Breakaway

Chapter Thirteen

“So what did you want to talk about, Jasmine?” Remi sauntered back into the kitchen after saying goodbye to Jason, feeling soft and relaxed and happy.

“Well. Um. Ethan and I want to buy a house.”

“Oh. Really.” Remi’s stomach rolled over. It had been a big step for them to move in together in Ethan’s apartment. Buying a house together sounded serious. She still wasn’t convinced their relationship was all that mature. She sat at the big, oak kitchen table with Jasmine.

“We want to buy a house, but things have tightened up a lot because of the recession,” Jasmine continued. “So we need a big down payment.”

“Oh. I guess you do.” Remi nodded, still not sure where this was going. She sipped her coffee, scalding hot, dark and rich. “Do you have some money saved up?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She waited.

Jasmine looked down at her coffee, appearing to struggle for words. Then she looked up. “I want you to sell the house,” she said.

Remi shook her head. “What?”

“I want you to sell the house.” Jasmine smiled. “It’s our house. All three of us. Right?”

“Uh…right.” Remi’s mind spun. What did she say? What?

“So if it belongs to all three of us, then one third of the value is mine and I want that money for a down payment on a house of our own. Me and Ethan. So you need to sell the house.”

Remi stared at Jasmine. What was she talking about? “But I live here, Jasmine.”

“I know. But you could find somewhere else to live. You’d have your third of the money.”

“But…” Remi blinked, looked around her. This was her home. This was their home. Even though Jasmine had just moved out, she’d already moved back once. She needed a place to come home to when things didn’t work out. Okay, if things didn’t work out. Think positive. And Kyle—he lived in the dorm at college, but this was really still his home.

“I can’t move out, Jasmine,” she said slowly. “I don’t want to sell this house.”

“But, Remi.” Jasmine leaned forward. “A third of this house is mine.”

It was true.

Their parents had left everything to all three of them, including the house. It had to be split evenly three ways, somehow, someday. But Remi had never thought ahead to the day that might happen.

How could she leave here? The house meant so much to her. Stability. Security. Family. In a life that had her parents flitting in and out and then gone for good, it was the one constant. Home.

But that wasn’t the only problem. Remi did not have faith that Jasmine and Ethan’s relationship was strong enough to last. Buying a house together was a serious commitment.

She sighed. She knew how that was going to be received. Jasmine wanted to hear that as much as she wanted to have her head shaved.

Remi ran her hand through her hair, still tangled from an energetic night with Jason. “Jasmine. This is kind of sudden. I need time to think about it.”

Jasmine’s mouth twisted. “What’s to think about? You know you have to do it. Part of this house is mine.”

The urge to give her sister a shake rose inside her, but she tamped it down, taking a deep breath. “Jasmine. Think what you’re asking. I can’t just sell the house on whim. I need to find somewhere else to live. And besides…” She tried to stop herself, but the words came pouring out. “I don’t know if you and Ethan buying a house together is such a good idea.”

Jasmine’s eyes narrowed and her mouth pouted.

“I knew it,” she said, pushing her cup away. “You just don’t like Ethan.”

“It’s not that.” Dammit, why had she said that? She needed to be careful here. “It’s just what I said. You two have fights all the time. You don’t trust him.”

“Yes, I do.”

Remi resisted the protest that sprang to her lips. Fine. “Okay. Could you just let me think about it? Maybe there’s another way.”

Jasmine stood up and crossed her arms across her chest. “There is no other way. We don’t have enough money and we’ll never have enough money for a down payment. The way the economy is now, we’ll be lucky if we ever have a house. How are we supposed to have kids, living in an apartment?”

Remi stared at her, aghast. “You want to have kids?”

“Well, maybe someday.”

Oh dear God. Jasmine was a very young twenty-one-year-old. There was no possible way she was mature enough to be a mother.

It was all her fault. She’d reared Jasmine for the last five, nearly six years. She should have made her more independent, more responsible. But no. She was too busy being the responsible one, taking responsibility for everything.

Suddenly Remi felt very heavy and very tired, the weight of it all pressing down on her shoulders. She slumped a bit.

“I’ll think about it,” she said slowly. “I promise.”

“Fine.” Jasmine turned and flounced out.

Jason squinted at Brianne. “You’re what? Pregnant?” Is that really what she’d said?

“Yes.” She twisted her fingers together on her lap, still looking at his chest.

Why was she telling him this? Did she think he’d be upset? He didn’t care about Brianne’s life anymore, he’d moved on. She had to know that.

Suddenly his gut cramped. She couldn’t be telling him this because… Holy fuck. Did she think he was the father?

“Brianne.” His voice came out sounding funny. “Why are you telling me this?”

