The Chase (30 page)

When she dug through the anger and was being rational, she realized that she wasn’t mad at Sara. Sara was only doing what anyone in her circumstances would do, and she seemed reasonable. There had been nothing hateful or manipulative about her words. Nor could Kendall begrudge her her happiness over having a baby. Even though she wasn’t sure if and when she wanted one herself, Kendall loved kids, understood the joy they brought, and could never think of a child as a mistake in any way.

But a small, pathetic part of her looked at Sara and thought that was the kind of woman Evan should have married—a traditional and beautiful woman who would stay at home and raise his children.

Which just made her feel like shit.

Pulling her travel blanket up tighter around her shoulders, she leaned on the window, not caring if it was dirty.

“You going to take a nap?” Evan asked her, his hand rubbing up and down on her thigh in a soothing gesture.

She moved her leg so his hand fell away. She didn’t want him to touch her. “Yes.”

“Sleep tight,” he said, but even as he did, his head was turning and his eyes were drifting back behind them, she had to assume to check on Sara’s progress.

Everything else Kendall thought would be possible to work through. They were her fears, her issues, and with time and concerted effort, she could get over her insecurities.

But this?

Watching her husband show concern for another woman? Having basically a third party inserted into their marriage, someone who needed him more than she did?

It hurt so bad she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Like a hand had reached up and cut off her windpipe.

“Damn it,” Evan said, frowning at his phone.

Part of her was feeling so petty and childish she didn’t even want to ask what was wrong, but curiosity got the better of her. “What?”

He held his phone out to her. There was a text from Eve.

Wonderful. Everyone knew already that another woman was having her husband’s baby. Great. Just utterly fabulous.

“I’m sorry, Kendall. I really am.” He tried to hold her hand but she jerked away again. “Will you just talk to me? This was an accident. I didn’t plan this.”

Well, duh. That was just a stupid thing to say. Feeling the tears in her eyes, Kendall knew she should stay silent, that this was neither the time nor the place to discuss the situation, but she couldn’t hold back her emotion. “I know that. I know that we were nowhere near dating at the time of conception. It doesn’t change the fact that in four months you’re going to be a father to a child and I won’t be any part of that. It doesn’t change the fact that today I am about to be thoroughly humiliated when everyone finds out. It doesn’t change the fact that I am about to become fodder for the gossip mill and no one will give a shit that I finished second on Sunday. They’ll just want to snicker at my situation.”

“No one will be snickering at you. It’s not like I cheated on you.”

“You know what? Just don’t try to put a pretty bow on this right now, okay? I don’t want to hear it.” She was snappish and she knew it. She knew he wasn’t hurting her intentionally, but he was still hurting her.

Maybe a better woman could have accepted the situation, embraced Sara and her baby with open arms, but Kendall wasn’t sure she could do that.

“We have to deal with this, whether we want to or not.”

She knew they did. But at the moment, all she wanted to do was bury her head under her fleece blanket and weep.

 

 

“YES,
I did have a relationship with Miss Parker,” Evan said, trying to sound matter-of-fact and nothing more as he stared out into a room full of reporters, their pens moving across their notebooks, flashbulbs going off. “It ended approximately in late November.”

That was a polite exaggeration of what he and Sara had shared, but he was trying to put a positive spin on it for everyone involved, including his wife, who had refused to attend this press conference. Had refused in fact to speak to him for the last three days.

“Is the baby yours?”

Forcing himself not to fidget, Evan answered the question exactly the way he and Eve had rehearsed. “If that is the case, I am fully prepared to live up to my emotional and financial responsibilities as a parent.”

“So you’re saying there’s a possibility the child is not yours? That Miss Parker is lying?”

“I have no reason to believe Sara is lying.”

“Is it true that Untamed Deodorant has pulled all ads with your image?”

“That is true.” For which Evan was more than a little put out. It wasn’t like he had cheated on his wife. This was not a scandal of epic proportions. A little shocking, sure, and definitely a case of extremely poor judgment on his part, but it wasn’t like he’d kept a harem. Yet everyone was making it out to be a huge deal, and Evan actually suspected part of the reason was because of Kendall’s stone silence on the matter. It made him look guilty of more than he was.

While he knew why she was devastated, he couldn’t help but be hurt himself. He needed her, desperately. Both her moral support and her love, and she was shutting him out completely.

“Are you planning to drive this weekend in Richmond?”

“Of course. I have no intention of letting my team down. The Untamed Chevrolet is running extremely well and we’re looking for a good race on Sunday.”

They grilled him for another ten minutes then Eve indicated one more question.

Unfortunately, it was a doozy.

“How does your wife feel about this? Quite a wedding present you gave her.”

Nice. The woman smirked at him, her lips a horrible coral color.

“My wife was as surprised as I was, obviously. But she completely supports me in doing the right thing.”

If she did or not was a big question mark, but it had to be said. “I just ask that you respect my wife’s privacy at this time, and if you want to talk to her, focus on the fact that she’s having an amazing rookie season.”

Then Evan excused himself, stood up, and left the room, hoping that he looked way calmer than he felt. Within minutes he and Eve were pulling away in her SUV and Evan was feeling like he needed to hurl and have a drink, two feelings that were starting to become awfully familiar.

“That was fucking horrible,” he said to his sister. “But thank you for being here and coaching me through this.”

“You might have been stupid enough to fire me, but I wasn’t going to leave you totally hanging out to dry.” She gave him a rueful smile as she pulled out onto the main road. “I think it went well.”

