He was still mad. Well, he’d warned her. Brodie nodded and walked toward the stairs, embarrassed he would watch her bare butt the whole way.
But when she turned around at the top of the stairs he’d disappeared to the lower level and his solitary shower.
Wishing she could run away again, Brodie headed into his bedroom and the en suite bathroom. She wouldn’t get away with running again.
* * *
Brodie found Kade on the balcony, dressed in a faded pair of jeans and a pale blue T-shirt. He sat close to the edge, his bare feet resting on the railings, a beer in his hand. Brodie, dressed in the clothes she’d arrived in, saw there was a diet cola and a glass on the table so she sat down and perched on the cushion.
Kade poured her cola into the ice-filled glass and handed her the cold drink. He sat back and linked his hands behind his head looking like the urban, relaxed businessman he was. Except she also saw the tension in his jaw, the banked anger in his glittering eyes.
“You missed your doctor’s appointment and the first ultrasound.”
“I called and rescheduled.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” Kade said, his tone bitter.
Brodie frowned. She’d briefly mentioned the appointment to him and he’d never indicated his intention to go with her. “I didn’t know you were planning to go with me.”
Kade cut her a look. “Of course I was, Brodie.”
Wow...okay. “I thought you’d only take an interest in the baby once it was born.”
“I. Take. An. Interest. In. You.” Kade spat out the words.
“Oh.”
After a couple of minutes, Kade broke the silence. “I was worried about you. I thought something had happened to you, to our baby. I couldn’t find you. I didn’t know where to start looking.”
Brodie closed her eyes at the note of desolation in his voice, the hurt he was trying so hard to hide. Brodie turned her head and looked at his hard profile, the way the evening breeze picked up his hair and blew it over his forehead.
“My dad did that once.”
Oh, God, no.
“Did what?” she asked, not really wanting to know the answer because she knew it would make her feel ten times worse than she already did.
“Disappeared. I was about ten and I came home from school and he wasn’t around. By eight that night I was worried, by midnight I was terrified. Three days later I was out of food and out of my mind with worry. Ten years old and I had cramps in my stomach from hunger. The morning of the fourth day I decided to skip school and go to the police. I was leaving the house when he pulled into the driveway, looking like he’d rather be anywhere rather than back in whatever town that was, with me.”
Brodie gripped the arms of her chair and closed her eyes, silently cursing Kade’s waste-of-space parent. She heard Kade stand up and felt the brief kiss on the top of her head. “I was terrified then but that had nothing on what I felt this past week.” Kade’s voice sounded like it had been roughened with sandpaper. “Everything is up in the air with us and I get that. I don’t want to take over your life or control it or you. But if—when—you go, keep in contact, okay?”
Brodie nodded once, sharply, and forced the words past the tears in her throat. “I don’t know what you want from me, Kade.”
Kade walked around the chair and stood between her and the railing, the dim lights on the balcony casting shadows over his taut face. “I have no idea, either. I’m as confused about where to go, what to do as you are. But the one thing I do know for sure is that running away doesn’t help. My father ran from town to town, from creditor to creditor, nothing ever changed. Because wherever you go, there you are.”
Kade’s fingers raked through his hair. “But maybe you could talk to me before you run. And I need you to come to grips with having me in your life. Because, even if we aren’t going to be together, I am still going to be part of your life because—” he pointed to her midsection “—that is my kid, as well. We’re in this together. So, on some level, I need you to trust me, to believe I won’t let you down.”
But he would. Everyone did.
Before she could respond, he continued, “But, Brodie, you only get this one chance. You run again and that’s it. That’s you telling me you don’t want me in your life, in any capacity.”
Brodie bit her bottom lip. “And the baby?”
“I will not abandon my child.” Kade rubbed the back of his neck. “Lawyers, supervised visits until the baby is old enough and formal arrangements for custody. We’ll be handing over the baby in parking lots. We’ll be apart and separate, co-parenting but not communicating.”