She wiped her eyes and lifted her chin, not yet meeting his gaze.
Just tell him
, she ordered herself.
Tell Michael Larson the truth, and tell him why you told him about the baby. You are not going to be able to do this alone.
“I’ll tell you if you still want to know after I ask the question I came here to ask you,” Carrie said quietly.
“Okay,” Michael said, leaning back in his chair. “Ask.”
“I want to know if you want our child to raise, because I don’t want it. I’m not a bad person, but I’ve gone through enough in my life, and I can’t do this. So if you don’t want the baby, you don’t have to give it another thought. I’ll arrange for an adoption and never tell anyone it’s yours. I didn’t even tell Tom who the father was.”
Michael all but knocked his chair over standing up. Carrie didn’t want his child. Hearing it from her was like being struck across the face with a sledge hammer.
He walked to the patio door in a daze and stared out into the darkness. Pressing his forehead to the cool glass of the door, he let himself think of the attraction between Carrie and him. After waiting for several years to be with her, he had been inside her more than out of her for the entirety of the night. The fire between them had burned hot, and Michael still felt that same level of longing for her. If that fire had melted Carrie and him together to create a child, he reasoned, that child was a creation of his every bit as much as any piece of art he’d made with his hands.
Michael raised his forehead from the glass and turned back to the woman sitting quietly in the chair. He had seen her ordering and commanding an army of people in her events business with a precision any military general would appreciate. Tonight, she looked vulnerable and defeated. His heart hurt to realize he and his unwanted child were the cause of her distress.
“Yes. I want our child,” he said firmly, walking back to the table and forcing himself to sit for a third time. “Whatever you need from me, you have it. I’m glad you didn’t get an abortion and marry Tom. I’m glad you looked me up and told me about the pregnancy. As far as I’m concerned, you did all the right things.”
“Are you sure?” Carrie asked him, though she saw the resolution in his face. She just wanted to hear him once more say he would take care of their baby before she laid the rest of her sins at Michael Larson’s feet.
“Let me put it this way. I want any child I created with you under any conditions,” Michael said emphatically. “I don’t have any idea how to make you believe me other than to show you over time.”
“Okay,” Carrie said. Nausea threatened to overwhelm her again, but she pushed it down. “I’m going to believe you.”
“Now tell me what went wrong between us,” Michael demanded quietly, keeping his tone as soft as he could. Whatever it was, he intended to fix it.
Carrie looked at her hands and then back into Michael’s determined gaze. He’s not the careless boy he was, she thought, but it didn’t change the bigger things.
“When I was a sophomore in college, I was crazy about this guy who was a senior. One night I went to a party and ended up in bed with him. We had both been drinking, but I was stupid enough not to care. It was my first time to have sex with anyone. I got up afterward to go to the bathroom. When I came back to the bed we had been using, the boy was already gone. I got dressed and went back to the party where I found him holding one blond on his lap while another clone of her leaned on the arm of his chair. I don’t even think he realized he’d just taken my virginity and discarded me six seconds later. Young women can be stupid and naïve about such things. I was both. It was obvious being with me had meant virtually nothing to him.”
Michael closed his eyes at the amount of pain in her expression. After watching Carrie marry and divorce twice, he was empathetic about how much it hurt to see the person you wanted be with someone else.
“I’m sorry you were hurt. The guy was a jerk for what he did to you, but I was just as careless at his age. I drank and partied pretty hard in college. I eventually got over it, or whatever it is that young men do to finally grow up,” Michael said.
Carrie shook her head. “That’s a great rationalization if you’re a young guy sowing wild oats, and not so great for the young woman who ends up being the field he’s plowing.”
Michael said nothing in response to her comment. At this point, he knew better than to laugh. Instinct told him Carrie wasn’t trying to make a joke. He watched her clear her throat and take in a deep breath before she continued her story.
“A month after I’d been with the boy, I found out I was pregnant with his child. Since I didn’t want the baby of a man who couldn’t tell one woman from the other, I had an abortion and never said anything about it to anyone. I didn’t tell my parents, my sisters, or confess to my minister. You’re the first person I have ever told. Regardless of why the guy behaved as he did, I’ll never be able to forget him or what I did as a result of what happened between us.”
“
Carrie
,” Michael said, his heart breaking for the pain she had held inside all these years.
It would have been awful to go through that experience alone. Michael reached out a hand to pick up one of hers. It was limp and cold in his, no life to it at all. He felt a sudden need to infuse her with his energy, but Carrie went on talking, giving him no choice but to listen.
“Getting an abortion is a terrible experience, Michael. Since I had genuinely cared about the guy, I was devastated afterward when I realized I had willingly killed a part of both of us. I grieved for months. When I finally came to terms with myself, I vowed I would never have an abortion again, no matter what the circumstances.”
Carried looked at him, held his gaze and saw the concern he felt for her now. There was a flicker inside her, and then she remembered how much pain he had caused her. She pushed the flicker away.
“So here I am in your kitchen trying to keep that promise to myself even though I was careless enough to end up getting pregnant by you for a second time in my life,” she said, watching the horror come into his face.
Michael pulled his hand away from her. “You’re saying it was me? You’re saying I was the guy in college who took your virginity and got your pregnant?”
“Yes,” Carrie said, standing, preparing to run if she needed to. “It was you. It was you back then, and God help me, it’s you again now. I thought in a town the size of Lexington that I would never have to be around you ever again after college, but the universe seemed to have other plans for me.”