She looked at him blankly. “I thought I should. You have a right to know.”

“Are you saying…?” He felt his throat close up, paused. Tried again. “Are you saying I’m the father?”

Her eyes widened. “Of course you’re the father! There hasn’t been anyone else.”

The room moved around him, shifted, faded away. He wasn’t sitting, he was floating. He gripped the armrests of the chair to hold himself in place. His vision went foggy and he felt like his brains were spinning around in his head.

It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t be pregnant. It was a mistake.

“You’re on the Pill.”

She nodded, bending her head. “Yes. But…” She shrugged. “I guess we’re one of those point-zero-one percent where it doesn’t work. For whatever reason. I don’t know.”

“Are you sure? How do you know? You could just be late.”

Jason’s fingers ached from clenching the upholstery and he tried to relax. His ass was almost lifting out of the chair, his body had gone so tight and rigid.

“I did two tests. Just to make sure.”

He stared at her, the room still moving in circles like a bad case of bed spins after too much partying. And then he shook his head. Was this for real?

“Brianne. You’re not just doing this to try to get back together, are you?”

Her mouth dropped open. “No!”

“Are you sure?” She’d been phoning him all the time, wanting to talk. This couldn’t be true. “How far along are you?”

“Two months.”

But…but… “Brianne. We broke up two months ago. Are you sure there hasn’t been anyone else?”

“They start counting from the first day of your last period,” she said, her voice low. “Which was two weeks before we broke up. It probably happened that last night…” Her words ended on a small sob and she pressed a hand to her mouth. “I’m not exactly happy about this either. There goes my Victoria’s Secret job.”

That did sound like Brianne, but…

He narrowed his eyes at her. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. Anger surged inside him that she would stoop this low.

“You’d better go,” he said, rising.

“What?” She stared at him. “You really don’t believe me?”

He slowly shook his head. “No. I don’t.”

“Jase!” Her cry sounded distressingly anguished. “I’m telling you the truth! I wouldn’t lie about this!”

He shook his head stubbornly, folded his arms across his chest and lifted his chin. “Just leave, Brianne.”

“But…but…what do I have to do to make you believe me?”

He scowled. “I don’t know.”

“If I…show you the pregnancy test…?”

He pursed his lips. “That’ll prove you’re pregnant, I guess. It won’t prove I’m the father.”

“Jase!” Her eyes filled with tears. “I haven’t been with anyone else! I love you!”

Fuck. He closed his eyes.

“I can get something from my doctor,” she said, standing, her fingers twisting together. “My doctor can tell you how many weeks I am. Then you’ll know.”

He gave a jerky nod. “Yeah. You do that,” he said. She wouldn’t get anything from her doctor. Because it wasn’t true.

He wasn’t even going to tell Remi about it. Because it was just so crazy and there was no need for her to get all upset about it. Jesus! He swiped a hand across his forehead as he drove back to her place later. They’d decided to just order pizza and celebrate his win at her place.

When he got there, she greeted him looking a little like a goaltender who’d just been bombarded with fifty shots on goal with no defense. Which was pretty much how he felt. He sucked in a breath as he kissed her.

“You won’t believe what happened,” she said. He followed her into her kitchen where she began to open a bottle of wine.

Oh, man. He could say the same to her. But he wasn’t going to.

“My sister wants me to sell the house,” she said.

“You’re kidding? Why?” He reached for the bottle and corkscrew she was struggling with. “Here. Let me.” He popped the cork out and poured wine into two glasses while she told him about her earlier conversation with Jasmine.

But his mind drifted off, back to that horrifying conversation with Brianne. He still couldn’t believe she would go that far to try to get him back.

“Jason?”

He looked up at Remi. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay? You seem…distracted.”

He forced a smile, his body tight and twitchy. “Yeah. Fine. Go on.”

He tried to listen, he really did, but his thoughts were all over the place and Remi was noticing. Jesus. He had to stop thinking about Brianne. He firmly pushed those thoughts aside and focused on Remi. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She looked around her. “I love this house. But it’s true. Kyle and Jasmine are entitled to their share of the house. Even though I think they need this place to come home to. At least for a while.”

He nodded and drank some of the wine. Then the words just popped out of his mouth. “You know…you could move in with me.”

He couldn’t believe he was sitting there calmly, steadily looking at Remi, inviting her to move in with him, and his heart wasn’t racing, his gut wasn’t heaving, his neck and shoulders weren’t rock-hard with tension.

He’d thought about it earlier and now the idea had slid into his head like a puck gliding into the net, and before he’d even had time to think about it, he’d said it. He wanted Remi to live with him.

