First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (124 page)

“I smoked pot.”

“I’m sure you’re not the only pregnant woman to do it. Obviously your professor did.”

“Finn had a heart defect.”

“Did anyone say it was caused by the pot?”

“No.”

“Then let it go. All the way. Otherwise you’ll end up with some beauty marks like these.” She held up her wrists.

I’d do anything to shift the conversation away from me. “So what happened there?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. I mean, I do this circuit, and I say a lot of things about life getting better, and feeling suicidal isn’t a failure, just a condition, one to treat and fight, not to fall prey to.” She tugged her sweater sleeves over her arms. “But honestly, I did it just because I felt like I should be scarred. This big thing had happened. My baby had died, and my boyfriend had ditched me. Those things should leave a mark.”

“So you made the mark yourself.”

“Yes. I didn’t realize at the time that these marks weren’t the ones to worry about. It’s the one in here.” She drew an “x” over her heart. “I sabotage my own happiness a lot. It’s obvious from looking at me. It’s why my talks work. I swear half the people leave thinking, ‘Hell, I’m not half as fucked up as her.’ Whatever works.”

“So you don’t date?”

She shook her head. “Nope. I’ll screw anything with a functioning dick. But they are out the door before the clock strikes one.”

“I haven’t dated either, not since Gavin left me.” I paused. “Except, he’s here. In San Diego. We ran into each other.”

“Did you know he was here?”

“No. He walked out of the funeral and I never saw him again.”

“Holy shit. I thought ditching me in the hospital was bad.”

“That’s pretty bad.”

She laughed. “We sure can pick them, can’t we? So have you talked to him?”

“He’s hell-bent on us getting back together.”

Tina frowned. “You going to do it?”

“I was. I have been. But then, God. He’s different. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Did he blame you? Back then, I mean. Is that why he left?”

“He didn’t know I smoked pot.”

Her eyes grew wide, taking up so much of her doll-like face that she looked like one of those caricatures that artists draw of people at theme parks. “Does he now?”

I shook my head. “I can’t tell him now.”

“But how can you be with him if you don’t? It’s screwing you up, plain as day. Can you carry that secret to your grave? Should you?”

The exit was coming up and I started fighting my way over. Anger started to build. Who did she think she was, lecturing me about this? “We’re nearly there,” I said. “You should make the flight if security isn’t long.”

Tina reached over to touch my arm. “I’m sorry, Corabelle. I don’t mean to upset you. I’ve been in all the bad places. I remember when the blood started coming out of my arms, thinking, ‘Yes, this is the right thing. I can be with my baby and no one can take him away again.’ I’m not sure we ever fully recover from thinking that way. It’s like we always have a last resort that’s way way beyond what other people consider.”

We pulled up to a red light. The signs for the airport loomed ahead. “Gavin drew a line in the sand and said we should just step over it, and let the past be the past.”

“I think that’s a good philosophy, if you can do it. I have the bad habit of dredging up the muck, over and over again, ad infinitum.” She tugged on her stockings where they were curling at her knees. “I should stop wearing these now that I’m a proper grown-up.”

“They’re cute on you.”

“I wore them when I was pregnant. They’re like a basketball player’s lucky socks. Sometimes I think a bit of Peanut is in them, since I sweated like a pig when he was cooking.”

The light turned green. “We’re here. I’ll just pull up wherever I can find curb space. It’s pretty crazy here.”

“That’s good. Thank you, Corabelle. I know you were probably coerced into doing this for your own good. I hope I didn’t piss you off forever.”

I shook my head. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I have to own up to the past after all.”

“Each of us has to find our own way. I’m hoping to figure it out before I kick the bucket for real.”

I had to focus for a while, dodging taxis and cars pulling out. A red truck left a gap near one of the terminals and I whipped into it.

We ducked out of the car and into the mayhem of honking cars and a stern security man blowing his whistle and smacking his hands on car hoods, making them move along. “No waiting!” he shouted. “Circle back around.”

I popped the trunk so Tina could grab her bags. “Thanks again. Good luck,” she said and passed me a business card. “Feel free to look me up if you need something. Not like I’m doing anything anyway.”

