All Over You (Unforgettable You, Book 1.5) (5 page)

I’m stunned. I can’t even believe what I’m hearing and the amount of venom coming at me. And all this time I’d thought she’d been mad at me because she’d seen me making out with Angela three weeks
after
she’d dumped me.

Yeah, you got that right. She dumps me and is pissed to high heaven when she sees me with another girl. No one can ever tell me females aren’t the irrational sex. Guys don’t pull crap like this.

Shit, I still can’t believe she really thought I’d just leave her high and dry if I’d gotten her pregnant. I’ll admit to having done some shitty things in my life, but I did not—would not—do
that.

We’re too young.

We got too serious too fast.

I don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone right now.

That’s what she’d said when she broke things off. And I’d believed that
she’d
believed it at the time.

Shit, I don’t know that much about how a girl’s mind works, but I figured it had been a normal reaction to “the scare”. I’d given our “breakup” a week, two weeks tops. By then I figured she’d have calmed down and she’d be missing me like crazy just like I’d been climbing the walls without her. But when she’d ignored my calls and texts and refused to even see me the week after, I’d been
pissed the fuck off
. Who does shit like that? Go out with a guy—have sex with a guy and tell a guy you love him—for almost a year—and then refuse to talk to him again? And who breaks up with a guy the morning after you had sex with him?

“That’s a load of shit and you know it. I came back didn’t I?”

“After,” she cries, her voice shrill. “You came back only after I’d gone to the doctor and she ran the blood test that told me I wasn’t pregnant. Of course you could come back then, when you knew you had nothing to worry about anymore.”

I throw my hands up in frustration. “If you felt that way, why the hell did you have sex with me the night before? What was it, like one for the road or something?”

Her response is a mutinous silence as she steps back and crosses her arms over her chest, pulling the t-shirt taut against her breasts. She’s pissed and I refuse to be sidetracked by the sight of her nipples protruding from beneath the white cotton.

Sex with her that night had been different. I’d gotten off—as always—but I’m not sure she had even though she’d said she did. She’d been even more nervous than our first time. I had to talk her out of filling the condom with water to make sure there weren’t any holes in it. I’d assured her that with the condom and the fact that she was on the Pill, we were more than protected. From that I’d naturally assumed she’d been terrified of getting pregnant. Obviously, that hadn’t been all of it. She’d been terrified of getting pregnant
by me
. That hurts. Hurts worse than I could’ve imagined.

I stifle the hurt and yes, a little bit of anger too. Calmly, I say, “No, Becca, I would never leave you to deal with something like that on your own. Never.” There’s no way I would abandon my kid. Not my own flesh and blood. And I would never have abandoned
her.
I’m not
that
much like her father.

With a sharp toss of her head and a glower, she marches past me. “Yeah right. You can say that now but where the hell were you when I went to the doctor? Where were you when I was sweating it out wondering what I was going to do about school or how I was going to break it to my mother? Where the hell were you then, Scott? Oh, I know, you were home, where I was lucky if I was able to get you on the phone.”

I watch as she grabs my jeans and shirt I’d hung over her desk chair. Spinning around, she marches back and shoves them at me. My hands reflexively close over the bundled clothes.

“Becca, I told you I had to go back because of the stuff going on with my parents’ business. You said you understood.” Okay, so maybe that had been fudging the truth a little but the foundations of the truth were all there. My mom’s career is essentially just that, my parents’ business whether I like it or not. I don’t most of the time.

“You were obviously lying to me because you wanted out. I wasn’t going to argue with you about it.”

“Dammit, Becca, I wasn’t lying.”

She goes still and suddenly she looks weary and drained. Tipping her head back, she inhales a deep breath and briefly closes her eyes. In that moment of silence, I feel a tightness in my chest. I take in the long line of her neck and the smooth, unblemished skin of her face. I want to kiss her so badly it’s like a physical pain. I haven’t kissed her in over a year—the most miserable year of my life.

“Listen, Scott. I really don’t want to dredge up the past so why don’t you get dressed and leave. Leave me alone.” Then she’s walking back toward the bed, and the ache in my chest worsens.

“Hey, I wasn’t the one who broke up with you. Don’t forget, you’re the one who broke it off with me.”

She stops at the foot of her bed and turns around. “I told you I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Well tough shit. I want to talk about it. You come at me with all this shit and I don’t even get to defend myself?” I know this is probably the wrong approach to take with her if I want to get her back but at this point, I don’t give a flying fuck. Anyway, it’s not like I have a ton to lose. She hasn’t said a word to me since she saw me with Angela last year.

“Was I scared when you told me you were pregnant? Hell yeah I was. Which eighteen-year-old guy all set to start college wouldn’t be? We were both scared and neither of us can deny that. But would I have just left you to deal with it all by yourself? No. No. A hundred times no. Not only did my parents raise me better than that, my own conscience wouldn’t allow it. I loved you, Becca. You were the most important person in my life.” My hands tighten around my clothes.

She is standing eerily still and blinking furiously, her eyes having taken on a glassy sheen.

“Scott.” She doesn’t so much as say my name as she breathes it, the sound thready and hoarse.

“I know I probably could have handled things better. It just came at a really bad time.” Not that knocking up your almost eighteen-year-old girlfriend could ever come at a good time. “But I want you to give me another chance. I want you back.”

