Page 56 of Snowbound

I’m pregnant with Gabe’s baby.

With that revelation, I fold in half and retch over the toilet again. I barely have time to think though, because seconds later, my work phone rings.

I wipe my mouth, try to steady my racing heart and drag myself into the living room. I pick up, and immediately, Ellen starts yelling. “Where the hell have you been? This is the third time I’ve called you in the last half hour.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had to run some errands. How can I help you?”

“The venue you’ve chosen. It’s no good. It won’t do at all.”

“But there’s a lake, and we can easily get horses there,” I say, in no mood to deal with her demands.

“I don’t want horses,” she sniffs as if I’m the one who’s stupid. “I need to be wearing red. I need it to be striking. Stunning. I need it to be candlelit, maybe in a barn.”

“We decided on the venue, and I’ve already called them,” I say as firmly as I can. “We’ve decided on a plan.”

“I don’t want that plan anymore,” Ellen huffs. “I want you to do what you’re told.”

“What I’m told,” I repeat slowly.

Again, I think of Ruth and John, the way they smiled, the way that they loved everything I suggested. The way they worked with me through difficulties. The way they loved each other.

I think of Gabe and his stupid insistence that he didn’t need anyone else, the way that he told me that I was the one bringing him out of his shell. That I was the one helping him become the person he was supposed to be.

Was he trying to tell me something deeper? Something I was too stupid to have seen?

Like a tsunami, it comes crashing down around me. What I’m doing right now isn’t making a dream come true. It isn’t helping anyone.

It’s bragging and showing off, and I don’t want anything to do with it anymore. The city is suffocating, full of people who push you out of the way and don’t care if you fall. Small-town life took some adjusting to, but the weeks I spent in Mullen Falls were the happiest of my life.

That wedding was what passion looked like. That’s what I want to do — help people get everything that they dreamed of, not be captive to the whims of rich people who think it’s their right to boss you around.

“You know what,” I say, my hands shaking. “I’m not doing what I’m told. We either stick with the plan or you’re going to have to find someone else.”

“I’m going to what?” screeches Ellen.

What I’m doing right here is an absolute career-tanking move. I know that if I tell Ellen to get lost, I am ruining the reputation I had as someone who gets it done. No one’s ever going to call me again. That vast sum that I ask for is going to be wildly out of reach because no one’s going to come near me.

But as the words come out of my mouth, my resolve gets stronger. I’m having Gabe’s baby. Even if he doesn’t want us, I at least have to tell him. I have to go and tell him in person.

If he rejects me, I’ll figure something else out. But if he wants this family, I can’t deny it from him.

I can’t deny how I feel about him any longer.

I can’t keep living in a lonely city like this.

“You’re supposed to be doing what you’re told!” Ellen is screaming into the phone now, and I can just see her pretty face, blotchy and red, apoplectic with rage. Somehow that image fills me with calm.

This is a stressor I don’t need in my life. I don’t want it.

I want something real.

“I’m sorry, Miss Sinclair,” I say. “I think this is the end of our partnership. I don’t think I can give you what you want.”

“If you cancel on me,” she threatens, “I will make sure you never work another day in your life. I will see to it that every single person who ever thought of hiring will think again.”

“So be it. Goodbye.” I hang up before I can listen to her yell more.

No doubt she’s furious and means every word she said.

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