Beyond Broken (The Bay Boys #3) (49 page)

Two weeks?
 
No fucking way.
 
He looked at the date on his phone and saw that it was Friday.
 
Even though he was tempted to drive into the city right now and wander around her campus looking for her, Caleb knew that the chances were slim that he’d actually find her.
 
But tomorrow…tomorrow was when she interned at the museum.
 
He knew when she started and when she ended.
 
When she finished tomorrow afternoon, he’d be there and he’d convince her that this was foolish, that she needed to come home, that he didn’t want them living apart for even another night.

It seemed so long since he’d last held her, tracing the freckles on her soft skin as she drifted off to sleep.
 
All because of three little words and Caleb’s inability to accept them.
 
He’d pushed her away, denied himself the comforts of their bed, the comforts of her, and now…he was fucking miserable.
 
What had it even been for?

He glanced back down at the note, still pinched between his fingertips.
 
No.
 
He refused to simply wait around until Maddie made a decision about
their
future.
 
He needed to talk to her, to be near her.
 
The rising panic in his chest wouldn’t disappear until he was.

He’d give her today, no matter how much he would agonize over it.

Tomorrow was another story.

FORTY-THREE

When Maddie stepped foot outside the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park after her shift, she was not in the best mood.
 
Her ankles were swollen from being on her feet for most of the day, she barely got any sleep last night, and her eyes were still a little swollen from all the crying she’d been doing.
 
In short, she felt like a complete mess.
 
A sad, mopey, pregnant mess.

To make her day even better, not even a minute out of the museum, she saw Caleb.
 
He was standing several yards away, arms crossed over his chest, as he scanned the crowds.
 
It was a Saturday and the museum was usually pretty busy.
 
Families, couples, and students milled around the entrance, either leaving or just entering, and it took a little while for Caleb’s eyes to meet hers.
 
When they did, Maddie almost—
almost
—did an about face to retrace her steps back inside.
 
She didn’t want to do this right now.
 
She just wanted to go back to her mom’s house.
 
She wanted to hole up in her childhood bedroom, eat copious amounts of pistachio ice-cream, and then sleep the rest of the afternoon and evening away.

She ignored that her treacherous heart gave a little stutter at the sight of him.
 
She ignored that she immediately reached up to straighten her hair before she frowned and gripped the material of her new maternity dress.
 
She ignored the way her eyes devoured the sight of him, watching him uncross his arms and start towards her, a gleam of determination in those dark eyes.
 
She even ignored the way women around him stopped to blatantly check him out, ogling everything from his lips, to the shifting muscles in his arms, to his firm backside, cupped perfectly in his dark jeans.

Mostly, it just hurt her to look at him.
 
Last week, she would’ve thought of him as hers and she would’ve thought that there was no reason to be jealous of those women because
she
was the one who got to see that backside in the flesh and
she
was the one that knew it was just as perfect as his jeans marketed.

Now, she knew better than to think that.

Maddie swallowed.
 
Her exhaustion had been momentarily pushed to the side when she spotted him, but now it crashed back down on her.
 
This was the man who’d broken her heart a couple nights ago.
 
This was the man who’d lumped their entire relationship into the
friends with benefits
column after she confessed that she
loved
him.

And it still stung.
 
A lot.
 
His rejection of her.
 
His easy dismissal of her feelings.
 
All he thought was that they were good together and that
the sex was pretty fucking fantastic,
to quote him word for word.

She knew why he was here.
 
It pissed her off because he couldn’t even give her some time to work things out in her head.
 
He’d been perfectly fine avoiding her for the past
week
, after all.

Maddie stopped walking, letting him quickly stride the rest of the way to her since she saw this meeting as unavoidable.

“We need to talk,” Caleb said when he reached her.
 
His hand reached out to grasp her hand, as if he couldn’t
not
touch her and that just irritated her even more.

She pulled free and took a step back, placing a hand on his chest to stop him from invading her space.
 
“I’m tired, Caleb.
 
My feet are throbbing and I just want to go home.”

“Let’s go home then,” he said easily.

“To my
mom’s
home,” she snapped back.

In clear frustration, he ran a palm through his hair, eyeing her.
 
“Maddie, this is ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” she repeated and there went another stab to her gut.
 
“You think that what I told you was ridiculous?
 
Do you think that what I feel is
ridiculous
?”

He exhaled a sharp breath.
 
“That’s not what I meant.
 
Of course, that’s not what I meant.”

“Enlighten me then.
 
What exactly did you mean by
this is ridiculous
?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

A young couple gave them a long glance as they passed by and Caleb glared until they averted their eyes.
 
He looked around them and then jerked his head to the side.
 
“My car’s parked over there.”

“I’m not going with you,” she said, taking a step around him and walking past.

“Okay, then we’ll go to your car.”

“I took BART in.”

“Jesus, Maddie,” he cursed, grabbing her arm to stop her.
 
“Will you just give me ten fucking minutes and talk to me?
 
I need to explain some things.”

Maddie sighed wearily, squeezing her eyes closed and trying to take deep breaths.
 
Her pulse was rapid and she knew it was due to stress.
 
That couldn’t be good for the baby.

“Fine,” she snapped.
 
“Ten minutes.
 
Then I’m going home.”

“Fine,” he said in return, but his voice was softer than hers.
 
