Page 65 of Baby I'm Yours

My thumb hovers over her contact for a moment before I screw my courage to the sticking point and hit call.

“Well, hello there, stranger,” Maya answers on the second ring. “I was just having a treat and thinking about you. How’s the pastry class going? I know it’s a French pastry-baking intensive, but I’ve been praying that you’ll learn how to make these medialuna things I’ve been buying at the Argentinian bakery. They are so delicious, Elaina. Like a normal croissant, but with more butter and sugar and deliciously wicked secrets inside.”She makes a happy sighing sound. “This one has a dulce de leche center. And it’s homemade, I can tell.”

“Sounds amazing. I’ll have to see what I can do.” A smile trembles on my lips for a moment. As miserable as I am, it’s good to hear her voice. “But sadly, I’m not calling with a pastry update. I…” My voice catches.

How do I explain this without actually explaining it and betraying Hunter’s trust even further? That’s probably something I should have thought through before I placed this call.

“What’s up?” Maya asks, concern creeping into her tone. “You sound funny.”

“I feel funny,” I admit, pulling in a deeper breath. “I’ve done something, Maya. Something crazy that was actually turning out to be pretty great—really great, actually, maybe the greatest thing ever—but then I made a mistake. I think I did, anyway, and I need advice. But it’s complicated, and I can’t tell you everything.”

She makes a soft, considering sound. “Okay, this sounds serious. You know I’m always here to listen, but first, you have to tell me if you’re all right. Do you need me to come back to the city? We’re still in Canada on our seashore trip, but I can be home by later tonight if you need me. We’re only an hour from the airport where we left the plane.”

I shake my head as I pace back and forth across the patio, sweat breaking out between my shoulder blades in the heat. “No, I don’t want to spoil your fun. You don’t have to come home. I just… I need you to tell me if I fucked up. And if I did, maybe help me figure out what to do about it? But, like I said, it’s complicated. I promised I wouldn’t share some things, and that promise is going to make it hard to give you all the backstory on what exactly is going on.”

“Okay,” Maya says. “Just start at the beginning, and share as much as you can.”

I pace faster, a fretful sound escaping from low in my throat. “I can’t. The beginning is the most secret part.”

“Okay, then keep it theoretical,” she says, proving she’s the wisest and the best.

“Right. Theoretical. That’s smart.” I sink onto one of planter walls surrounding the flower beds, the heat of the brick seeping through my dress. “Okay, so…say you knew something important about a close friend’s family member. Something related to their health, that the family member specifically asked younotto share with your close friend. And so, you didn’t share it…but then something bad happened to the family member as a direct result of this thing you weren’t supposed to share, and your close friend has no idea that you knew about the thing. So, now you feel terrible. Because maybe you should have shared the thing? Maybe your responsibility to be a good friend should have come before your responsibility not to break a promise? What do you think?”

“Is my mom okay?” Maya asked, clearly worried. “She said her ultrasound came back clear, but she’s never had to get an ultrasound after her mammogram before. I’ve been so worried. And I know she was worried about me being worried, because of the pregnancy and all. But I would rather know she’s in trouble than flit around Canada eating saltwater taffy and making out on the beach with my sexy husband while she navigates a breast cancer diagnosis alone. Or with just Dad and Mallory. They’ll be a wreck. You know how they are. They both get way too emotional in a crisis. Mom is going to need someone with a steady?—”

“No, she’s fine. I promise, Maya. This isn’t about you.” I exhale, feeling shittier with every passing moment. “But you justgave me my answer. I fucked up. I should have told the close friend the thing.”

“Now wait just a second,” Maya says. “I didn’t say that. I don’t know all the nuances of this particular situation. I mean, the person you were keeping the secret from could be more like my sister. With Mallory, it would be better to keep the secret. At least for a while. She gets so upset, she can barely function, and she has to keep functioning. She has a child who needs her and a demanding new job she can’t afford to lose if she wants to keep paying her mortgage. In that kind of situation, I could see the wisdom in…sheltering someone a little.”

I watch a pigeon peck at a chunk of discarded sandwich near my feet, my stomach continuing to sink. “Yeah, but this friend isn’t like Mallory. This friend is fully capable of handling the truth. And he’s the type of person who isn’t going to be happy that he was left out of the loop. He might actually want to strangle me or just…never see me again. Which would be worse than the strangling because he’s really important to me, and I don’t want to imagine my life without him in it.”

“Oh, honey.” Maya sighs. “You’re in love again, huh? Someone you met in the city?”

I fight to swallow past the iron grip guilt has on my throat. “Yeah. But it’s different this time. I’m pretty sure it’s the real thing, the thing I was starting to think I might never find. But I did, Maya, and now I’ve fucked it up forever.” The pigeon hops closer, braver now that it’s seen my tears. It knows I’m weak and too distracted by my own misery to go after a piece of its sandwich. “If I tell him about the secret, he’ll hate me. And if Idon’ttell him, my guilt will eat me alive and ruin everything anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Maya asks. “I mean, sometimes the kindest thing you can do for the person you love is to keep a secret. If thetruth is only going to bring them pain, is burdening them with it really the best choice?”

“I don’t know.” I swipe at my eyes. “When I was thinking about it before, I thought I could keep it to myself, but now… I just feel so terrible. And sad. And certain I made the wrong call. But he’s so upset right now, I don’t want to do anything to make it worse.”

“I get it,” she says. “But I’m guessing this man loves you, too, right?”

My chest aches at the memory of everything that happened this afternoon. “Yeah,” I whisper. “We just said it for the first time. Like…today. But we’ve both been feeling it for a while. It’s so good, Maya. I’ve never felt so at home with a guy or so cared for. He makes me feel like I’m the thing that matters most to him in the whole world. And now…” I blink faster. “The thought of losing him feels like dying.”

Maya makes a sympathetic sound. “I get it. I really do. But love, real love, isn’t that easy to destroy, honey.”

I sniff. “Not even if it’s still pretty new?”

“No,” Maya says, without a beat of hesitation. “Look at me and Anthony. We were only together a week before I found out he was lying to me about some pretty serious stuff. But we talked it through and found a way to move forward. We both knew, even at the very beginning, that this was too special to give up on it without a fight.”

But how do you fight for someone when you’re the one who created the distance between you in the first place? How can I explain choosing Margaret over Hunter when he’s the one I owed loyalty, no matter how impossible the choice felt at the time?

My lips part, but before I can speak, my phone buzzes with an incoming text.

Heart leaping, I pull my cell back to read the message.

It’s Hunter—Just got cleared to see Mom. Going in alone. Don’t worry about tea for me.

Shit. I shouldn’t have taken so long. I should have made sure I was there for him when they cleared him to see Margaret. I’m fucking things up left and right today, with no end in sight.

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