“I... I’ve been falling for Meghan since the second I saw her sitting across from you here at Rocky’s. I was trying to stick to my plan, do everything in the order I’d decided.” He blew out a tortured breath. “I’ve fucked it up. All of it. Haven’t I?”
“Yeah,” Max agreed. “But you can un-fuck it up. Admit you were an ass. It’s simple, but not easy. I, of all people, understand how hard it can be to tell the one you love how much you love her.”
The tightness in Isaac’s chest loosened. Had he been fighting the way he felt this entire time because he’d been sticking to a plan? He’d been looking at everything as a goal to be achieved, and in the process had overlooked what actually mattered.
Meghan mattered. His child mattered. Max, and Kendall. They mattered. The accolades didn’t matter. He’d been chasing them out of sheer habit.
“So I just...tell her how I feel?” Isaac asked his brother, hope crawling out of the depths and blooming anew.
“In your own way.” Max raised his beer glass. “Busting onto a talk show’s soundstage is kind of my thing.”
“You don’t have to be here for this,” Kendall said, her finger hovering over the button on her cell phone. She was standing between the kitchen and the back door. “I can take the call outside.”
Meghan, seated at the table, rested her head in her hand and tried to appear as if she hadn’t been crying every other waking moment for the past four days. “I just want to hear his voice. I won’t say anything. You don’t have to bring me up.”
Isaac’s loveless proposal was the nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. Meghan’s job, as a mother, would be to never paint her child’s father in a bad light. She had to get over Isaac, heal her heartbreak and find an amicable middle ground with him. She was hoping it wouldn’t take longer than the end of the final trimester to achieve it, but now she wasn’t so sure.
She hadn’t seen him since she stormed out of his apartment the night he’d proposed with a real diamond ring. He hadn’t chased after her, and he hadn’t called or texted, either. Unless Kendall and Max were keeping it a secret, Isaac hadn’t reached out to them.
Gaining closure required hearing from him, but she couldn’t make herself call or go and see him. And since he wasn’t calling or coming to see her, that left them at an impasse. She thought maybe if she could hear his voice, hear him as his practical, upbeat self, she could drive that spike the rest of the way into her own heart and begin the healing process.
As much as she told herself she wanted them to be over, there was a part of her that wished she’d said yes to that second proposal. She could be lying in his arms and snuggling close to him...knowing he didn’t love her back.
So, okay, that wasn’t an option. She refused to marry someone who didn’t love her, who’d asked out of obligation. If she thought about that long enough, she could whip herself into being angry, and at this point, anger felt better than grief.
She’d been editing her podcast all week, hoping to keep her mind off Isaac and the fact she’d be raising a baby alone. Well, not alone. Max and Kendall would be there. And her parents had taken the news of their unborn grandchild surprisingly well.
The public, too, had been gaga about the baby rumors. Kendall insisted an official statement could wait. Wait for what, Meghan didn’t know, but she was glad to postpone it. She felt raw and sad and achingly vulnerable. At least if she heard Isaac and he sounded like himself, maybe she could convince herself he wasn’t worth pining over.
“You’re sure?” Kendall held up her cell phone.
“I’m falling a bit more out of love with him every day,” Meghan lied with a smile. Kendall didn’t buy it, her mouth a twist of censure as she pressed the button to call Isaac.
Meghan listened as the speakerphone emitted ring and ring. Her stomach was in knots, and she found herself rooting for his voice mail. He answered in the middle of the very next ring with a casual but definitely not upbeat, “Hey.”
“Hi,” Kendall replied, her gaze flitting to Meghan. Meghan gave her sister two thumbs-up. “How’d the call with Charles go?”
“Uh. Okay, I guess.” He sounded disappointed. Had he not been offered the role? Despite her best efforts to be angry with him, Meghan’s heart ached for his loss in addition to hers.
“Oh-kay,” Kendall said. “It was my understanding he was offering you the lead role.”
“He did,” Isaac said. “I turned it down.”
He...what?
“You did what? Why?” Kendall echoed Meghan’s thought.
“Meghan,” he answered.
“You turned down the role for Meghan?” Kendall asked.
“She hates me.”
Meghan’s heart crushed. She didn’t hate him. That was the problem.
“Isaac...have you been drinking?” Kendall asked.
“Don’t worry. Max is here. Apparently, he’s seeing me home.”
Meghan heard Max’s telltale grumbling in the background.
“So, yeah. Meghan hates me. Which sucks. I didn’t think...” Isaac trailed off.
“You didn’t think what?”
“There is no what. That’s it. I didn’t think. I acted. I acted like a dick who had nothing to lose when I told her I didn’t love her. I do. I just couldn’t tell her in that moment that I did. I didn’t know how things were going to go. How they were going to work out. I had a plan. I had everything under control.”
He was rambling, and Meghan was afraid to read too much into it. Did he admit he loved her?
“Isaac, you should probably talk to her in person. When you’re sober.”