“I’ve been watching you,” he said suddenly, the words tumbling out like a confession he couldn’t hold back any longer.
I looked up sharply, my breath catching. “What?”
“For two weeks.” His hands curled into fists on the table, his knuckles white. “I’ve been in Medicine Park, but I’ve been coming here. To Lawton. At night. Watching you.”
My stomach twisted, a strange mix of fear and something else. Something that felt dangerously close to hope. “Why?” I whispered.
“Because I couldn’t stay away.” His voice was raw, stripped of all pretense. “Because I needed to know you were okay. Because I—” He stopped, his jaw clenching. “Because I’m a fucking coward who didn’t know how to face you.”
I stared at him, my mind racing. He had been watching me. For two weeks, while I’d been moving through my days like a ghost, he had been there. Watching. Waiting.
“I saw you at the farmers’ market,” he continued, his voice quieter now. “At the farm. Here at the diner. I saw you smile at customers and help your sisters and serve coffee like everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine, was it?”
I shook my head slowly, unable to speak past the lump in my throat.
“You looked...” He trailed off, his eyes searching mine. “You looked like I feel. Hollow. Like you were going through the motions but not reallythere.”
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it, and I quickly wiped it away with the back of my hand.
“I broke you,” he said, and the words sounded like they were being torn from somewhere deep inside him. “I broke you, and I didn’t even realize it until I saw you behind that garage with Angel.”
“You didn’t break me,” I countered, my voice trembling. “You just... you made me realize something.”
“What?”
I took a shaky breath, my hands still wrapped around the coffee mug as if it were the only thing keeping me grounded. “That I had been waiting for you. All this time, I had been waiting for something I couldn’t name, and then you showed up, and I thought—” I stopped, my throat tightening. “I thought maybe you were it. Maybe you were what I had been waiting for.”
His expression crumpled, and for a moment, he looked like he might reach across the table and touch me. But he didn’t. He just sat there, his hands still flat on the table, his eyes locked on mine.
“And then you walked away,” I finished quietly.
“I know.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Hope.”
The apology hung in the air between us, fragile and uncertain. I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe that he was sorry, that he cared, that maybe, just maybe, there was something between us worth fighting for. But I was terrified. Terrified that if I let myself hope, if I let myself believe, he would walk away again. And I didn’t think I could survive that a second time. “Why are you here?” I asked, my voice barely audible. “Why now?”
He was quiet for a long moment, his eyes never leaving mine. And then he spoke, his voice low and rough and filled with something that sounded like desperation.
“Because I need to know if you’re pregnant.”
His words hit me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. I stared at him, my mind going blank. The coffee mug was suddenly too hot in my hands, the steam rising between us like a barrier I couldn’t cross.
“What?” I breathed.
“I didn’t use protection,” he said, his voice tight. “That night at the pond. I didn’t—” He stopped, his jaw clenching. “I need to know, Hope. Are you pregnant?”
Chapter Fifteen
Slaughter
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she set down her coffee mug with careful precision, her fingers trembling slightly as they released the ceramic. The mug made a soft clink against the wooden table, a sound that seemed to echo in the suddenly tense silence between us. Her eyes, those soft green eyes that had haunted me for two weeks, that I replayed in my mind every night before sleep, locked onto mine with an intensity that made my chest tighten. There was something different in her gaze now, something harder than I had ever seen before. A flicker of hurt, maybe. Or suspicion.
“Who is Julie?”
The question hit me like a sledgehammer to the ribs. Sharp. Brutal. Unexpected. I went completely still; every muscle in my body locked down as if I had been flash-frozen. My breath caught in my throat, trapped somewhere between my lungs and my mouth, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but stare at her across the table while the fluorescent lights hummed overhead and the coffee maker dripped in the background, each drop marking another second of my silence. My mind raced, scrambling for an explanation, for the right words, for anything that would make this moment less catastrophic than it felt.
Who is Julie?