Page 76 of Lose You to Find Me

He shakes his head again. “There’s that word again.Complicated.I think life is only as complicated as we make it. If you don’t want to be friends, don’t. Can’t say I disagree with your father though. Love is love. We can’t always help who we fall for. It takes a long time, maybe even a lifetime, to learn how to stop doing that. And quite frankly, I don’t think it’s worth it.”

“Why not?”

He takes his time grabbing his cup and blowing on the steam billowing from the little opened tab. “The kind of love you can’t forget about is the real kind. There’s a saying out there that talks about how love isn’t about finding someone you can live with but someone you can’t live without. So what’s it felt like being without the Anders boy?”

Depressing.

My nostrils twitch as I hold my pen with a white-knuckle grip. “Sad. Lonely. I thought I’d spend this summer away from Lindon and clear my head and heart, as if it could be that easy. Maybe learn a new hobby that I never thought about before. But instead, I spent it being lectured to about the evils of men by my bitter aunt who went through a horrible breakup a couple of years ago and being surrounded by old memories and past mistakes. I wasn’t healing there. I was haunted.”

Instead of asking me what ghosts and demons lingered, he asks, “What’s one of the things you want to learn to do?”

The answer is easy. “Cook,” I admit a little sheepishly. “I don’t know how to. My dad always dealt with the meals growing up. Since he moved out, it’s been takeout and delivery because Mom doesn’t know how to cook either. And when I was with Caleb, he’d take care of stuff like that. He was good at it too.”

I used to joke that he should have gone to culinary school and become the next Gordon Ramsay—trade in footballs for five-star feasts.

His answer was always the same. “It wouldn’t be the same. Cooking is only fun when it’s for people I care about.”

The first time he ever told me that, I knew he was destined to be a doting husband and wonderful father. Somebody who would take care of his family and do anything to support them.

“What?” Caleb asks, grinning up at me from where he chops the vegetables at the kitchen counter.

I smile from the stool across from him, propping my chin on the heel of my hand. “I just like seeing you all domesticated. You’re feeding an entire house full of football players and actually making them eat their veggies.”

He waggles his brows. “It’s practice. There are some picky eaters here who test me nine times out of ten, but they eventually eat what I put in front of them. Except for DJ sometimes. He came home plastered last week after celebrating the game against the Hawks and would only eat dino nuggets.”

That definitely sounds like DJ. “Well, he’s a kid at heart, so that makes sense.”

My boyfriend shrugs, focusing back on the carrots he’s cubing. “How many do you think you want? Kids, I mean?”

My stomach drops like it always does when kids are brought up. It’s been over four years since the unexpected miscarriage. When I went back to Planned Parenthood for a follow-up to go on birth control, they did some tests when I explained the painful periods I got. They noticed cysts on my ovaries and told me it could be nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing. Those cysts kept coming back, and not even the hormonal birth control pills they put me on did anything to help.

It became obvious that the cysts were caused bysomething, and eventually that diagnosis came with a lot of potential consequences. Endometriosis. I’d done enough research to guess what was wrong before I saw the official word in my medical file, and I hated knowing there could be a day when I found out I wasn’t fertile at all because of the condition.

Then I would have wasted one core memory on the wrong person. And I think that was what hit me hardest. Because if I experienced that moment with Caleb, I wouldn’t feel so horrible. He would have been there, told me it’d be okay, that we’d have time. But would he have been upset that I’d lost the baby? Sad that we’d missed the opportunity? If he was with me when I found out I was sick, would he comfort me? Or would he tell me there was still a chance?

Telling him anything would mean admitting I slept with someone else, and that’s a burden I plan on keeping to myself for life. Or at least until I can’t keep it anymore. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I don’t like to think about the past that often, but it’s in the forefront of my mind when children come up in conversation. Because there could be a day when Caleb decides that the struggle isn’t worth it in the long run. It’s better I make that choice before he does.

“I don’t know,” I tell Caleb, sitting up. “My focus is on school right now.”

His smile doesn’t falter. “I get that. There’s no rush.” Leaning across the counter, he brushes his lips against mine. “We’re in this together. I’m ready when you’re ready. Maybe we’ll have a little redhead. Mom says a redhead would look cute with our eye color.”

I tighten my hold around the pen in my hand and shake myself out of the memory. I’d blame the pain I’m in for reminding me that my reproductive system hates me, but it’s beyond that.

It’s the reason I’m here.

The truth.

Because Caleb is going to be a wonderful father someday with somebody who can give him the world.

And that isn’t me.

“So what do you say?” Leon asks, drawing my attention back over to him.

Jaw clenching from the dark path my thoughts are taking me down, I ask, “About what?”

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