There, I’d laid it all out on the line. I’d uttered the words I hadn’t said aloud since I started my pursuit to win her back three months ago. Initially, I’d thought sure and steady would win the race—like a damn turtle—but I hadn’t counted on Becca’s stubbornness and her unwillingness to forgive. But then, I’d thought it had only been about seeing me with Angela. I hadn’t known all this.

“I don’t want you to answer me now.” I know exactly what the answer will be if she does. “I just want you to think about it and everything I said. I would never lie to you about this.” Although I know eventually I’ll have to come clean about my past and my family. But I can’t tell her until I’m sure she can handle it. Until I’m sure I won’t lose her again. Until I’m sure she’ll forgive me for keeping her in the dark.

I leave her standing in the middle of her room and get dressed in the bathroom. When I’m ready to leave, she’s nowhere in sight and her bedroom door is closed. Obviously, she doesn’t want to see me before I leave.

On my way out, I run into her other roommate. April halts abruptly when she sees me, her green eyes going wide. It’s pretty early but she doesn’t appear to be coming in from an all-night bender. Nope, gorgeous as usual, she looks freshly made up, her clothes spotless and unwrinkled.

Her hand is still on the handle of the front door when she looks at me before taking a wary look behind me. “Scott, this is a surprise,” she says, slowly enunciating every word. “Um, is…?”

“Becca’s in her room,” I interject when she hesitates. I don’t know exactly what she’s heard about me. Coming from Becca, I’m sure it’s nothing good. Olivia is a different story. She doesn’t despise me.

“Ah,” she says nodding, though I’m sure she’s confused as all hell.

“I was just leaving,” I say, stating the obvious.

“Cool, see you around.”

I nod and then I’m out of there.

On my way to my car, I start feeling uneasy about leaving the timeframe of her answer so open-ended. I don’t want to give her too much time so I pull out my cell and text her.

I’ll give you a call in a couple days.

When I get behind the wheel, I stow the phone in the console for easy reach should she actually text me back. Ten minutes later, just as I’m turning into the parking lot of my building where I share an apartment with Clint, a good friend on the swim team, my cell chirps, indicating an incoming message.

This is a busy week for me.

Just as I thought. I sigh and shove the phone in my pocket and get out of my car. I can see getting her back isn’t just going to be hard, it might very well be impossible.

CHAPTER FIVE

R
EBECCA

John calls on Sunday and as usual, I ignore it. I’ve been ignoring them for years but like clockwork, he calls every month. In the messages he leaves, sometimes he sounds upbeat:

Hi Becky, it’s your dad. Sorry I missed you. Hope things are going well at school. Would love to hear from you. Call me when you can. Love you, sweetie.

And other times he doesn’t:

Hi Rebecca, it’s your dad. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please give me a call. I love you.

I delete the messages and never return his calls. But his call reminds me what happens to girls when they put their trust in the wrong guys. So that whole week I try really hard to put what happened with Scott over the weekend out of my mind. I shouldn’t care that he wants me back. I’d figured that out about a month ago when all of a sudden he started appearing everywhere I happened to be.

At first I’d thought the meetings were coincidences because initially he never tried to talk to me. I’d caught him looking at me a couple times but I’d thought that was natural given our past. But lately, it’d become obvious he wanted to talk, that he was interested and that’s when I’d started going out of my way to avoid him.

Obviously I hadn’t gone far enough out of my way because he’d caught me.

If you want to know the truth, him pursuing me had given my ego a much-needed boost. What girl wouldn’t want the guy she’d been completely head-over-heels for to want her back. I’d felt smugly triumphant. I’d wanted to crow,
see what you screwed u
p and
look and see what you’ll never have again
.

What I hadn’t counted on was the toil it would begin to take on me. Last weekend should have never happened. There’s no way I should have ever let him get that close, drunk or not.

Speaking of drunk, I glance around the bar, then at the cold bottle of
Mike’s Hard Lemonade
clutched in my hand. One drink is all I’m having tonight. Contrary to my behavior last weekend, I’m not in the habit of getting drunk off my ass.

“
Scott’s not here.” April smirks as she sends me a sidelong glance.

I make a face at her. “I wasn’t looking for him.”
How could she tell?

“
Okay, if you say so,” she replies skeptically before taking a sip of her wine cooler. “I’m not,” I insist, lying through my orthodontically straightened teeth. The fact is I revert to habit when I feel cornered so I’d ignored him. This week I’d ignored his many texts and almost daily phone calls. Thank God I hadn’t been there when he’d come to the apartment looking for me. Olivia told me about the near miss when I’d come home from my shift at the library where I have a slightly better-than-minimum-wage paying job cataloging books.

“
Well you can stop looking,” April says as if I hadn’t spoken, her amusement evident in her dancing green eyes. “He just walked in.”

My traitorous heart leaps, my gaze flying to the entrance of the local bar many of us underage college students frequent because they rarely card us for drinks.

It’s Scott all right, standing just inside the door scouring the room, two of the guys he hangs out with at his side.
Damn.
Why does he have to look
so
good? Tall and gorgeous, he doesn’t lack female attention. Never has and at this rate—because in the two years since I met him, he’s only gotten hotter with age—I’m sure he never will.

I tear my gaze from him and hunker down on the stool at the bar. When he does see me—as he inevitably will—he won’t catch me gawking at him.

Angling her body toward mine, April leans in and whispers close to my ear, “Too late, he’s coming this way.”

My friend has this uncanny ability to read me even when I’m not being quite this obvious. An ability I find only beneficial when I need her to get me out of an uncomfortable situation, otherwise, it can be a bit of a pain in the ass.