The Sweetest September. Liz Talley

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      He looked down at her with cautious green eyes...like she was a ticking bomb he had to disarm. “What are you doing here?”

      Shelby tried to calm the bats flapping in her stomach, but there was nothing to quiet them. “Uh, it’s complicated.”

      He slid in beside her, his thigh brushing hers. She scooted away. He noticed, but didn’t say anything.

      “Complicated,” he repeated as though tasting the word. “You didn’t go back to...Seattle, was it?”

      “No, I went back.”

      “But you’re here again.” His words held the question.

      She glanced at him and then back at the men still casting inquisitive looks their way as they followed the tractor down the furrows.

      John got the message and stepped on the accelerator, this time heading toward the huge combine sitting silent in the opposite field.

      Shelby yelped and grabbed the edge of the seat with her other hand, nearly sliding across the cracked pleather seat and pitching onto the ground rushing by the wheels. John reached over and clasped her arm, saving her from meeting the hard ground.

      “You good?” he asked, releasing her arm and making no apology for the abrupt launch and turn.

      “Yeah,” she said, finding her balance, her stomach pitching more at the thought of revealing why she sat beside him than at the actual bumpy ride.

      So how did one do this?

      Probably should just say it. Rip the bandage off. Pull the knife out. He probably already suspected why she’d come. If it had been anything other than her being pregnant, she’d have found him before now.

      As they turned onto the adjacent path, Shelby took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”

      He made no sound, but she felt his reaction. Glancing sideways, she saw him go rigid, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

      “Pregnant?” he said, his voice low, perhaps even angry. “By me?”

      “That’s why I’m here.”

      “That’s very unlikely.”

      “Oh, I am. Went to the doctor. Saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Pretty sure there’s a baby in there.”

      He slowed down and eyed her in the brightness of the afternoon, looking as if he studied an insect that had landed on his windshield. Squash or let it blow away on its own? “I understand the concept, but it’s not mine. We used a condom. I remember because it was bright pink and I’d never seen anything like that before.”

      “Yeah, I thought pink condoms were kind of fun, but that’s not important. Or maybe it is, because something went wrong with it. Besides you ran out before—” She snapped her mouth closed, wishing she hadn’t mentioned his running out. The fact he hightailed it like a coward was the least important part of the whole travesty. “The condom must have broken. Or did you notice any, um, leakage maybe?”

      His head snapped around. “No.”

      For a moment he didn’t say anything and she wondered if he was searching his memory for that night. “Look I don’t remember much, but I’m pretty sure I would remember that. I was drunk but not stupid.”

      “I’m not lying.”

      John frowned. “I’m not saying you are, but I can’t accept you got pregnant that night.”

      “Look, I’m not thrilled, okay? I’m only here because I thought you should know.”

      “Are you sure it’s mine?”

      She almost slapped him. Would have been melodramatic and very Scarlett O’Hara-like, fitting considering she sat in the middle of a field in the Deep South feeling rather beat down. “Thanks for the unspoken accusation that I’m a whore. And a stupid one at that.”

      John slammed the brakes, his arm catching hers before she could slide forward into the dashboard. “I’m not calling you anything. A woman I barely know shows up saying she’s pregnant, I think I’m entitled to ask a few questions.”

      Shelby yanked her arm away and shifted even farther from him. “I came to tell you. That’s it. I don’t expect anything from you. I can take care of the baby on my own.”

      John sank against the cracked bench seat, looking as if someone had taken the starch out of him. “Just give me a sec, okay?”

      Shelby didn’t say anything more. She got it. She’d needed a lot of moments herself over the past few weeks.

      For several minutes they sat; the only sounds were the tractor humming, the occasional shouts of the men working the fields and their mingled breaths, which was vastly different from the last time they’d been together. Very sober. Maybe too sober for the reality that had just crashed into both of their worlds.

      “So what are your plans?” he asked. “Are you going to, uh, move forward with the pregnancy?” He sounded choked, as if the words stuck in his throat.

      “Yeah. At first I thought about taking care of it—”

      “Oh, God,” he breathed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I can’t imagine. I can’t—”

      “I know, but my first reaction was to erase the mistake we made then I could just move forward, but...” She trailed off, wondering how she could put into words what she’d experienced when she’d seen the heartbeat, heard the rhythm established by a life growing inside her. It was almost sacred.

      John’s eyes met hers, his gaze still convoluted, still shocked. “But what?”

      “I heard the heartbeat,” she whispered, swallowing the sudden emotion. Something warm crept up her spine. It wasn’t an aw emotion. More like something that might eat her and swallow her whole. Not danger, but something life altering, something that made her palms sweaty.

      John said nothing, merely turned his attention to the field full of glossy green leaves of sugarcane stirring in the slight wind. Captured stark against the horizon, he stood in sharp relief. John was a man shaken to his core.

      “I’m sorry,” she said, after several more seconds of nothing from him. The knot in her stomach grew tighter. She didn’t know what to do, how to make it better for him. Or her.

      “Me, too,” he offered, his eyes fastened on the horizon.

      “If you’ll take me to the house now, I’ll let you get back to work,” she said.

      John scratched his head beneath the Ragin’ Cajun ball cap. “Not yet. Let me run this part out and then we’ll go back to the house.”

      Shelby didn’t want to spend any more time with him. She wanted to go to her hotel room in Baton Rouge, take a bath and curl up beneath the coverlet with the TV drowning out everything in her life. Escape sounded perfect, but obviously John wasn’t going to let her slink away. The knot inside her tightened and twisted. “Fine.”

      After СКАЧАТЬ