He turned to me, his eyes full of hope and love, and a little bit of fear as well, fear that I’d go with my mom, but he knew he had to trust me now. “What do you want to do? Do you want to stay with me or go with them?”
My answer was immediate. Sure, we’d made a lot of mistakes. We should have come clean on this as soon as things started going to hell. But standing there, his eyes shining with new-found maturity and the love they contained, I knew all my worries in the past were phantoms, and I needed to trust him as much as he was trusting me.
“I'm staying with Stefan,” I said after I found the spit to moisten my dry mouth. “I don't want to go anywhere or talk to a counselor because I plan on having the baby . . . no matter what.”
Stefan let out a sigh of relief, and our parents began laying into me again, trying to make me see reason. Mom was worried about some mythical future, about a social reputation. Terry was thinking about his company and the family name. Neither of them said one thing about Stefan or me. It pissed me off. They were thinking only about themselves.
“That's enough,” Stefan said loudly over them after they'd started repeating themselves, and he could see I was about to scream at them. “You heard Bella's decision. She isn't giving up the baby, no matter how hard you browbeat her otherwise. Now that the issue is finally settled, if you can’t respect her decision as an adult, you can all just leave.”
Our parents resumed yelling, calling Stefan out on how hypocritical he was, but Emma interrupted them.
“You heard Stefan. He wants us to leave. I know it irks you both as their parents to be kicked out, but they are adults and this whole thing is going nowhere.” She glanced uneasily between Stefan and Terry. “Lord knows, we don't want another fight to break out.”
“You heard Grandma,” Stefan reinforced, pointing at the front door. “Go.”
Emma walked over to the front door and held it open, motioning to my parents. “Come on, you two. There is nothing left we can do for now.”
Mom glared at us both for a long while before throwing up her hands in exasperation. “Fine!”
Shaking her head, she walked out of the apartment, not deigning to throw me a second glance. Grandma, however, paused at the door, giving us an appraising look. I wondered—it had been so long since we’d spent a lot of time together. Just how much wisdom, how much did I miss not going to see her before? She nodded once, and while she didn’t smile, she wasn’t pissed off, either. She was worried, but still, there was a look of respect in her eyes when she saw Stefan come over and put his arm around my shoulders, and I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“The invitation to come out to the estate is still there. Goodbye for now, you two.”
“Bye, Grandma,” we said in unison.
Chapter 35
Stefan
“I can’t believe what just happened,” Bella said quietly when our parents were gone. “That was the most embarrassing thing ever.”
Her arms were crossed across her chest, and she stood there in her short shorts and tattered crop top, looking vulnerable. She looked so beautiful to me in that moment, so sweet. I held out my hand, and she clasped it, letting me pull her into an embrace.
“I know it was tough,” I whispered, knowing it was the understatement of the century but not wanting to dredge up the bad shit that had just happened. “But in some ways, I’m glad it’s finally in the light of day.”
“Why didn’t you lock the door?” Bella demanded, her voice sharp. “Jesus, Stefan, if we had just locked the damn door!”
The me that I’d been even a few hours before would have gotten pissed off. Hell, maybe I was still pissed off, but I was so over the line that I didn’t know it. Instead, I hugged her tighter, holding her close. “Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. Bella, you don’t know how much it meant to me when you said you’d stay.”
Bella swallowed, looking down. “I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “What do you mean, sorry? Bella, in that one answer, you told me that you loved me, that we’re doing the right thing, and that somehow, for all the fuckups I’ve made, you’ve still got faith in me. I promise you, when I figure out how we’re going to get out of this—”
Bella held up her hand. “Stop right there, Stefan.”
I was confused and tilted my head. “Stop what?”
Bella looked up at me with a hint of her old fire, the same light that I’d taken for bitchiness, the same desire for power that she’d only shown flashes of since we found out she was pregnant. “Stefan, I love you. And I’ve learned over the time we’ve been together that I like taking care of you. Hell, I like cooking you breakfast and washing your funky ass socks. But I can’t just sit back and let you do everything. Now, I understand that you want to work to save me some physical stress, but we can’t do it alone anymore. You can’t just expect me to sit here on my rapidly expanding ass while you figure things out by yourself! I’ve got a brain too, you know!”