Page 95 of Chasing Forever
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lottie
Brooks doesn’t rush me to start talking. He just runs his thumb slowly across my fingers. Our hands are laced together as we walk around his property. Mack trots beside me this time, not wedged between us, like his own quiet confirmation that even he knows there’s no space left between Brooks and me anymore.
So much has happened in the short time since we’ve returned from Vegas.
“I have to tell you something, but to get there, I have to start with Holden. Are you okay with that?”
“I do know you were engaged to my brother.” There’s a soft tease in his voice as he squeezes my hand.
“Still, I couldn’t stand to be around a girl you barely dated without wanting to tug her down by her hair, and I’m asking you to go back to a time when I was going to marry another man.”
“Just to note, I like the jealous part of you. And I want this. I want you. So I want to know everything you want to tell me.”
I nod, grateful he doesn’t make us stop walking. Instead of heading to the dock, he veers us around the small pond.
“Holden and I moved fast. Not as fast as us, but it felt like it at the time.” I need to get this all out before I lose my nerve. “I thought I was in the middle of one of those whirlwind love stories—flowers, sweet texts, long talks under the stars. I got caught up in the magical way he painted our future with his words. He was charming and ambitious, but most of all he made me feel chosen, as if I were everything to him.
“I’d barely been out of Willowbrook, and he’d studied abroad in Spain. He talked about the world like it was something you had to see in order to say you’d really lived. Naïvely, I thought we were one of those couples who were lucky to find their forever so young.”
I stop and glance at Brooks. I can’t imagine being on his side of this, hearing me talk about how I thought another man, his brother, was my everything.
“I’m good. Promise,” he says gently. His eyes are on me, solid and patient.
“I was only nineteen. It went from kissing to sleeping together really fast. He was my first…”
His jaw tightens, but he says nothing.
“We were careful… or thought we were. But I got pregnant only three months into dating.” I pause, the memories, the emotions crashing in too fast to stop them now. “Your parents had told him to take the summer off before starting job interviews. They probably regret that now.”
I fall silent, the memory painfully pressing against my ribs.
Brooks doesn’t say a word. He’s just there, present. Letting me hold the space how I need to. Letting me tell the story he only knows bits and pieces of.
As hard as I try not to let it happen, I’m taken back to that time, and all the raw emotions claw at me again. Me, crying in Sadie’s arms after I took the pregnancy test. Me telling Holden at our make-out spot. Holden’s truck door slamming so hard it shook the frame. Him pacing in the moonlight, saying I’d tricked him, that I’d trapped him. And me… trying to swallow the shame and figure out how I was going to tell my parents.
“Holden didn’t take it well at first,” I say, not needing Brooks to hear how horrible it felt to get that reaction from the boy I was in love with when an innocent baby of both our making was growing inside me.
Brooks inhales sharply beside me. I don’t need to say it. He knows what that kind of anger looks like. “Tell me what happened.”
“It’s not going to change?—”
“I don’t want any secrets between us. Please, Lottie.”
I swallow. “He accused me of doing it on purpose. To keep him in Willowbrook. Said I was ruining his future.”
Brooks’s chest rises and falls in a wave of restrained fury. He closes his eyes for a second, as though he’s trying to breathe through it.
“But the next day… he showed up outside my house on bended knee. Rose petals all around him. Apologized for his reaction the night before, told me I just took him by surprise and that he was in shock. When he proposed, he said we’d prove everyone wrong. Said it didn’t matter what anyone thought. And I wanted to believe him so badly that I said yes.
“Our parents weren’t thrilled. Irresponsible, they said. Too young. Holden just kept telling me that it was us against the world. He could be so convincing. One moment cruel, the next, reciting poetry. The good outweighed the bad. It was an adjustment for both of us. The baby wasn’t planned, but they were still wanted.”
“How mean did he get?”
I shake my head. “Just words. I know they can hurt, and they did, but…” I shrug. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s been over for a long time.”
We walk again, both silent for a minute. I feel Brooks growing more tense.
