but she kept her hands pressed tight together between her knees.

She felt his hand tensing on her thigh, but couldn’t read his expression at all.

“You never told me,” he said.

“I didn’t.” Her voice was practically a whisper. “I knew if I told you, you’d convince me to stay. You were so hell bent on getting married and starting a family while we were young. I knew you’d talk me into going through with it.”

“Going through with it,” he repeated.

His face had gone a little paler. Maybe it was the cold, but Allie didn’t think so. She’d been holding back the tears up to that point, but she felt them pooling in her eyes now. She blinked hard and looked up at an overhead shelf until her vision cleared. She took another breath.

“I made the appointment that weekend you went to the music festival at the Gorge. I went by myself. I didn’t tell anyone.

There was this counselor who stayed with me the whole time, but I didn’t feel like talking about things, so I mostly just talked about law school applications and the high price of olive oil and whether or not the Blazers would go to the playoffs.

” The words tumbling out of her mouth sounded absurd and jumbled, so she forced herself to take a few deep breaths.

“After it was over, I caught a taxi back to our apartment. I felt nauseated for the first couple days, but after that I was mostly back to normal. By the time you came back from Washington?—”

“You had an abortion.”

Allie gave a slow nod. She was struck by the abruptness of his words. By his need to say them aloud. To put them out there in the hollow, chilly air between them. She’d never done that, not once in sixteen years.

“You had an abortion without talking to me about it,” he said. “Even though we lived together. Even though we slept in the same bed every night. Even though we were talking about spending our lives together at that point.”

“Jack, I know,” she said, and her voice sounded too high to her.

She hadn’t thought it would affect him this much. She’d guarded the secret so tightly that she’d almost put it out of her mind. But he was hearing about it for the first time. She reminded herself of that. That he’d been a part of things, too, even though he hadn’t known.

She forced herself to meet his eyes, to not look away this time. The silver-blue irises glittered in a sharp streak of sunlight that slashed through the chilled air. His eyes weren’t cold. They weren’t even angry.

They were the eyes of someone who’d just watched a close friend run over his dog, then back up and do it again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and her words were barely a whisper.

She glanced down at his hand on her thigh, studying the ridges and bumps and the little scar he’d gotten on that long-ago camping trip.

With no matches or lighter, he’d tried to start the fire by rubbing two sticks together.

He’d rubbed and rubbed and rubbed for what seemed like hours, but hadn’t even made smoke that way.

Just a gash in his hand when he slammed the sticks down in frustration.

The futility of it made her want to cry, though she knew that’s not where the tears came from at all.

When Jack finally spoke, his voice came out crackly. “I’m sorry you went through that,” he said. “I—I guess I don’t know what to say. It must have been hard.”

Allie nodded again, not trusting herself to form words.

“I imagine it was scary and sad to go through that alone,” he said, and she nodded again like a dumb puppet.

He drew his hand back, breaking contact with her for the first time since this conversation began. Allie felt herself shiver. He didn’t say anything else. Not for a long time.

“We went looking at wedding venues that week,” he said.

Allie looked up, surprised he’d remembered that detail. “Yes. I—I guess we did.”

“It was that same week,” he said. “Because I’d loved that damn concert at the Gorge so much I suggested we find a place nearby. But you wanted to keep the wedding closer to home. I remember you saying that. That you wanted it to be a place that held meaning for both of us.”

“That’s right,” Allie said, wondering why she’d forgotten until now.

“We must have visited six or seven places that week. And you went through it all knowing you wanted to split up,” he said. “So much so that you hid a pregnancy from me. An abortion.”

Allie’s eyes stung and her throat felt thick and tender. “I’m sorry.”

He dragged his fingers through his hair, and the helplessness of the gesture pulled the breath out of her lungs.

“Allie,” he said, and the crack in his voice made her chest ache. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. I would have wanted to know. To be involved. To at least talk with you or comfort you or?—”

“I understand,” she said. “But Jack—I made the best decision I could at the time. I knew we couldn’t get married, and I didn’t trust myself not to cave if you begged me. Don’t you see? I couldn’t have done things any differently.”

She watched his throat move as he swallowed. Then he gave a sad little head shake. “That’s not what bothers me most, Allie. Not the abortion. Not what happened sixteen years ago. I’m bothered about now .”

“What do you mean?”

“This—this—pattern. This habit of hiding things. Of cheerfully going through the motions and covering up anything that doesn’t fit the story you’ve written in your mind.”

“I don’t?—”

“You do,” he said, hurt still flashing in his eyes.

“You pretended Wade was your fiancé, and then you said you were just friends. Only it turns out he actually was your fiancé at one point, and you neglected to mention it. And then there’s this money—” He gestured toward the chest, a wild look in his eye.

“Were you even going to tell me about the reporting requirements? About the fact that I’m as legally bound as you are to report it to authorities? ”

“I thought if I just waited?—”

“How long?” he demanded. “How long are you planning to sit on this, Allie? To pretend it’s not here? To convince yourself of some ridiculous fairytale about your grandmother squirreling it away instead of accepting that your parents are thieves and this money is part of that.”

The words felt like a kick to the chest. Allie blinked back the tears, struck by the fact that he was right.

“Jack,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I should have said something.”