The security guy started eyeing us, so she entered the fray heading into the terminal. I jumped back into my car and fought my way out of the curb lane.

Only after I’d gotten away from the melee and into the calm of the cars leaving the airport at a leisurely pace did I realize what had just happened. Tina had undone all of Gavin’s work to make me let go of the past. If I wanted to keep him, I had to tell him what I had done.

Chapter 41: Gavin

A lone couple walked along the ocean’s edge, kicking into the spray, sending water droplets flying. I banged my shoes together, knocking out the sand, wondering where Corabelle and Jenny might be. Jenny had texted me over an hour ago, simply saying, “Meet us at the end of the path between campus and the shore.”

Pretty much everyone who went to UCSD knew how to access the path that cut through a swanky neighborhood and led out to the sea. Usually it was pretty busy here, being the easiest access for students living in the dorms, but the day had dawned chilly, and the winds had been howling all day. Not beach weather by any stretch.

A few seagulls circled, then flapped away as a cluster of loud teen boys jostled each other on the path through the brush, then turned to walk along the beach.

“Tell me again how she called out your name, ‘Arnold, Arnold!’” A guy in a Chargers jersey shoved his friend, presumably Arnold, so hard that he stumbled into the foam.

“Damn it, now I’m wet. Asshole.” Arnold leaped back onto the packed sand. “I’m totally going to interrupt your next hookup.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time for your revenge, my friend, a long time,” said a third guy. Then their conversation was lost to distance and the crash of the waves.

Bud hadn’t said a word when I took off early to meet Jenny and Corabelle. He seemed to know that if he protested, I would quit. I figured Corabelle had found out that she wasn’t pregnant and was either going to blow me off or give me a friend speech. Those seemed like the only two possibilities if Jenny was coming along.

I stared at the waves and the blue-gray of the Pacific. The sand crunched behind me, and Jenny plunked down next to me, kicking her green-spandexed legs out in front of her. She looked like Kermit the frog, a fat green coat creating a bulbous torso over the spindly tights. Her hair was tied in a single pink ponytail.

“So here’s the rules,” she said. “I stay, but I go over there.” She pointed at a rock near the edge of the underbrush. “You make her cry, you die. You get upset, you die. You do anything but show her love and understanding and unconditional lifelong groveling, you die. Are we clear?”

The girl knew how to make a point. “Clear.”

She scrambled back up, and over my head she said, “Man-meat’s all yours.”

I turned to Corabelle, standing slightly behind me. Once again I thought of a fragile doll, sad and beautiful, every feature perfectly detailed on her face.

“Would you rather walk?” I asked.

She shook her head and sat beside me. Her arms were crossed tightly over her midsection as she huddled in an olive wool coat. Her hands were bare, pink, and looked cold. I wanted to hold them, to warm them up, but I suppressed the urge to reach for her.

“How did the doctor visit go?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have the blood work back, but he seemed to think I was fine.”

“Good. Do you feel better?”

“I guess so.”

The seagulls returned, circling over the water in front of us. She seemed content to just sit without talking, but my anxiety rose. I wanted this bad part over, so we could get back to where we’d been.

“Corabelle, I’m sorry you found out about — the other girls, the paid girls, the way you did. I should have told you.”

She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “That would have been an awkward conversation.”

“It was past, so I left it in the past. But I should have known they’d write me eventually. It’s their business.”

“A business,” she repeated, and I realized I was screwing up.

“I’ll change my number. They won’t bother me anymore. I don’t want them anymore. I want you.”

Her dark eyes watched me with measured calm. “You sure about that? You sure there isn’t something I could do or say to change your mind?”

“No way.” I gave up on resisting and moved closer, putting my arm around her shoulders.

She closed her eyes a moment. “I got arrested in New Mexico. That’s why I left school.”

A wave of shock coursed through me, but I kept my voice steady. “What happened?”

“I hit my professor. She was pregnant.”

Damn. I squeezed her shoulders. Had she been jealous? Bitter? Regret washed away the shock. I should have been there. “Did they expel you?”

