They didn’t believe him, and they shook their heads at the fact that I had, and they didn’t believe anything other than he was a prick and us being together was one massive pool of shit I was wading around in.
I told him how Yasmin had come out to join me at girls’ night and was the only one with another opinion in the chaos, but even that didn’t matter to my friends. I’d asked Nicola and Vicky to go check with her that what Lucas had told me was true, but they brushed it aside as nothing and said she was already back up in Newcastle and barely in contact. Another great help from the universe.
I told him how the whole world was against us, and people would never buy into us being together, and that was obvious. Especially not the woman screaming for him to choose his future, me or them, and taking his little girl across country.
“Maybe Yasmin will be able to help us convince people, if she knows the truth,” he said, but I shook my head.
“That isn’t what I meant. What I meant is, it doesn’t matter that she does. It will never matter. Even if she screamed from the rooftops that Maya was a total bitch who deserved you coming back to me, they’d still be cursing and scowling and saying I’m an idiot and you need to get back to your little girl.”
“Stop it,” he said, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
“We’ll never make it,” I told him. “Seriously, Lucas. You can’t let her take Millie across the country. Whatever it takes. You have to make it right for Millie.”
“But I can’t!” he said, and his hands were right over on mine. “I can’t walk away from this, Anna. Not again. I can’t make that fucking choice!”
We sat in silence, because what could we say?
Maya and Millie were likely already holed up at her parents’ place, and I hadn’t even attempted to reason with my parents yet. Everyone was still determined I should get back with the man who’d pulled me up from the floor last time around, nursing me through nights of pissing in the bed and blanking out in random places and dropping down exhausted for hours. And even though my seizures weren’t down to Lucas, that would never be accepted by the people who’d helped me through them in those early days.
I’d been having seizures before he made his idiot mistake, and I’d been the one to let myself wallow, and cry, and work every hour of the day or night just to try to forget he existed. But it didn’t matter. They’d still be cursing him for plunging my brain into one long ping pong of misfiring.
But even that faded to insignificance with the other coal of doom burning in the fire.
Millie.
It was all about Millie.
He had a little girl who needed him to be there for her, whatever the cost, and she had to come first, no matter how much we wanted each other.
“You have to get to your daughter,” I said, and saw him flinch in his seat. “You know it as well as I do. You have to get to her.”
“There will be a way,” he replied. “I mean, Maya can’t keep her away from me without legitimate reason. Not in the long-term.”
“But she’ll try,” I said. “She’ll use anything she can, and it’ll take months, and battles, and court, and so much time without her before you get it fixed.”
He gripped the steering wheel and cursed, and I reached out to squeeze his hand.
“I can’t choose,” he said. “I can’t walk away from Millie, and I never would, but I can’t walk away from you either. Not again.”
“So what are you going to do?” I asked him. “Threaten Maya with legal action if she doesn’t come back? Split your time between Cheltenham and Hampshire? Do you really want it to get that aggressive between you?”
He didn’t answer, because he didn’t have an answer to give me. I forced my hand away from his and forced my breath into line, and then I straightened up.
“You need to think,” I said. “You need to drop me back at home, and then you need to think.”
He was shaking his head when I spoke. “No. Don’t walk away. Please don’t leave.”
But I was shaking mine right back. “This isn’t leaving,” I said. “The last thing I want is to leave, but you’ll never make a way through this while I’m sitting beside you. It’s too clouded.”
He slammed his hands on the steering wheel three times over. “This can’t! Be fucking! Happening!”
Oh, but it could.
It most definitely could.
“Take me home,” I said again. “Please, Lucas. You have to be objective in this, and that’s never going to happen here.”
My whole body was crying out to hold him tight and go back to his with him. I wanted to greet Bill and Ted, and lose myself in his beautiful filth, climb into bed in his arms, and count on the world outside coming around to us by some miracle, but it wouldn’t. Seeing Nicola and Vicky scoffing at the idea of Lucas making one night’s mistake and trying to be there for an unborn baby was more than enough to show me acceptance was nowhere near in sight. And that was without even beginning to comprehend how far Maya could hold Millie to ransom.