I knew it would look awful in the eyes of the general public, only worsened by the spin the cruel media would certainly put on it. We were given three months to pretend to be in love, and on the final day of that agreement, I vanished without a trace. Just like that, I left both him and his father high and dry, under an international spotlight of intrigue.
Yes, I knew exactly how it looked, and I was truly sorry for it, but I tried to reason in my own defense: Maybe they just told everyone I got food poisoning or just stayed back at the penthouse to cheerfully work on wedding plans. “She sends her love,” they probably said. That was precisely what I would have done if I was still Nick’s publicist instead of his girlfriend.
Wait. Girlfriend? Is that all I am? Is this just one of those average boyfriend-knocks-up-his-girlfriend stories, only elevated to a global scale because of who the baby-daddy is?
I honestly wasn’t sure about that. The only thing I did know for sure was that the whole thing was, to put it lightly, complicated.
Back at the lake house, Nick and I had the talk, right after I overheard him telling James that the two of us weren’t in a relationship. Being the passionate people we were, we really hashed it out, and in the end, the only conclusion we could come to was that as hard as we tried to fake it, the scripted act we’d been putting on had somehow morphed into a reality show. We refused to refer to it as love, didn’t dare to venture that far, but it was real.
So this is real too, I thought. This baby is real too.
A warm smile lit my face as I gazed out at the ocean. The sun was just touching the tip of the water, spilling orange-gold light across the choppy waves, as if someone high in the sky had overturned a can of paint just to watch it ooze over the horizon like icing on a warm cake.
I glanced down at my shoes, now completely submerged in and, and then I looked back up again. There wasn’t anyone in sight for miles, and for a split second I thought, I could just stay here...forever.
“Kind of addictive, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” I said, startled by the intrusion of the voice.
“The running.”
I whirled around and let out a gasp at the sight of a beautiful man standing behind me, his feet also sunken in the sand, the same beautiful man I’d left back in a penthouse in New York, but instead of being excited to see him, every beat of my heart filled me with dread. How the hell did he find me? And now that he has... What is he going to do?
Chapter 2
I wasn’t sure if Nick had just curse me out for ruining his life, drag me back to the big city in chains and force me to go on highly publicized lunch dates till Christmas, or simply throw me into the sea and have his PR team write up a believable cover-up story, but I was sure that he was no longer “impossibly happy” with me. I should have known better than to expect any of those punishments though; the Nick I knew would do no such things to me or anyone else, which was part of the reason what had started out as a faux love affair had turned into something else.
Sure enough, he simply kicked off his own shoes and strolled casually up beside me. The breeze gave his honey-colored locks a playful toss, and the flickering sunlight burned bronze upon his skin. His eyes softened as he stared toward the horizon for a few seconds. Finally, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and released a contented sigh. “I came here once, when I was sixteen,” he said, a faraway nostalgia illuminating his face. “I was supposed to go to a Christmas party hosted by my father at the MET. Harold was going to pick me up within the hour, and he even laid a tuxedo across my bed. For whatever reason, I skipped the party and just...came here.”
A faint smile broke through my shock upon seeing him, knocked down the wall of dread wedged between us. For some reason, even though Nick was the last person in the world I should have wanted to see, my entire body warmed just at the sight of him. “So...instead of putting on a tuxedo, you ran away to Peru?” I questioned, wondering why his stories always seemed to end with him behaving in some absurd, abrupt manner.
He lifted his shoulder in a shrug, his eyes never leaving the water. “It made sense at the time.”
I cast him a sideways smile, but it faded when I saw the profound sadness written all over his face, the kind of incurable sadness that was a symptom of being left behind.
“Everyone told me not to come,” he said softly, “from Max, to Louise, to Stacy. They all warned me, told me to just let you go. James didn’t, of course, but we both know he’s famously crazy.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My spur-of-the-moment escape was thwarted almost as quickly as it had started, and now I found myself suddenly standing face to face with the walking personification of every uncertainty and fear I’d been trying to avoid. Fortunately, Nick didn’t seem to expect a response; rather, it was almost as if he was just thinking out loud, talking to himself.
“Maybe they were right,” he muttered. A sudden wave of insecurity tightened his handsome features, and he pulled in a sharp breath. “I don’t... I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
At that point, all I wanted to do was reach for him, to take his hand and assure him that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to somehow force him to accept my apology, to demand that he take me back into his arms so we could start afresh on building the life we’d spent three months talking about, that together we were going to share.
Sadly, I knew I could do none of those things. There was now a game-changing secret between us, even if I was the only one who knew about it. All I could do was stand there and stare at the water, trying to keep the ocean of tears out of my own eyes.
“I guess...” Nick pulled in a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “I guess I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” He finally turned to look at me, hitting me with the full force and inescapable power of those perfect eyes. “So are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Okay.”
Just say yes, I told myself. Just say yes, and he’ll hop back on his private jet and be gone, so you can put this whole thing behind you. If nothing else, at least fucking nod! You owe him that much, damn it. Don’t just stand there gawking at him like an idiot!
I tried. I honestly did. I even went so far as to think about something happy. Prancing puppies and bouncy balloons and triple-layer chocolate cake and... It didn’t work, and even my best attempt at a smile failed miserably.
Nick’s eyes tightened as his skin paled several shades. His hand reached automatically toward me in concern, but then he deliberately stuffed it back in his pocket, as if it had misbehaved. “You’re crying,” he said to himself, not a question or an answer but just another layer of confusion, hiding an even deeper layer of pain. “Abby, why?”
Crying? I am? Shit! Prancing puppies, my ass. I’m gonna sue YouTube for mental duress!