Mauricio swept his hand idly up and down Hadley’s back as she slept in his arms. It had been too long since he’d held her. He was realistic enough to realize this changed nothing between them, but he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her. How much he’d missed making love to her. While sex with other women had been satisfying, Hadley and he seemed to have a special chemistry that never failed to make him feel like he’d given her a piece of his soul.
She wasn’t going to just forgive him for his behavior. Maybe if he’d apologized sooner. But it had taken him a long time to realize what he’d lost when she’d left. He’d used anger as a shield to pretend he hadn’t royally screwed up.
He shifted a little, wanting to dispose of the condom before he fell asleep. He pulled away from her, felt the wetness on his shaft and looked down.
“Shit,” he said, standing and pulling off the broken condom. This wasn’t a good thing. They didn’t need the complications of unprotected sex right now.
Hadley shifted on the bed, opening her eyes and smiling up at him with the sweetest smile he’d seen on her face in the longest time. For just a moment, the cowardly part of him didn’t want to tell her about the condom. He wanted to just wash up, climb back into the bed with her and pretend that nothing had happened.
Chances were she wouldn’t get pregnant from one time but he knew he owed it to her to tell her.
He wasn’t sure how to say it. She was sleepy and would probably go right back to sleep... Maybe he could wait until morning.
“Mo, you okay?” she asked, lifting herself up on her elbow. The comforter he’d draped over her fell to her waist; his gaze was drawn to her breasts and he felt his cock stir for a moment. He thought about climbing back on top of her and taking her again.
“Yeah, um, Had, I don’t know how to say—”
“Don’t say anything. We don’t need to talk at all tonight,” she said. “This thing between us... I’m glad it happened tonight. I needed it and it seems like you did too.”
He listened to her talking about their broken relationship with only half of his attention. He had to stop her and tell her what had happened with the damned condom, but he wasn’t sure how.
“It’s not that,” he blurted out. “The condom broke.”
“What?” She jumped out of the bed, staring down at her thighs. Her face got tight and that expression he’d come to see on her face all the time toward the end of their relationship was back. It was hard, a little bit angry, a little bit unforgiving, and he hated that.
“I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said, shaking her head. “This is what we get for not using our heads.”
He wanted to comfort her, but when he reached for her, she shook her head. “I’ll go to Pimm’s Pharmacy in a week or so and get a pregnancy test—hell. No, I won’t. Everyone will know if I go there.” She rushed into the bathroom and shut the door.
She’d thought she’d wake up in the morning maybe feeling a little sad but this... No, she should have known better than to hook up with Mo. Things between them were always one step away from a full-on mud rodeo in the rain. Just a shit show waiting to happen. The problem as far as she could see it was that she had no willpower around him. Especially when it had been such a long dry spell...which she knew was a bad excuse.
She’d come here tonight because she missed him. There, she’d admitted it. She might not have wanted to deal with that particular truth, but she was tired of only having him in her hot sexy dreams.
There was a knock and she turned to look at the closed bathroom door. He probably wanted to get in here and wash up too. She opened the door and he stood there with a weighty look in his eyes. He put one hand on the doorjamb and the other on his chest. She saw his signet ring on his ring finger as he rubbed his hand over his chest.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Honestly, you don’t have to keep apologizing. We both came up here with our eyes open,” she said.
He nodded.
She hated this. She hated the distance between them because they weren’t in a relationship. No matter how much she wanted to pretend that Mauricio was just a Bull Pit hookup, she knew he wasn’t.
She reached out and took his hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing before she walked by him and let him have the bathroom. They were going to have to figure something out. But it was—what the hell time was it?
She glanced at the digital clock under the TV.
Four in the morning.
Her mother had always said that nothing good happened after midnight. Of course, she was always right. Still, Hadley might not be pregnant... Maybe they could wait to find out?
She heard the toilet flush and then a few minutes later Mo came out. He hesitated, and she realized that even though she had said neither of them was to blame, she was acting like he was somehow to blame. If she hadn’t been so hot for him, this wouldn’t have happened, but she hadn’t felt this spark with anyone else.
“Mo, it’s okay. It’s not like this is the first time we had the pregnancy scare,” she said.
“You’re right. Girl, you go to my head. Normally, this sort of thing never happens to me,” he said.
“Same. I’m not going to be able to get a pregnancy test for a while, which I guess is fine since I can’t take it for a week or two. I have an exhibit I’m supposed to start installing in my shop. I’m thinking I can go to one of the big box stores near Houston to get the test when I’m there next week.”
He moved farther into the room and sat down next to her at the foot of the bed. He was close enough that she could feel the heat coming off his body and smell that cologne of his that she loved.
“Do you want me to go get one?” he asked. “I have a meeting with a supplier for Homes for Everyone.”
She knew the charity was close to his heart. When they were still together, she’d gone with him to help build the homes and had even donated her time and artist talents doing murals in the children’s rooms.
“It’s okay. I think it will be better if I go and get it,” she said. She didn’t want him to be too involved unless...
“What are we going to do if I am pregnant?” she asked after what felt like an hour. The clock under the TV showed that only two minutes had gone by.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “I’m not the same man I was when you left me.”
She nodded. She knew that. She had changed too. For a long time, she’d been defining herself by how she was seen in town... The younger Everton sister, Mauricio’s girlfriend, that arty girl who went to Manhattan... The truth was, she hadn’t ever taken time to figure out who Hadley Everton really was.
