Chapter Twenty-Five
Skylar shoved away from underneath him at the sight of Travis peeling the broken condom away with such a confused, anguished frown, pain gouging her just looking at the panic clenching his jaw and steeling his eyes, still reeling from the lovemaking, but now her stomach twisted with dread.
Oh God. It could be her worst nightmare come true. They’d managed to be so careful.
“Baby, I don’t know what happened,” he breathed roughly, desperately trying to placate what must be a look of mortification on her face. “Tell me you’re on the pill.”
She shook her head. There’d been no reason to take birth control. The last person she’d tried to do this with had been so many years ago, when she was still in grad school, and it had failed so miserably because she’d missed Travis so much, she’d never bothered getting the medication again.
“Sky, I never would have done that if I’d known this would happen—fuck,” he growled, pulling away, raking his hand through his hair and casting the sable hair into disarray.
Think, Skylar!
Her whole body shook. She couldn’t go through all of this again. Her mind flashed back to that phone call, the ambulance, the hospital bed, the dreaded news. She jumped up. She didn’t know what to do. Snatched at her clothes and fished her feet into her underwear and jeans, stretching on her sports bra only to realize it was inside out but didn’t care, stretched on her tank top. What was done was done, and she needed to get back home, get a game plan in place. This could jeopardize everything with Brandon. If she came across as irresponsible, then it was guaranteed he’d be removed—
A hand feathered down her arm, took her fingers. Travis’s anguished look as she glanced up at him was too much, and she slowed. He was dipping his head and giving her the look. He took her other hand.
“Skylar, I’m sorry, I—” She collapsed into him, feeling so overwhelmed she didn’t know what to say or where to begin.
His fingers snaked up though her hair again, cupping her head to his bare chest so that the drumming of his heart thudded against her ear, his other arm scooping beneath her legs as he dropped back to sitting, dragging her onto his lap, and unfastened jeans barely pulled up, simply holding her. She shuddered. What if she ended up pregnant?
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.
“I shouldn’t have gotten carried away,” he murmured, pressing a kiss against the side of her head, arched around her as if protecting her. “I told myself to hold back, and I didn’t.”
Heshouldn’t have gotten carried away? She’d rolled the condom on for him, so desperate to stop flinching, to stop sending him those mixed messages when she should have just told him.
God, how could she have been so foolish as to play with fire when she knew the magic their bodies always created together? She’d felt his arousal and realized he wasn’t going to make the first move. She’d felt his eyes practically undressing her when she’d taken that drink of water, felt the generous heaviness in his jeans. He’d gone all in, too, yeah. This wasn’t his fault any more than it was her fault, and yet the memories wouldn’t go back into their box where she normally successfully herded them each time they tried to rear their heads.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked, the deep reverberation of his voice against her ear. “Sky, babe, talk to me, dammit.”
She shook her head, realized it wouldn’t stop shaking. She had to let this out. Couldn’t hold onto the secret any longer as her hand slipped across her belly and held the empty space.
“I was pregnant, Trav,” she confessed thinly, her voice rising.
His hands upon her, so firm, gripping her so securely, tensed. His whole presence stilled.
“What?” The single word from his mouth hung in the balance.
The tears wouldn’t stop welling on her eyelids. God, would he be mad that he’d never known? She unfurled from his chest and looked at him. He looked back, his dark, striated eyes questioning.
“When you deployed. When the news came that you’d died…” Her lips trembled. “I was four months along.”
She wasn’t making sense, but she needed him to understand. This was already hard enough to talk about without having to repeat herself and rehash every detail over again.
“What’re you saying, sweetheart?” he whispered, his voice harsh, as if she’d just kicked him.
The tears rolled down her cheeks, streaking her hot skin. He palmed her cheeks, his thumbs pushing each rivulet away. She took a deep breath, held it, trying to control the trembling as she felt a cry contort her face.
“Tell me,” he encouraged. “Tell me what you mean—I gotta know.”
She tried to steady her breathing, but it only increased, grew more uneven as she bit her lip and failed in her quest to hold back her crying.
“I didn’t know for the first couple months. And when I found out, I had no more communication with you. You were in AIT, and deployment seemed inevitable, and I never got a chance to tell you before you were just”—she shook her head, searching madly for the right words and coming up short—“gone.
“I didn’t want to tell your family until I’d told you first. But I didn’t know how to reach you. The number I called you at in basic wasn’t the same anymore.”
He chewed his cheek, worked the inside of his mouth in his molars, eyes flitting back and forth between hers, waiting for her to elaborate, palms still holding her face as he searched for answers in her eyes.