“Went well, huh? My whole life is exploding in front of my eyes. I can’t believe my stupidity has subjected Kendall to this. God, I suck.” Evan banged his head back against the headrest and wished he could write music. There was a country song waiting to be sung out of this mess.

“But you know what? Say you and Kendall didn’t get back together last month . . . then you’d just be a guy who screwed up and got someone pregnant. Either way it still was an accident and you couldn’t predict that you and Kendall would get back together. You couldn’t predict that five months after the fact Sara would trot her pregnant butt out and make waves. So stop kicking your own ass and just deal with it.”

“Just deal with it, huh? Alright, just like that. Easy enough. Sure.” He groaned out loud. “If Kendall loses her sponsorship over this, man, how can I make that up to her?”

“She’s not going to lose her sponsorship . . . Shit.”

“What?” he asked, but he already saw what had prompted the curse. When they pulled into Kendall’s driveway, she was standing in it with Tuesday and they were loading two large suitcases into her trunk. Twenty bucks said those suitcases were filled with his stuff. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

Evan opened the car door before Eve even came to a stop. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

Kendall froze and turned to him, her eyes focused on his shoulder. “I was going to take some of your stuff back to your condo. I think that maybe it would be good if we had some time apart.”

“To do what?” he said, his voice rising louder than he intended. “Ignore the problem as long as possible? Sweep more issues under the rug? I don’t think so!”

Her hands were still on his suitcase, her face pale, dark circles under her eyes. “I just can’t . . . Don’t you get it? I just can’t.”

Evan turned to Tuesday, who was standing there looking incredibly uncomfortable. “How can you let her do this?” It wasn’t remotely fair to drag her into it, but Evan was so horrified, so hurt and outraged, that he wanted a reaction from someone, anyone.

Tuesday’s hands came up. “Hey, don’t look at me. This isn’t my marriage.”

Exactly. It was their marriage, their whole future. Not something to ignore and discard. “Kendall, look at me, damn it!” he said in frustration.

But she just pulled his suitcases back out of her trunk and set them in the driveway. “I need time. You need to respect that.”

“This is a marriage!” And yes, he was shouting. “Ten days ago you stood in front of me and you pledged to be my partner. Not to run away.”

She rounded on him, her eyes snapping. “I am not running away. I’m just asking you for some space so I can process what the hell this means in my life. This is not something small, this is a child!”

As if he didn’t know that. “I am well aware of that fact. Which is why I want to discuss how we—you and me—are going to deal with this situation. It may be my biological child, but as my wife you’re going to be spending a lot of time with her, too.”

“Her?”

“It’s a girl.” Evan didn’t know what else to say. How could he force her to talk about her feelings with him?

He couldn’t. That was obvious when she started to back up, tears in her eyes.

“I can’t do this,” she said.

“Kendall!” Evan reached for her, but she was already running for the town house.

Tuesday looked shocked, but Evan barely saw her.

All he could think was that Kendall had lacerated his heart into bloody ribbons once again.

 

 

KENDALL
stood in her foyer, back on the door, tears streaming down her face. Evan was pounding on her front door, but she couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t answer it.

She knew she was being irrational, but she couldn’t help it. She got hurt, she shut down. She needed time to work this through on her own, to process her feelings.

Evan was having a baby girl with Sara.

A child that he would look at and see himself and another woman in.

A child that to Kendall just exemplified all her failings as a woman.

She couldn’t be all things to all people, she knew that. But she wanted to be all things to Evan.

“Kendall! Open this fucking door!”

She jumped at the force with which he pounded on her front door. But his anger didn’t sway her. She couldn’t deal with it, any of it, not right now. Why couldn’t he understand that?

“Kendall, don’t do this . . . I love you.” His words trailed off on a sob. “Kendall!”

Okay, that reached into her chest and squeezed her heart.

She loved him, too.

But maybe their wedding had been too spontaneous. Maybe they had needed to work out some things first, like how they problem-solved and whether they were planning to have children someday. They had talked about patterns, her shutting down, his impulsiveness, but after the fact . . .

She pressed her fingers to her temples, not sure what to do, what to think, how to feel.

He pounded again, a harsh thump, thump, thump that echoed the rhythm of her racing heart. “Kendall!”

Maybe she should open the door. Maybe she should let him see her vulnerabilities and insecurities . . . maybe she should trust him. Trust herself. Maybe she should learn from the past and not repeat her same mistakes.

Maybe she should believe that Evan could love her just as she was, that she had nothing to fear from a woman like Sara.

Maybe . . .

Swiping her hands across her damp cheeks, she turned and opened her front door, prepared to both burst into tears and to fling herself into her husband’s arms and have it be all better.

Except he wasn’t there.

Evan had left.

“No, damn it,” she whispered. She would just go after him. He couldn’t be that far.

But when she stepped out onto the stoop to see if he and Eve were still in the driveway, her ankle rolled as she stepped on something. Moving her foot with a wince, she glanced down to see what had caused her to lose her footing.

It was the band she had put on Evan’s finger on their wedding night.

He had thrown it on the ground.

Like it was nothing.

She supposed, as her eyes blurred, that it was.

EVAN
sat on the old dirt track off Route 3 and stared into space. It was the first of May already and grass and weeds were growing like crazy in the damp spring weather. His thoughts were hopeless, his heart aching.

Walking away from driving was the right thing to do. He was at peace with that. Maybe, if anything, the hell of the last two weeks had forced his hand. He didn’t have the passion or the dedication he needed to go out there anymore. Hell, maybe he’d never had it. Time to step aside and let the new guard take his spot.