Love and Death in Blue Lake Read Free Page B

“I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I still love you, I’m always going to love you, but we have new lives. Good lives. We have to honor that.”
    “You’re still my wife, so if you mean cheating, technically you’re cheating on me with him.”
    “Then I guess you’ve been cheating on me a lot.”
    They laughed like they used to, and the years tumbled away. He pulled her up and toward the loft. She let herself be led up the stairs even though the rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared, and stars were visible through the skylights. He pushed her down, just a gentle touch, but she knew what it meant. They’d done this before. A lot.
    “Edward. We can’t.” She sat up on the bed and looked around. She’d wanted to see his personal space, that was all. Or that was what she told herself. What she saw was that the rain had stopped and the first pink of dawn lit the sky.
    Edward must have seen it too. “Damn if that sky doesn’t match the color of your mouth.”
    She remembered wearing bright red lipstick when they were together in public, but in private she always went soft for him. Could he really remember a detail like the exact shade of her mouth? She felt his hot gaze, saw him twist his neck to watch her over his shoulder. She sat on the bed, her purse open, a tube of glossy tint, that yes, she picked it up and saw he was right, matched the dawn which came super close to her natural lip color. She felt unutterably sad. It was the weirdest thing because she had only recently gotten everything she ever wanted. Hadn’t she?
    “I’ll throw your bike in the trunk.” His step down the stairs was fast and sure.
    “Don’t bother.” And she was down the stairs and out of the house even quicker than he could move.
    “Court, honey, there’s no need to be upset.” He caught her hand and held her in place, looking toward the more blue than green water of the Sapphire river, engorged by the recent deluge. “Friends?”
    She sighed. It occurred to her that she still loved him with all her heart, and that fact broke her resolve. She squeezed his hand. “Yeah. And more. You’ll always be in my heart. But that’s the only place you have in my life now.” She bit on the side of her thumb until she remembered she gave up that nervous habit fifteen years ago. “You can drive me home. I have to tell you something, anyway.”
    She watched him swing her bike easily into the back of the truck. It was the only way to stop this. She had to tell him about the baby.

Chapter Two
    Courtney didn’t want to tell Edward about the baby. She had been slowly realizing that her feelings for him had never gone away. They had hibernated. She didn’t love Xander. She didn’t want to raise a child with him. She didn’t want Ruby to be Xander’s legal daughter. She wanted all of that, but with Edward. How had she been so blind?
    He wasn’t going to go for the baby. Not if he was the Edward she’d known so well.
    “I don’t know how to start, so I’m just going to say it.”
    “It’s like we never went away, isn’t it?”
    “All those feelings just rushing back.” She let the warm night air hold her close. She was with him again. Her one love. She shook herself. She had to come clean. “Damn it, Edward, now wait. You don’t know everything.” She wasn’t angry at Edward; she was angry at herself for letting her heart feel these things they should not be feeling. It wasn’t gonna work. No way. Sure it felt right, but so did heroin, from what she’d heard.
    “I don’t have to know everything. I just need to know one thing. Do you still love me?”
    “Yes.” This was only making it more difficult. “But there’s a problem.”
    “Ain’t no mountain high enough…,” he sang. He used to sing for her sometimes.
    “I’m pregnant.”
    “Baby?”
    She wished he was calling her baby, but she knew he was asking the big question. The one that had seemed so happy and right before she began planning her return to Blue Lake