He led her to his car, which was parked on the street in front of the museum.
 
He must’ve gotten there early or he must’ve been really lucky to get such a good spot.
 
When he unlocked and opened the door for her, she had to hop a little to get into the passenger seat, but the moment she sat down, she felt instant relief.
 
She actually sighed and then kicked off her flats, only realizing afterwards that she might not be able to get them back on.

Caleb looked at her when he got in, watching as she leaned down to massage her calves.

“They do know you’re pregnant, right?” he asked, irritation rolling off of him.
 
Maddie knew he didn’t like her working this much and she wanted to tell him to stop stressing out because it was only one day a week.
 
But even she was beginning to wonder if she should take it easier, especially since she’d started getting headaches this past week.

“You wanted to talk,” she reminded him, glancing out the passenger window.

When she looked over at him, he had both hands draped over the top of the steering wheel, like he needed it to ground him.
 
He was staring straight ahead and then said, “I can’t tell you what you want to hear, Maddie.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I just wanted to explain what I meant the other night.”

“I understood perfectly, Caleb,” she said, confused by the disappointment that filled her anew.
 
She had just naively hoped that perhaps he needed time to figure out what she already knew…that he cared deeply for her too.

For weeks, she’d held herself back.
 
She had bit her tongue every time she wanted to tell him how she felt because she’d been—justly—afraid of how he might react.
 
And it shouldn’t be like that.
 
She should’ve been excited to tell him.

The hopelessness of their situation hit her all over again.
 
And she felt like a fool.

Then it hit her, like a sledgehammer to the stomach.

“This was never going to work out, was it?” she murmured, defeat making her shoulders slump.
 
She stared down at her belly and put a hand there when she felt the baby give a light kick.
 
And, even though she hated herself for it, she missed the nights where Caleb would touch her there and she would be able to see every emotion on his face.

“Don’t say that,” he said, his gaze darting over at her words, trying to read her.
 
Whatever he saw in her face made him shift towards her, his hands reaching out to cradle her face in his palms.
 
“Don’t say that, Maddie,” he pleaded.

“I was kidding myself,” she said, closing her eyes.
 
His hands were warm on her face and she didn’t have the strength to pull away.
 
“I thought that if we lived together, if we played family,” her lips twisted bitterly, “for long enough, then a relationship between us would just happen naturally.
 
And I’m so
stupid
for thinking that, for wanting that.”

“Maddie—”

“I can’t force it though,” she continued.
 
“I can’t force you to have feelings for me, or for you to want to be more than just our child’s father, or for you to just
let me in
.
 
And it wasn’t fair for me to expect that of you.
 
I know that all you want is for her to grow up in a healthy, normal environment.
 
I get it.
 
But…I don’t think this is the way to go about it, Caleb.
 
Not anymore.
 
This isn’t healthy.
 
And it’s not normal.”

Caleb stared at her, the space between his brows pinched, his mouth tight.
 
“I thought…I thought what we had was good, Maddie.
 
I thought you were happy.”

The way he said those words made tears sting her eyes.
 
“I was happy, Caleb,” she said.
 
“You did make me happy.
 
I just—I can’t live like that, always wondering and never knowing.
 
I wanted to give you everything, but then I realized that you weren’t able to reciprocate.
 
And don’t I deserve to be loved, Caleb?”
 
She forced a small smile on her lips, but it didn’t quite meet her eyes.
 
“I think I do, at least.
 
And it’s not fair for me to be in a situation like that, knowing that we’re only playing pretend when I want the real thing.”

“We’re not ‘playing pretend,’ Maddie,” he growled.
 
“We were building something.
 
It might not have been conventional, but I wasn’t pretending that we were anything more than what I expected us to be.”

She closed her eyes.

There it was.
 
The root of their problem.

Caleb didn’t want anything more than what they already had—a comfortable friendship.
 
With perks, of course.

Maddie wanted his love and for him to accept hers.

“And what happens if down the road, you meet someone?
 
Or I meet someone else?” she asked, looking at him.
 
His hands slid off her face and he fell back against the driver’s side door, a scowl emerging.
 
“What happens if I fall in love with him and he falls in love with me?
 
What then?
 
Would you just stand aside and let it happen?”

His jaw ticked so hard that it was like a throb and he shifted his head so that he looked out the windshield, away from her.
 
This was what confused her.
 
He would act like this.
 
He would act like a jealous lover—he did it with her doctor, with the flirty check-out guy at the supermarket, with basically any man who looked at her twice—yet he still insisted that they were just friends.
 
Was it because she was pregnant?
 
Maybe he wasn’t even jealous.
 
Maybe he just felt threatened since she was carrying his child.

She almost laughed.
 
Yet another thing that she’d read wrong…

Her voice hitched when she spoke next.
 
“I’m just trying to point out that even though our arrangement might work now, it would fall apart in the future.
 
I—I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for it to happen, Caleb.
 
It would eat away at me until nothing was left.
 
And I need you to understand that.
 
And I need you to give me time to get over you.”

“So,” he said, voice guttural, “you’ve already made up your mind?”

“I was prepared to fight for you, Caleb,” she whispered, wiping her cheeks.
 
“But even I can see that this is a losing battle.
 
I can’t fight for you when you don’t even want to be won.”