Page 77 of Ghosted By Texas

The jackass laughed at me.

“Why are you laughing? I’m serious.”

“That’s not how it works, Becs.”

“That’s how all the books claim it works. Haven’t you seen all those jokes about the people who eat the sugary crap and end up with diabetes?”

“Yeah, I have and it’s a bunch of shit. One of the guys from my fraternity was Type One. He had to be genetically predisposed to get it and he said his doctor told him it didn’t matter what he ate, that his diet didn’t cause it. The guy grew up with vegetarian parents who never allowed him to have soda or many sweets. I promise that drink is just a test and won’t cause you to have it. If you do end up with it, we’ll adjust to make sure you and our son stay healthy.”

“Fine,” I mumbled, though inside I was hopping around like a giddy schoolgirl. He wanted to help me adjust to stay healthy, if necessary. He meant business, too. Austin had rarely left my side unless one of us was working. Dallas stepped up and took over running the club at night, especially on the weekends, so that Austin could be with me. Houston had his other business to run. Austin went in during my work hours to get all the ordering, payroll, and business side of things taken care of.

They were eventually going to hire a management team to run the place when it was open so that Dallas could go back to whatever it was Dallas did and Austin could continue to work whatever hours he needed to between me and the baby, so that hopefully we wouldn’t have to put our son in daycare when my maternity leave was up.

I still hadn’t confided in Clea what was going on with Austin and me, though I had a feeling she already knew there was more to us than I ever let on.

I couldn’t tell her now for the same reasons I never confided in her to begin with. I was worried that it wouldn’t last, and she’d think I was an idiot for putting myself out there with him again. Okay, that wasn’t it either, because as much as I valued her opinion, it wouldn’t really matter in the end. My decision boiled down to what I felt in my heart. The problem was, I was afraid to admit it to myself, and if I told her everything, then that would be admitting to myself that I’d already given Austin the power to hurt me irrevocably.

As it turned out, I did not have gestational diabetes and the drink they made me chug, which was a gross orange concoction, did not make my pancreas stop producing the insulin the baby and I needed.

“You want to head back home, or do you need to go back to work?”

“Home. I took the day off just in case,” I admitted.

Austin laughed at me again. “Just in case your drink gave you the sugars?”

“Hush!” He continued laughing at me as he drove. “You’re a jerk.”

“You still love me,” he teased, though there was an edge to it when he ended and cringed over how I might react to that phrase.

“I do, you know. Despite everything that’s happened between us, I’ve never fallen out of love with you. I’ve been angry, confused, and disappointed but underneath it all was still the love I’ve always felt for you.”

“That’s something I can work with,” he said before pretending that driving took far more concentration than it did. Considering I saw a bit of moisture collecting in his eyes to go along with the relief he must have felt, he might have needed to concentrate a bit harder.

Clea and Houston’s wedding was two days before my next baby doc check-up, as Austin called them. I was in my third trimester with six weeks to go until delivery day. Hopefully. Dr. Danvers kept warning me that most women went over their due date. I refused to believe that bit of nonsense. I was not most women.

“Are you sure you want me wearing this?” I asked Clea for the third time.

“Yes, it looks gorgeous on you.”

“But it’s white,” I argued.

“So, what. It’s my wedding and you can wear white because I said so.”

I chuckled at my best friend’s testiness. She was the opposite of a bridezilla. Except where her shoes were concerned. “I’m really not too sure about this dress with these heels.” She was like a broken record with that crap all morning.

“Oh hush, you’ll be fine.”

“Says my knocked-up bestie who gets to wear flats.”

I laughed at her view of how unfair things were. “Well, you’re the one who wouldn’t wait until I got my figure back to march down the aisle toward your lover man.”

“I still don’t know why you aren’t the one marching down the aisle, considering.” She had the audacity to point at my burgeoning belly. I wanted to laugh about it, but I couldn’t, so I offered a weak smile instead.

“It wasn’t an option,” I reminded her.

“I know he-”

I cut her off mid-sentence. “He asked, but you and I both know that it was done reluctantly.” It had been a hair-trigger reaction to finding out I was pregnant. “Let’s face it, we dated years ago for a short time.” I pointed to my belly, still ready to perpetrate the lie I’d stuck with to convince myself, through my bestie, that my heart wasn’t already down river with Austin’s somewhere. “This happened as a result of a one-night stand years after he ghosted me for something that wasn’t even my fault and didn’t directly concern us. I couldn’t agree to marry him.” The truth was, he had never asked again, so I assumed it wasn’t what he really wanted, despite all the time we’d spent together in recent months.

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