Feel the Rush: A Hard Feelings Novel (InterMix) (26 page)

“Reed, I don’t have anything to say to you right now. You look like shit. Go home and go to bed. Trevor, go inside the apartment and wait for me. Eva, help me clean up this mess.”

She shot him a look that ripped the vocal cords from his throat followed by a frown that almost killed him. He’d hurt her again.

Chapter Twenty-six

Meagan stood next to Trevor in the parking lot in front of her building, waiting for the taxi to pick him up and take him to the airport. She wanted to drive him, but he was being his stubborn-ass self and refused to let her. He was probably afraid she would break down and cry in the middle of the airport if she went with him. Which wasn’t too far of a stretch. She felt like she could break down and cry at that very moment.

“I hate that you’re leaving so soon,” Meagan said, when she saw the taxi pull in. She wrapped her arms around his waist as he encased her in a hug.

“Me too.”

Wiping her eyes with the back of her index finger, she pulled away. “All right, go before I jump on your back and make you take me with you.” She sniffed.

He winked. “Jump on, honey.”

Eva playfully shoved Meagan aside. “She’s not leaving me. Get it out of your head now,” she said, pressing her tiny body against Trevor’s side.

His large body enveloped her in a hug. “Nah, I wouldn’t take her from you. Besides, I think that guy, Reed, would hunt my ass down.”

Meagan rolled her eyes.

“He loves you, Meg. And I hate to say it, but I kinda liked the guy. I’m pretty sure he would have had no problem taking a few swings at me.” He laughed. “He was definitely ready to fight for you, Meg.”

She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. Of course this would be the one guy he would approve of. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and kissed the top of her head quickly. “I am on your side.”

Lifting his duffel off the ground, he swung it over his shoulder. “All right, I’ve gotta go.”

Meagan hugged him one last time, then he slid into the backseat of the taxi. She turned away before he drove off, and headed back towards the courtyard. She was glad he came, but saying good-bye always sucked.

“Trevor’s right, you know,” Eva said, stepping up beside her. Eva didn’t agree with Trevor very often. She much preferred to argue with him. He could tell her that her hair was red and she would argue, so that fact that Eva was saying Trevor was right about something got Meagan’s attention.

“About what?”

“Reed loves you.”

She shook her head feverishly. What happened to her two best friends being on her side of things? What the hell happened to her wingman? She didn’t need this from Eva, too. “It’s over between us.”

Eva laughed and the mocking sound was like nails on a damn chalkboard. “This is what you always do, Meagan. You self-sabotage,” she argued.

Her steps halted in the middle of the courtyard. “What do you mean?” she muttered, her eyes finding a way to glare at Eva from the small slits in her lids.

Eva swung around to face her, her green eyes ready and willing to fight. “You can tell me till you’re blue in the face that you want your forever—that you want Mr. Safe—but you don’t. Why do you think you have always dated Mr. Bad, Mr. Sexy, and Mr. Unavailable?”

“And why’s that?” she snapped, throwing her hands in the air, then dropping them to her bare thighs.

Eva shook her head like it should be written plain as day on her face, which was worse than her accusing laugh. “Because you knew there was no forever with them, you knew there was no risk. That’s why you gave into Reed so easily after declaring your so-called plan—because you thought he wasn’t safe either. You told me he was everything you usually went for. Sexy, funny, carefree, silly, reckless. You thought it wouldn’t last, and that’s why you chose him—because you’re afraid of safe.”

“That’s ridiculous.” A laugh escaped her throat as she stalked back toward her apartment but Eva wasn’t the slightest bit fazed by the little outburst. She just fell in step right next to her again.

“Is it? Let’s take Jax for example. You said yourself that you never saw yourself marrying him, it was just sex. Moving on to Joey, that man—sexy as he was—was nowhere close to husband material, not for anyone, and we all knew that. Then there was Kale—”

“I cared about him—”

“You did, but you also knew the score. He laid it all out there for you, nothing more than sex. There was no fear for the future because you knew there would never be one with him.” She paused, her voice going soft when she continued. “You knew that Reed wasn’t one to settle down, to slow down. But then you fell in love with him—and you ran.”

Her feet froze midstep as Eva’s words rang through her ears. She turned toward her friend, who was telling her everything she didn’t want to hear, but everything she needed to know. And it pissed her off—because it was true.