She stared at him. “What?”

“You could move in with me.” He reached for her hand. “I want you to live with me.”

She moved her head slowly from side to side, pretty lips parted. “But we hardly know each other. We can’t move in together.”

“We know each other,” he said, stroking his thumb across the back of her hand. “I love you, Remi. I want to live with you.”

“Are you crazy?”

He remembered the last time they’d had a conversation like this and how heated and angry her question had been. This time her voice was soft, wondering. He grinned. “No, I mean it.”

“Wow.” She blinked at him. “That’s a pretty serious step for a guy who just wants to have fun.”

“It would be fun living with you,” he said. “I know it.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Jason, there’s more to it than that.”

“I know. I actually thought of it this morning, how much easier everything would be if we lived together. Just think about it. Maybe this thing with Jasmine will blow over. There’s no rush. But you know…even if you don’t have to sell the house…think about it.”

She nodded, her eyes a little dazed. “Okay.”

“Let’s order pizza. I’m starving.”

It took Brianne a week.

She showed up at his apartment the next Saturday, grim-faced and pissed. “Here,” she said, shoving a paper into his hand. “Nine weeks. Now do you believe me?”

He stared down at the note on official medical stationery. It looked…real.

His stomach heaved, his mouthed filled with saliva and he swallowed repeatedly. He could not puke. He could not puke.

“And I brought this too,” she snapped, pulling a plastic baggie out of her purse. She handed it to him too. He looked at the plastic stick inside. “That’s the pregnancy test I took. For the third damn time.” Her lips tightened into a thin line. She glared at him.

He wiped his mouth. The silence stretched out, long and thick.

A million questions backed up in his brain. He closed his eyes.

Jesus. A baby. Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“What are you doing to do?” He sounded like his voice was coming from far away, echoing in his ears.

“I’m…I’m going to have the baby.”

He squeezed his eyes closed. He’d never been someone who believed in abortion but he’d also always believed in a woman’s right to choose. Because they were the ones who got pregnant. But at that moment, he had to ask, why, why she would do that when her career and his life would be so hugely impacted by this.

But he knew why. It was a baby. Their baby.

Jesus Christ. How could this have happened?

How could he be a father? He felt like a kid himself. And what was he supposed to do about Brianne? They’d broken up. He didn’t love her. But she was going to be the mother of his child.

Nausea rolled again. He fought it down and looked at Brianne standing there, arms folded across her chest, hip cocked.

He had to ask it. “What do you want from me, Brianne?”

Her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. “You know what I want.”

Did she want them to get back together? To try to make something work for the sake of their child? The questions ricocheted around inside him, but he was a coward, too afraid to speak them aloud in case she said yes, that’s what she wanted.

Remi.

Oh, Christ, Remi. How was he going to tell Remi about this?

He’d just asked her to move in with him.

The idea of hurting her sliced through him with such a sharp, jagged pain he made a noise. He cleared his throat, glancing at Brianne. She watched him with sad, glossy eyes and a shaky mouth.

He turned and walked into his living room, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither do I.” She followed him and perched on the edge of his couch. He lowered himself into a chair.

“D’you…do you want us to get back together?”

She blinked at him. “I still love you, Jase. You know I do.”

Fuck. That was not what he wanted to hear. That jagged pain inside him intensified.

“I don’t know if I can do this on my own, Jase.”

He moved his head slowly up and down. He got that. He wasn’t sure if he could do it either. A baby! Christ!

He leaned his head back, trying to imagine his life with a child. With Brianne. Terror clawed at him, long talons dragging through his intestines, panic bubbling up inside him with that familiar feeling of being caged, trapped, noosed.

Like marriage, he’d always figured parenthood would come someday. He wasn’t a confirmed bachelor, sworn to stay single forever. Nah. His parents had created a great family and he wanted that too. Someday. Some very far-distant day.

A son to teach how to play hockey.

Maybe a girl. But girls could play hockey too.

But not now. Not now. Not now.

He lifted his head and looked at Brianne.

“I can’t do it alone,” she whispered. “I need you, Jase.”

She held out a hand.

He ached. He hesitated. But the despair and pleading in her eyes tugged at something inside him. They’d done this together. Created a baby together. He rose up, walked over to her and sat down beside her. She turned into him and he hugged her, holding her against him, her face pressed to his chest, his cheek to her hair.

Guilt weighted heavy on his shoulders—a feeling like he was cheating on Remi. But Brianne needed him. Man, did she need him. More than he wanted to be needed and a battle raged inside him over who he owed more to, over what he was supposed to do, over whether he had it in him to do the right thing—or whether he had it in him to even know what the right thing was.

His life was so fucked up.