Page 144 of Tangled up in You

JESSE

She tried to process this development.

“But you didn’t call me,” she finally said. “And you only sent one text.”

“You didn’t call or text us, either,” Mark replied. “And it wasn’t like you couldn’t get our info.”

Her legs suddenly felt weak and she sank into the chair Mark had occupied when Josie first shoved her into the room.

She honestly didn’t know how to respond. Chris still held one of her hands, as if afraid to let go now.

“At the very least,” Mark added, “you could have told us you’re pregnant.”

“Mark,” Chris snapped. “Stand down, dude.”

“No, he’s right,” she softly admitted. “I should have reached out sooner.”

Chris knelt in front of her, recapturing her other hand. “That doesn’t matter now. All that matters is we need to reboot this from where it went wrong. We love you, and we miss you, and we want to be part of our child’s life even if you don’t feel that way about us now. I’m sorry that whatever you heard or misheard hurt you, but we didn’t know! From our end, you disappeared without saying good-bye. Can you understand that? We can’t fixwhat we don’t know is broken. I wish you had confronted us and we could have straightened all of this out immediately.”

Her vision blurred with more tears. She stared at their hands, where they were clasped together. “I thought you didn’t want me,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “And it hurt too much to make it…final.”

“Oh, sweetie.” He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her and she hated that now she sobbed, all the anguish and fear pouring out of her like spring melt on a hot day into a Yellowstone stream. “RSD’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

She sob-laughed. “Yeah, it is.”

“Okay,” he said, still holding her, now stroking her hair even as she cried on his shoulder. “Let’s reboot,” he said. “We can’t get back the last four months. Let’s start over where we are. Is the baby okay? Is it healthy?”

“Yeah,” she sniffled.

“Are we having a boy or girl?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t want to find out yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was having a rough time processing everything.”

“It is ours, right?” Mark asked.

Chris sat back. “Dude! Fucking seriously?”

She opened her eyes. Mark stood leaning against the desk, staring at the floor, his arms tightly crossed over his chest. “Fair questions, I think,” he quietly said.

Chris stood and turned on him. “Remember how upset I got that time back in our early days when you drove to Bozeman and didn’t bother to tell me? Remember you couldn’t understand why I was so upset you missed our dinner and couldn’t just take an apology? Remember how it took severalweeksof working things out for you to finally understand what happened in my brain?”

Mark’s cheeks flushed. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “So?”

“Remember I explained RSD to you? How stuff like that triggers me?”

Mark shifted a little but didn’t reply.

“Well?” Chris snapped.

“Yeah? So? What’s that have to do with this?”

Chris pointed to her. “She’s a sparkly unicorn vampire, too. No one experiences things the same way, but imagine her reacting the way I did back then because her RSD was triggered. Only multiply it by everything else that happened on top of it.”

Mark’s cheeks grew redder. “How was I supposed to know she misheard what we said? We didn’t even know she was there!”

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