“You’re right, I ran!” she shouted, and it felt good. “I’ve been in love before, Eva. I know what it feels like to love someone so much that you can’t see straight. I also know what it feels like when you find out that the man you love, the man you saw when you saw your future, doesn’t see you. And I know what fear and anger look like when I look into that man’s eyes when he finds out he is going to have a baby that he doesn’t even want. Twice, Eva. I saw that same fucking look twice! So maybe you’re right, maybe I don’t want safe, because when you let yourself feel safe, that’s when you get hurt.” She swallowed hard, trying to soothe the sudden burn in the back of her throat. “I was right to run, but it still didn’t prevent history from repeating itself, did it?”

She shouldered past Eva, quickly walking back toward the apartment. As far as she was concerned, this conversation was over.

“He’s not Daniel, Meggy!” Eva hollered from behind her. If there was one thing Eva could say to shake her—that was it.

Meagan’s feet sank into the grass as she turned on her heels in front of her patio. “Dammit, Eva. Let it go!”

“No,” she said, her eyes drilling holes in Meagan’s as she stalked toward her. “He’s not Daniel.” She stopped in front of her. “Daniel broke your heart. I get it. But Reed didn’t. You did that for him.”

Meagan’s heart was racing. “Because he didn’t want it! He didn’t see me.” She was shouting and part of her felt guilty for yelling at Eva, but that same part of her needed to shout. She needed to scream out all the anger she had at letting herself feel this way again.

Eva’s eyebrows darted up and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Did he tell you that? Because from where I stood, he may not have realized it yet, but the man had that move-heaven-and-earth kind of love for you.”

“He didn’t need to tell me,” she said, her voice cracking from the strain or a sob, she couldn’t be sure. “I saw it written all over his face when I told him I was pregnant. That told me everything I needed to know.”

“Well, did you know he sold his motorcycle?”

The voice was only vaguely familiar, but even then, Meagan recognized the icy tone that fell over her.

“Becky,” she began as she turned around. But the first person she saw wasn’t Becky—it was someone else, someone she’d seen before. She couldn’t remember where, though, or who she was—but she had seen her before, she knew she had.

“Did you know?” Becky repeated, but the icy tone had melted some.

Meagan forced her gaze to meet Becky’s. She expected to see anger and disdain, but she only saw sympathy. “No, I didn’t.”

Becky tucked her short hair behind her ears. “Well, he did. I never in a million years would have thought he could part ways with that motorcycle. So when he called me to make sure I was okay with him selling Mackly’s bike, I knew something was going on with him.”

Her eyes widened.
Mackly’s bike?

Becky nodded, answering the question that was apparently not only running through her mind but written all over her face. She sucked in a sharp breath as realization struck her, stealing the air that was previously in her lungs. The day Mackly died he was driving Reed’s bike. Reed’s motorcycle was his brother’s. She didn’t know how she didn’t realize it sooner.

“You had just told him you were pregnant and he was getting ready to go see you.” A smile cracked across her hard face. “He didn’t think you’d be too keen on strapping a baby to the back of the bike, so he traded it for an SUV. He said he needed something baby friendly.”

Meg’s heart stalled before it worked its way into her throat. He gave up his bike, his brother’s bike, for her baby? She just stood there, staring blankly at Becky, trying to find something to say, anything. Becky frowned and the tension in her eyes softened. She was sad. Hell, Meagan would rather her look angry. Sad was hard to handle right now. “I’m so sorry, Meagan,” she said softly. “I can’t even imagine—”

Meagan raised her palm in the air to stop her. “Thank you.” That was all she could say, she couldn’t go there, not at that moment.

“You may not believe me, but I was happy when he told me. I’ve never seen my brother look at a woman the way he looked at you that weekend. And I never thought I’d see the day he let go of some of his guilt and actually live his life instead of burying it with thrill.”

Meagan’s brow furrowed. What guilt? Reed wanted to live life to its fullest, not bury it.

“I don’t understand.”

