I wish my baby belonged to someone better, someone more like him, someone who would touch me with tenderness and care that I was carrying his child. If I had made different choices, if I had made this mistake with someone like Brant instead of Theo, things would have turned out so much differently.
I wish I hadn’t been such an idiot, and I wish my baby didn’t have to bear the consequences.
“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Brant says, still feeling out why I’ve taken an emotional turn.
I shake my head, not looking him in the eyes. “You didn’t. I mean, I guess you did, but you didn’t do anything wrong. You inadvertently triggered a few thoughts I’ve been trying my best to keep out, but you don’t have to feel bad about it. All of this is my fault. It’s my fault there are any thoughts like these polluting my head, it’s my fault I have the problems I have, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“Hey,” he says, tipping my face up so I’m looking at him. His big, rough hand cradles my face so gently, and even though I know this isn’t his mess, I’m so tempted to take the comfort he offers. “You’ve still got your whole life ahead of you. Yeah, these mistakes might be part of it right now, but they don’t have to be so final. You’re still young. You’ve got plenty of time to clean up a mess you made when you were a teenager and do better going forward.”
“Yeah, I know,” I murmur, attempting a smile. “It’s just that some choices can’t be undone and some roles can’t be recast, and no matter what happens in the future, I’ve cheated my baby out of a lot of things that might’ve been really nice because I let a man who was willing to have me killed get me pregnant.”
By the end of that statement, tears well up in my eyes and my voice starts to shake. Brant’s hand moves to cradle the back of my head and he pulls me into his chest. The protectiveness of the gesture and his hold melts me, and I wrap my arms around him, crying into his T-shirt.
Like it’s his job, he rubs the back of my head and whispers reassuring nonsense about how it’ll all be okay, letting me cry until I’m all out of tears.
When the tears run out, embarrassment catches up to me. I pull back, swiping beneath my eyes and trying to get it together. “Whoa, sorry about that. I didn’t mean to cry all over you.”
“You don’t have to apologize for being sad,” he says calmly.
“I don’t know what came over me,” I insist, shaking my head. I can’t quite bring myself to meet his gaze. “Maybe those pregnancy hormones people talk about, mood swings and all that.”
Ignoring my dismissal, he says, “Or maybe you just have something worth feeling sad about.”
My lips curve up a little, but I’m not amused. “Yeah, maybe.” I’m no longer a fan of the vulnerability of being up here on this bench, so I ask, “Can you scoot back a little? I wanna get down.”
He takes a step back, but I can feel that his eyes never leave me. “You don’t have to be embarrassed, Alyssa.”
Trying my best to make light of it, I try to temper my voice, but I’m not quite convincing. “You invited me out to have a nice day today, and here I am crying all over your murder workshop.”
Brant watches me hop down, but rather than let me escape into playful humor, he moves forward and wraps his arm around me, tugging me into his side. “I’m having a nice day,” he assures me. “I want you to have a nice day, too.”
“I am,” I tell him, despite the tear tracks staining my cheeks. He doesn’t seem convinced, so I lean closer and tip my head up to offer him a smile. “I’m all cried out. I’m fine now. I promise.”
7
Brant
As I look down at Alyssa’s face all stained with tears, I’m torn between wanting her to learn all the lessons this dumbass mistake has to teach her and the desire to save her and her baby from any kind of misery.
On one hand, I know it’s her responsibility to stand back up from all this, but on the other, she’s so damn young and without the support system a family should offer. It’s hard not to want to lend her a hand.
Alyssa breaks away from me on her own, walking around the shop and looking at things while she gets her bearings. I stand back and watch, knowing she just needs the time to collect herself, and I want to give her that dignity.
Once she has recovered from whatever bout of misery got its hooks in her, she comes over, holding up two squares of wood—a project I finished shortly before she came into my life.