I couldn’t give a shit who knows, but I don’t want Lou finding out her Marine buddy’s a douche, looking for a payday after he jumped in the middle of a fight.
I end the call.
Lou smacks me hard on my chest. “Get out.”
“Hey. How’re you feeling this morning?”
She sits up, glaring at me. “I said get the fuck out, Buck.”
I stand and cross my arms. “No. We have to talk about last night.”
She shakes her head, rubbing her temples. “Fuck last night. A bear tore into my brain last night; at least, that’s what it feels like. I’m not talking about anything. And I don’t want you here—so get the fuck out.”
“You said something. I need to know what you meant.”
She looks up, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t remember most of last night. Looks like you might’ve gotten your ass kicked. Did I do that?”
“No. Your Marine buddies and I had a disagreement about who was putting you to bed.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. You’re here, so I guess y’all got it settled.”
“That’s not what I want to talk about.”
She holds up her finger to stop me. “Just wait. I have to go scour out my mouth.”
I sit and wait for her to get back from taking care of her morning stuff. My fingers drum on my pant leg. My muscles tense.
She comes back, falling face-down across the bed, her hands covering the back of her head. “Whatever it is you want to talk about, can it wait until this jackhammer in my head lets up?”
I lean toward her, running my hand over her shoulders. “Lou, are you pregnant?”
She does a push-up, her eyes wide. “What? No! Why’d you ask that?”
“Because you said something last night about a baby. Telling him about a baby? Were you pregnant?”
She flops back to her stomach, her face buried in the blankets, her voice muffled. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“You got pregnant? When? With who?”
Her shoulders heave with a sigh.
“Lou, c’mon.”
“It’s none of your business, Buck.”
“Please, tell me. What happened?”
Lou rolls to her back, hands over her face. “Buck, that was in the past—nothing can be done about it now. No point in rehashing it. It’ll only open old wounds.”
“Tell me.”
She sits up, her back ramrod straight, shoulders back, chin high. “Fine. It really doesn’t matter if you know anyway. It doesn’t affect a thing. Especially now, since I know how you’d have reacted, considering the way you’re acting about Arianne.”
“Arianne isn’t you.”
She turns a disgusted look on me. “Whatever. Yes. I was pregnant. About three weeks or so after you left for Hollyworld, I took a home pregnancy test.”
Three weeks. Fuck.
My guts twist. “My baby? Our baby?”
She turns hard eyes on me. “No. My baby. You weren’t here. You didn’t come back. And you never knew it existed while it was on this Earth. My baby.”
My insides seem to quiver. “While it was on Earth? What happened? What did you do?”
Her mouth hardens to match her eyes. “I didn’t do anything. I would never do that. Ever. I loved that little life with everything in me, with all the love you left behind. About eight weeks in, I started bleeding, and all the doctors could do was to tell me to put my feet up and take it easy.”
My mind races over the anger Lou holds onto about my not coming home. About me leaving her. A wave of nausea washes through me.
I reach for her. “Aw, Lou. Why didn’t you call me? Tell me? I’d have come back. I would never have left you to deal with that alone.”
She brushes my hands away. “Of course I didn’t call you home. I didn’t want you to come back for a baby. I wanted you to come back for me. I fucking loved you, you idiot. I loved you so much, and it cut so deep when you left. But you didn’t love me. You said goodbye to me as though you were gifting me with my freedom.”
I sit at the edge of the bed, dropping my head into my hands. “I was gifting you your freedom. That’s exactly what I was doing.”
TWENTY-THREE
I held in the tears just long enough to get Buck out of the house. Even then, I only took a couple of minutes to grab hold of the ugly monster trying to escape that safe little box and stuff it back where it belongs, deep inside and all locked up.
No way will I let him see me break down. No fucking way.
Aunt Delores was the one who comforted me when I sat by, my baby dying inside me, unable to do a damned thing to stop its tiny life from ebbing away with every beat of my breaking heart. I won’t put her through that again.