Becky looked to the woman standing next to her as if the words she was about to say would somehow reach out and pierce her. Meagan wanted to beg her to just say them, to tell her what she meant. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff looking down, just waiting for that moment when her feet would slip out from under her and her world would fall away with her. It was the waiting, not knowing how bad it would hurt when it happened, that was the worst. She just wanted to rip it off like a Band-Aid, but something in the way the woman’s eyes fell to the ground made her step away from that edge. Meagan was staring at a woman who was in love. A woman who was in love with a man that she no longer had. She was looking at a broken heart.

Just as a stream of reasons why this woman was here for Reed, broken-hearted, penetrated her mind, she stepped forward.

“He thinks he should have died that day, Meagan. He blames himself for Mackly’s death. He feels like it should have been him instead,” the woman said softly, barely able to get the words out.

Meagan’s heart wedged its way into her throat, constricting the burn that was forming. She felt the need to run to him at that very moment, to wrap her arms around him and tell him how wrong he was to blame himself.

Meagan’s eyes refocused in front of her when she felt a hand brush across her arm. When she looked up, the woman smiled faintly, pain etching deep in the facets of her eyes. “When Becky told me that Reed had fallen in love I didn’t know whether to cry happy tears”—she laughed once through her smile—“or check my hearing. I never thought he’d let himself have love, let alone a family. But then when she told me the woman he had fallen in love with, the woman who was pregnant with his baby, was Meagan Mitchell, I didn’t need any more confirmation.”

Meagan’s brows pinched together as she stared at her. Her blond hair was long and straight, her body was sun-kissed a dark golden brown, and she was curvy in all the right places. She was beautiful. But she wore a pained smile on her pink lips—a pained smile that mirrored the pain Meg had seen tug through Reed’s smile. Reed was broken, but so was she.

“Who are you?” she asked, once again tearing through the file folder in her memory that might help her remember where she knew this woman from.

“I was Mackly’s girlfriend.”

Meagan’s eyes widened as the heartbreak that was written across her face registered. She had lost the man she loved the same day Reed lost his brother.

“My name is Karrie. Karrie Jo. But you might know me better as Jo.”

As the name reached her ear it was as if the proverbial lightbulb went on in Meagan’s mind. Her feet shuffled back a step and she latched on to Eva’s arm, which was suddenly and conveniently in her reach. A coldness slammed against her, leaving her gasping for breath.

She walked to the patio and pulled the metal chair from the table and sat down. She was afraid if she didn’t, she would crumble to the ground.

Karrie . . . or Jo . . . or whatever her name was, followed her to the patio and stood in front of her. Meagan looked up at her and the familiarity she saw in her before transformed into recognition. She could see the beautiful blond cheerleader who was part of the reason her heart was a damaged mess. No. That was a lie. Jo wasn’t the one who broke her trust and shattered her heart. Daniel did that the moment he made her believe she was his forever. He shattered her the moment he got Jo pregnant . . .

Her hand flattened against her chest. “Oh my god, the little blond boy Reed told me about . . . that was . . . you didn’t . . .” Her mind was going in every which direction, preventing her from forming a clear thought, scrambling her words in her mouth.

She shook her head as a single tear skidded down her cheek. “No,” she said. “I didn’t terminate the pregnancy. Daniel wanted me to, but I didn’t.”

The tears that were accumulating above Meagan’s lashes finally spilled over, accompanied by a burn in the back of her throat as she forced down the sob that was raking through her body. “I’m glad,” she whispered.

“Me too.” She pulled out the chair next to Meagan and sat down. “Reed and Mackly were a lot a like, you know. If the table was turned, I know without a doubt in my mind that Mackly would have wished it was him instead of his brother too. When you love someone the way they loved each other, you just can’t watch their life slip away without watching a piece of you die right along with them.” Another tear spilled from her eye and she quickly brushed it away with her finger. “That’s why you can’t give up on Reed so easily, Meagan. He doesn’t think he deserves it. He closed his heart off to the idea of love and a family a long time ago, but you somehow found a way to open that back up for him. And don’t think for one second that he didn’t want your baby. He did.”

Meagan closed her eyes. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“No,” Becky said as she stepped onto the patio. “That’s where
you’re
wrong. He was scared. And I can count three times that I’ve ever seen my brother scared. And two of those times were because of you.”

Biting her teeth together as the overprotective little sister started to shine through, Meagan crossed her arms over her chest. “Look—”