“You’ve been staying away from me on purpose?” Michael asked, the question all but choking him. All the time he’d chased her and she’d been running like hell in the other direction.
“Yes. I stayed away in every way I could. It worked for a number of years. In my original projects, I refused to plan art events. Then three years ago, I suddenly couldn’t talk my boss out of assigning me to you because he wanted us to work together. What the hell could I say? How could I refuse without looking unprofessional? I was the best at what I did, and Paul wanted me to work with you. Then to my surprise your art events accelerated my career, so I resolved to find a way to live with our business relationship despite the past,” she explained.
“I was attracted to you the first time Paul introduced us three years ago,” Michael said, his innate honesty ruling his tongue. “You’ve been married and unavailable twice in two years. The women I dated other than you never really mattered to me. Every time you were single, I tried to be with you. You know that.”
“Yes, but now you can understand why I didn’t—and still don’t—want to be involved with you. Staying away seemed the only choice to me, but I hear crazy people never think they’re crazy, only other people do,” she said, sighing and looking away from him.
“Carrie, all I have wanted in the last three years is a chance to get to know you,” Michael declared. “How are those women I dated any different than the men you married? If you had dated me, you wouldn’t have married them.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Michael. How can I make this clear to you? When I decide to spend the rest of my life with a man and have his children, it’s going to be with a man I can fall in love with and trust completely. That will never be you,” Carrie said firmly. “Every time I look at you, I only see the boy that hurt me. I don’t like the way you are with women.”
Michael stood and walked away from her, too horrified by what she was saying to be able to think about all it meant. All this time he had loved her, chased her, and she had hated, feared, and loathed him for the mistakes of their past. Instead of him being a moth to her flame, it looked like it had been the other way around. Or maybe it was both. God help him, even after all she’d said he still wanted her.
“So you’re probably wondering, if I hated you so much all this time, then why did I crawl into bed with you a month ago?” Carrie asked the obvious.
Michael turned around to look at her, his own pain finding its way into his words as he answered. “Let me guess, you were planning to sleep with me and dump me? Or did you just intend to embarrass me with your rejection the next morning and hope I would spend all the weeks that followed being mentally tortured trying to figure out what I had done wrong?”
“No. It was actually nothing like that at all. At the art show last month, I stood under all that twisted metal in
Anguish
and wondered how you couldn’t see that you had created a replica of the pain that was inside me for you all this time. When you kissed me while I was crying, I simply broke. When you were inside me all night, I was like a drug addict wanting fix after fix. But the next morning—the next morning I hated myself for my weakness. Because it was wonderful, I hated you even more for not remembering that you had once been inside me all those years ago.”
Carrie picked up the ice water where she stood, drank half and put the glass back on the table. She put a shaking hand on the chair for support.
“I didn’t tell you my story to make you feel bad about college or what we did a month ago. I just want you to know why I really can’t spend the rest of my life letting you destroy me over and over. For the record, I don’t hold you any more accountable for the college stuff than I hold myself. It was my fault for having unprotected sex with a drunk guy. I consider that the end of our short, pathetic story back then,” she said. “What happened between us a month ago, I can’t explain completely, not even to myself.”
“Carrie—I’m sorry about what happened when we were in college,” Michael said, his voice barely a whisper. “All I remember is some generic two years of an emptiness I finally got tired of and outgrew.”
“I guess that’s my point, Michael. You don’t remember it, but I will never be able to forget,” Carrie said. “What happened the first time is the reason I’m making myself come tell you now. Otherwise, I might have done as Tom asked and started over with him.”
“Or you might have dated me when I asked you the first time,” Michael told her.
“I would never have dated you because you have poor taste in bed partners. Among the other women you were seeing when we met, you were dating Erin then, remember?” Carrie said lightly. “She made a special point of telling everyone in the office all the things you liked to do to her in bed.”
“Well, shit,” Michael spat. “It’s not my fault she was indiscreet.”
“How about Angela or Daphne?” Carrie asked. “And I seem to recall several others besides them. The two blonds you were with at the party were from my sorority. I got to hear in great detail how they competed in bed for you—together. So how much have you really changed since college, Michael? My actions seem to indicate I’m still just as stupid as I was then. I’m not sure people ever grow up. I don’t believe you have when it comes to women.”
She turned as if to leave but stopped and looked at the floor as she finished.
“I would rather have nothing more to do with you, but I simply can’t do the wrong thing again. Killing one of our children was all the evil I had in me for a lifetime. Now I just want to find a solution I can live with and try to go on. I can’t raise a child when I don’t even like the father. So if you want our baby, you can have it. You seem to have grown into a mostly decent man despite your womanizing,” Carrie said.
Michael wanted to find words to explain to her how empty it was to fill your hours with women other than the one you wanted, but he couldn’t. All he found inside was the same level of desire for Carrie Addison that he always seemed to have when he was near her. He wanted her in his life, wanted to get to know her. Something about her called to every instinct he had.
“Carrie,” Michael said quietly, “you are the ideal for me. I’ve regretted many of the women I’ve known, but I am not sorry for being with you a few weeks ago. That’s a night I will never forget. I didn’t mean to get you pregnant, but I will do the right thing for you and our child. You have my word.”
She walked to the kitchen doorway. “Don’t answer me now. Think about it for a few days, and then you can let me know for sure.”
“I can tell you that answer already because I know what I want. I won’t change my mind about you or the baby,” Michael said, meaning it even when he had no idea how he was going to making it work.
“Well, be sure about the baby,” Carrie advised softly. “I’ve learned the hard way that the consequences of some bad decisions last a long time.”