“No. I had a really good relationship with the university since I worked in the main office. They let me leave quietly.”

I wanted to ask her why she’d done it, but just held on to her. She would say what she needed to say.

Corabelle looked out over the water. “She was smoking a joint behind a building on campus. I knocked it out of her mouth.”

Now this made sense. “You were protecting her baby.”

“Yes, but —” She silenced, her eyes following the flight of the gulls.

I waited, flirting with the idea of bringing up the line in the sand again. But that speech was self-serving. I didn’t want to tell her my past, but clearly she needed to tell me hers.

“I blew up because I felt like I knew the consequences of smoking pot. People say — doctors say — it’s not related, but it’s hard to separate what you’ve done with the end result when you know you shouldn’t have done it.”

My arm loosened its grip on her shoulders. “Are you saying you smoked pot? With Finn?” I washed cold. When? How? I knew her so well. It wasn’t possible.

“Katie thought it would help me on the SAT. I had no idea I was pregnant.”

I felt Jenny’s eyes on me. I kept my arm on Corabelle, trying to hold in my disbelief, my shock, my anger. I kept my voice even and steady. “So you were doing drugs while you carried my baby.”

She was shaking so hard now that I could feel the movement through her coat. I withdrew my arm. “You never told me you were smoking pot. I thought we shared everything back then.”

Something sparked in her, an electric charge so palpable that I could almost feel it flash through her body. “You know what, this is never going to work.” She stood up. “We’re both way more fucked up than we knew.”

I scrambled up after her. “Obviously. You never told me any of this. Not even when he was in the hospital. Did you at least tell the doctors? Maybe they could have done something!”

“They were never going to do anything!” Corabelle’s voice raised to a shriek, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jenny heading for us.

“You don’t know that!” I dragged my hands through my hair. “Thank God I can’t have kids anymore. This is way too fucked up.”

Her face bloomed red. “What are you talking about?”

Now I had her attention. I loomed over her, my fury peaking so hard I could barely see her through the haze. “I had a vasectomy. So no more of my kids can get fucked up.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Jenny pushed at me, trying to put space between me and Corabelle, but I didn’t budge.

“Why did you do that?” Corabelle’s doll features contorted into something so tragic, it almost made me calm down, but hell no. She’d fucked up big time. The biggest way possible.

My fists clenched. “Because I always thought it was my fault Finn died. Because I would have been a crappy father, just like mine was. Because I signed to shut off the machines — lied even, to sign to shut them off, since we weren’t married.”

Jenny gave up on trying to move me and clutched Corabelle instead. “Come on, let’s go,” she said.

But I wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. Hell, all this guilt and I wasn’t the one guilty. “All these years I’ve been fucked up over this, and it was always YOU.” My body leaned toward her, and suddenly my father flashed before me, the same pose, and now Corabelle was the young version of me, cowed, bending down to escape.

Corabelle sank back into the sand like a paper lantern collapsing. Jenny let go of her and whirled around to me. “That’s enough, Gavin. Stop it now!” Her voice was a shriek. She snatched at my arm and dragged with everything she had. This time I let her take me away. I had to back off this. I had to regroup. But this was way beyond what I expected to hear from Corabelle.

Smaller birds scattered from an abandoned picnic as Jenny jerked me along the shore. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked. “She’s trying to come clean! What happened to your unconditional love and acceptance, asshole?”

“Our kid is dead,” I said, feeling the freeze come off my words.

“She didn’t kill it,” Jenny said. “Every doctor said it was not related.”

“Then why the hell is she bringing it up?” I ran my hands through my hair and glanced down the beach. Corabelle was still huddled in the sand, rocking back and forth. I’d never seen her like that. Instantly, I wanted to go back and gather her up, hold her close, kiss it away. Damn it.

“She needed to get it out. It’s what’s kept her so screwed up for so long. This was the only way to fix things. The only way she could actually be with you.”

Shit.

“She hurt just as much as you over that baby, probably more. So get back there and fix this.” Jenny grabbed my face and made me look into her eyes. “I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass if she ends up with you. I don’t think you’re that great. But it’s what she wants. And I’m helping her get what she wants.”