Page 112 of Until He Confesses

I very clearly heard the question that Anna had just asked but chose to remain silent. Instead, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and couldn’t believe how much weight I had seemed to lose. My eyes were hollow and sunken, and I looked so unkempt that it made me frown. Given the knowledge I had of my true state, the irony was almost amusing. I rinsed my mouth, ran a brush through my hair, and returned to the bedroom to see Anna seated at our dressing table and working on her laptop.

She turned when she saw me emerge, and she smiled.

“You look much better,” she said, and I nodded.

“Where's Mom?”

“Groceries, an hour ago,” she replied, and I returned to the bed I'd been in for the last few days.

My mom had been told that I had the flu, but not Anna. She immediately noticed all the nausea and severe unhappiness and correctly pronounced the mess I had found myself in. At first, she had been shocked, and then her eyes had filled with tears, and then, of course, she had nearly scolded me out of her mind. I needed all that hostility to distract me from the fact that I was pregnant with Lucas's baby, and I had absolutely no idea about what to do about it. It was still early, but I couldn't bring myself to even fathom the idea of an abortion.

“Are you any closer to making a decision?” she asked, and at the words, I shut my eyes. She didn't ask me often, thankfully. She knew how annoying this would be, but I didn't think it was any less aggravating than what she did instead, which was constantly watching me. From time to time, I could catch her gaze, and it was nerve-wracking, to say the least, but I had managed to keep my emotions under control.

"No," I replied, and then quickly picked up my laptop again to distract myself.

"But you're going to tell him, right?" she asked, but I ignored her. I had no clue what I was going to do, even though I had already called him and set up a meeting. My intention was for our meeting to be quick but given that it would probably be the last time I would have any interaction with him, it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to make this decision on my own, but at the same time, I wanted to talk to him and share my concerns with him.

Sighing, I picked up my phone and gave my intentions some further thought before sending him a message.

Me: Can we have dinner?

It took him about thirty minutes to respond, and in that time, I started to toy with the idea that perhaps I would never hear from him again.

Lucas: Sure.

53

LUCAS

From a brief meeting to now a dinner?

I stared at her words once again after I had sent the message and truly didn't know what to think. I still highly suspected that she wanted to break off things between us, so maybe all she was doing now was trying to be polite since it hadn't exactly been the most amicable break between us the last time around. I recalled completely losing my composure when she refused to give me a reasonable explanation as to why she was breaking my heart into a thousand pieces. The wound was still very visible to me and everyone who tried to get close to me, and I was about to find out if there would be more.

Through the course of our relationship and reconciliation, I had tried to keep as much emotional distance from her as possible. Thus far, I believed I had succeeded, but I wasn't sure. With her, I couldn't be, so all I could do was wait until I saw what a true forever separation from her, with no hope of reconciliation, would feel like.

I also couldn't help but wonder what the problem was. That last night together in Paris had been pretty relaxing until after she had gone to that meeting. I was trying my very best not to interfere, especially because I also suspected that it could be because of how I had exposed her to the world with that outing. However, the buzz was soon dying down, especially because we hadn't been pictured together again, so I expected that she would feel more assured.

Sighing, I put my phone away and got back to work. She chose the restaurant, L’Hommes. It was a bit pricey, but I was certain that she wanted something close enough to my office, so I complied. She arrived before me and I watched her from the door as she scrolled through her phone. She looked calm, however, at the slight crease of her brows and her pursed lips, I could tell that she was easily worried about something. She set it down unhurriedly and then leaned back into her chair to look outside the window. The weather was still as gloomy as it had once been, but it was New York, so there was still a lot of activity to watch. I could have stayed even longer by the entrance watching her, but it was time to face whatever blow she had come to deal, so I headed over.

She met my gaze as soon as I arrived, and I considered leaning down to kiss her, but I changed my mind at the last moment since I didn't know how the meeting would go. She did send me something resembling a smile, which I returned with a nod.

"Hope I didn't pull you away from work," she said. "I wanted to schedule later, but I didn't want to force you to eat dinner too late."

I was a bit surprised by how cordial she sounded. She wasn't a brutish person usually, but ever since we met up, we hadn't exactly been completely pleasant to each other.

"Lucas," she called, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"Yeah," I cleared my throat and took a sip of the available glass of water before us. I was nervous now, I realized. I couldn't even compare this to when she had broken up with me the first time because back then, she had been cool and detached. Now, she was polite, not very warm, but that seemed to have little to do with me. Most importantly, she couldn't quite look me in the eye.

I knew her more than most people did, and she was never someone I could classify as timid or unable to meet someone's eye unless she had somehow done something wrong. I couldn't wait to find out what this was about.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Why did you want this meeting?"

She met my gaze, which tightened, and it was filled with so much worry that I had to wonder if she was sick.

"No reason," she said but quickly corrected herself. "I mean, of course, there's a reason, but it isn't so urgent that we can't eat first."

"Sure," I said and picked up the menu to peruse the drinks section.

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