And she’d been slowly figuring it out. Apparently she still had a weakness for Mauricio’s dark brown eyes and square jaw.
“Want to try to sleep some more or should I walk you back to your car and take you home?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts at just the right moment.
Mauricio had taken a few minutes to get his mind together in the bathroom. While he had wanted some resolution to their relationship and the breakup, and thought Hadley needed it too, this wasn’t what he’d had in mind. For one thing, he wasn’t sure waiting two weeks was going to be easy for either of them. Now all he could think about was the possibility that she was pregnant with his child.
And while he’d never thought of himself as a family man, he had to admit the image of her with her belly round, expecting his child, kept dancing through his mind and making him think things that he knew weren’t possible. They were nowhere near ready for anything more than a hookup.
He’d apologized and he knew it would take a lot of time for her to truly forgive him. It wouldn’t surprise him if Hadley thought he hadn’t changed. All those fights last fall had wisened him up. He knew that it was going to take a lot of time to show her he’d changed. And she might not...she might not want more from him. She might never be able to forgive seeing him with another woman in his bedroom.
He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t sure he could forgive himself for hurting her that deeply.
But he was going to let Hadley take control of this situation. Whatever he felt, he was pretty damned sure that she was probably freaking out inside. She looked so calm and almost serene sitting next to him, but she kept tapping her left foot really fast and then she’d realize she was doing it and stop for a minute.
“Whatever you want to do is fine with me. I would like to come over when you take the test,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, then looked around the room. “I don’t think I can sleep anymore tonight. Do you mind taking me home? I caught a ride with Zuri last night.”
“Not at all. Do you want to wait here and I’ll go get my car and pick you up?” he suggested.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” she said. “I didn’t drive tonight.”
He put his shirt back on; it smelled like smoke and whiskey and the faintest trace of Hadley’s body spray. He buttoned it up quickly, then stomped his feet into his boots. “I’ll text you when I’m out front.”
She just nodded and he got up and let himself out of the room. He’d had one-night stands in the past and yet he’d never felt like this. It wasn’t exactly a nice feeling; he couldn’t define it, didn’t really want to. He wanted to get to his car, drop her off and then go home where he could try to figure this out.
One thought that plagued him as he walked toward the Bull Pit parking lot was how he always managed to screw things up with Hadley. Even in the beginning when they’d first started dating, he’d been trying so hard to make things perfect for her. It hadn’t helped that she had certain expectations for the men she dated. She told him that on their first date. It had been kind of cute and he hadn’t really paid attention to it until he’d hurt her the first time. Then he realized that she’d invested a lot in him as her boyfriend.
That pressure had made it harder for him to live up to her expectations and eventually he’d started to resent her. But that was on him. He’d always been the hothead. It had set him apart from his family, even his twin, since he was a kid. People who struggled to tell Alec and him apart based on their appearance could always tell in a fight.
There were only five cars left in the parking lot. He unlocked his car and drove on autopilot back to the Grand Hotel. He noticed that the streets were starting to get busy; it was nearly 5:00 a.m. and the commuters who drove to Houston were already getting a head start to beat the traffic. Then he saw a familiar Cadillac CTS turn onto Main Street from the Five Families area and cursed. His mother.
She was one of the morning news anchors for a local Houston affiliate. She did a double take as he drove by. He didn’t want to stop at the hotel, which would just raise more questions from her, so he drove past it, down toward the apartment towers where he had his penthouse, waited ten minutes and then went back to the Grand Hotel, staying vigilant along the way for his mom.
He pulled around back in the guest parking lot and then texted Hadley his location. He was sweating and felt like he was sixteen years old instead of thirty. But he didn’t want his mom to know anything. She had been upset when he’d broken things off with Hadley the first time; he knew that tonight wasn’t about them getting back together, and he didn’t want to have to explain that to his mom.
As much as he hoped that everything would sort of go back to the way it used to be, he knew those days were over. Hadley wasn’t going to start trusting him again. Not this quickly. He knew he was going to have to show he’d changed.
That scared him. He had never wanted to need her more than she needed him.
When he saw Hadley come out of the hotel and walk to the car, he hopped out to open the door for her.
“That took longer than I thought it would,” she said. “You okay to drive?”
“Yes... I passed my mom when I was coming back to pick you up and so I had to pretend to be driving to my place in case—”
“You don’t have to explain. The less our moms know about this the better,” Hadley said.
“Agreed,” he said, then drove her home to her loft on the outskirts of Cole’s Hill. He parked near the entrance to her shop, which was housed underneath her loft. She made no move to get out of the car and he turned toward her.
“I don’t have any regrets,” he said. “Well, maybe the condom breaking but otherwise I’m good.”
Hadley nodded. “Me neither.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek, and then let herself out of the car. “I’ll text you when I have the test and we can get together when I take it.”
“I’ll take you to dinner afterward,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” she said, and he felt her pulling away even then.
“I know. But either way I bet we’ll want to talk about it,” he said.
She nodded and then turned away. He watched until she entered the building and then waited until he saw the lights come on in her loft. He hated leaving, felt like he should have tried harder to stay with her, but he knew that he wasn’t in the right headspace to figure out anything right now.