“I don’t do empathy.”
“You did,” she said. “You did when my father died.”
“A mistake.”
She continued eating, because it was only when she was eating that she did not feel like garbage. Either because of the pregnancy or because of the emotional duress that she was under.
And Gunnar sat unnervingly at the end of the table, palms flat, and it reminded her of the way he had stood in the penthouse that night. Regarding her, as she stripped her clothes off.
There was no way she could be feeling aroused by him. Not now. Not when he was being so... So awful.
But then, that was the way it was. Her attraction to him always and ever defied logic of any kind.
The fact that he was her most long-standing crush was just... He is your only crush. Ever.
And a man less deserving of a title of childhood crush, she could not think of.
He was not a pop star. No smooth boy-band member who might make a young girl comfortable. No. She had always been swinging above her weight class. Always.
Maybe that was part of what had been instilled in her. Maybe that was why she had never been able to find it in herself to be interested in a man who was less confronting.
Because it was all about Gunnar. Beginning and end of story.
Because she had been taught to be ruthless, efficient, and above all else goal oriented. And a man who seemed like he could be anything less wouldn’t appeal.
She was such a mess.
And she was pregnant. With this man’s baby.
And suddenly, she felt as if the entire world had shifted.
She really hadn’t had time to wrap her brain about any of this. She had been caught up in trying to keep Gunnar from knowing the truth. She hadn’t really examined what it meant that she was having a baby.
Was she really going to have that child sit outside of boardrooms?
She knew how to be a CEO. It had been what she was trained for.
She wanted to have a moment of knowing what it was like to be a lover. Because it had been exhilarating. Because it had been freeing in a way. To embrace her femininity in a fashion that she had never done before.
She wanted that. But then... Now she was going to be a mother.
A mother.
She hadn’t even had a mother, she had no idea how to be one. She only knew how to be one thing.
And raising a child was all expansive, it required you to shift yourself, change yourself, wrap yourself around them in protection.
No one ever did that for you.
No. But the idea of bringing a little life into this world and not doing that... It seemed almost untenable. How could she? How could she give a child exactly the same life that she’d had when she stood here at twenty-six knowing how incapable she was of living in any other part of the world?
She knew her office. A corner office with a fabulous view, and she certainly had money and assets enough to take care of her basic needs. But she did not have friends, she didn’t know how to be with a man... She didn’t know... And he wanted to get married.
Suddenly, she wanted to cast up her accounts.
But she didn’t want to do that, because it would be humiliating.
And she just couldn’t bear any more humiliation. Not in front of Gunnar.