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 f**king 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 f**king 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 . . .