Down Fall (Fallen Duet 2)

“I love you, Lola. But I owe my wife everything.” His hands dropped from my face, the loss of his warmth causing me to shiver. “She’s everything to me, and I won’t push that aside, no matter how much I want you.”

“But—”

“I just had to make sure you were okay.” He nodded like he was affirming his decision in his mind. “Now that I know you are, we can part ways. You’ll never have to see me again.”

I couldn’t form words. Not when he took a step away from me, not when he turned, and not even when he walked away, taking my heart with him and leaving me with nothing.

I blinked at the closed door, my hand clutching at my stomach. The tears finally stopped, and a renewed energy replaced my sadness. If he didn’t want me, then that was okay. I’d do what I had to do, be who I wanted to be because he’d just told me the truth.

I wasn’t enough.

I’d never been enough.

* * *

LOLA

People said time was the best healer, and that was all I thought about as the days passed, rolling into one another uneventfully. I craved the normalcy of it to keep me occupied from everything that had happened in the last month.

My first year of college was done. Finished. Finito. And I had just under three months until I had to go back. I had to make a plan for those three months, put things in order, and channel all my efforts toward that. Plans got destroyed. Plans were never stuck to. Plans sucked. But it gave me a driving force.

Butterflies took flight in my stomach as I locked my apartment door behind me. Today was the day. The day where everything would become real. Part of me regretted not telling Brody I was pregnant the other morning, but the other part of me was glad I hadn’t. It wasn’t like I was going to keep the baby from him.

I would tell him, just...not yet. He’d told me where he stood—next to his wife—and that was okay. I refused to be one of those women who used her child as a bargaining chip. If he had really wanted me, then he’d have told me. So for now, it was me and the growing fetus in my belly against the world.

I pushed open the door to the apartment block and brought my hand up above my eyes to shield from the blinding sun.

“Lola!” My head whipped around, spotting the red car that Jan was sitting in, waving her arm out the open window. “Hey!”

I walked over to her and pulled the door open, cringing at the heat inside the car. Apparently, she didn’t have air-conditioning—open windows it was then.

“How you feeling?” Jan asked as she pulled out onto the road. Jan had become a friend in the time I’d worked in the diner, but since I moved into my apartment a week ago, she’d become more than that. And when she found out I was pregnant, she’d decided she was going to take me under her wing. Any other time, I’d have pulled away and gone it alone, determined to face it by myself. But I had no idea what I was doing, and it was about time I opened myself up to real friendships.

“Okay, I guess.” I shuffled in the seat and stared out the windshield. “I didn’t throw up this morning, so that’s a good thing, right?”

Her tinkle of laughter floated on the air between us. “Yeah. But you know the whole morning part of morning sickness is just a myth, right?”

I frowned and turned to face her. “It is?” I asked.

“Yep.” She took a turn and pulled into the lot of a doctor’s office. “It can hit you at any stage. When I was pregnant with Aria, I’d only ever get sick at night.”

“Well, shit.”

Jan pulled the car into an open space and turned the engine off. “And don’t even get me started on the smell of lemons.” She shivered and pulled a face. “They churned my stomach each and every time.” I laughed. Bacon I understood, but lemons? “You ready?” Jan asked, her jovial face turning serious.

My hand fluttered to my stomach, and I inhaled a deep breath. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

She pushed out of the car at the same time I did, and together we walked to the doctor’s office. This felt like a huge moment, one that Brody should have been there for. Maybe I should have told him after all?

No.

I wasn’t going to second-guess myself. I’d have this appointment, get all the dates in order and then decide for sure what to do. Besides, he was still undercover. It wasn’t like he could do anything right then anyway.

The doctor’s office was cool, bringing relief from the heat outside, and my body thanked it silently. I’d felt like a human furnace for the last week, and nothing I seemed to do would cool me down apart from leaning against the cold tiles in the bathroom naked.

Jan walked us up to the front desk, and for the first time in years, I felt my age. I was nineteen—twenty in a couple of months—but I had no idea what to do when it came to this sort of thing, so I let Jan do all the talking, and when she passed me a clipboard with some paperwork on it, I realized I didn’t even have insurance.

How was I meant to raise a child when I couldn’t even pay to see a doctor?