If It's Only Love (Lexi Ryan)
Chapter Thirty-Two

Shay

Dr. Merritt Reddy

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Office Hours, MWF 2 to 5

I hold my breath as I stand in front of Dr. Merritt Reddy's office. I've questioned my decision to come here dozens of times and nearly turned my car around on the interstate. I should've gone to George first, told him and let him decide what to tell his wife. But can I trust him to tell her the truth? If I leave it to him and he doesn't tell her, I'll walk around feeling guilty forever. She deserves to know about me as much as / deserved to know about her.

I hate him for putting me in the position he did, but I refuse to hate myself. I need to do this.

I lift my fist to knock on the wooden door, but it opens before I can, and I'm suddenly standing in front of the woman I saw George kissing in his front yard. Her long blond hair is tied back today, and the glasses on the tip of her nose rise higher when she scrunches up her face in a frown.

"Can I help you?"

"Um, yes. I'm ... Yes. Dr. Reddy, my name's Shayleigh Jackson. I was wondering if we could speak privately?"

Sighing, she rolls her shoulders back and presses her office door open, gesturing me inside. "I was going to get some coffee, but I suppose that can wait."

"Thank you." My voice shakes and I fear I might throw up on the lovely blue and gray rug covering her office floor. So, this is what it feels like to destroy a family. I'm a walking, talking time bomb, and she's just invited me into her office.

She waves to the gray armchairs just inside the door and waits for me to sit before she takes the one opposite me. "You're George's PhD candidate, is that right? I understand you've really blown away the whole committee with the work on your dissertation. George is very proud of you."

Bile rises in my stomach. She's not making this any easier. "I'm surprised he talks about me at all," I admit.

"Oh, of course he does. George lives and breathes for his graduate students. You've been a bit of a passion project for him the last couple of years."

You have no idea. "Have you and he... been together long?"

She smiles. "It's all relative, I suppose. We've lived together for ten years or so, been married for five. Our daughter is four."

I feel lightheaded, and the room feels like it tilts sideways. I gulp in air.

"You look a little pale, darling. Can I get you some water?"

"No, I'm fine." I just want to get this over with. "I'm really sorry to come here like this, Dr. Reddy. I want you to know that I thought a long time before I decided to come." She arches a brow. "Okay."

"Before I say anything else, I want you to know that regardless of what you decide to do, I don't like being in this position. Family is everything to me. But I had to come."

She folds her hands in her lap and studies me with a tilt of her head. "Maybe you should start at the beginning. You're not making much sense."

Another wave of nausea slams into me, and sweat breaks out on my forehead. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. In and out. In and out. "George and I have been . . ." God. I cannot say it. I can't be the reason this family falls apart. Can't be the reason this woman loses her husband or their child loses her father.

Too late for that, Shay.

She holds up a hand. "Before you do this, I want you to ask yourself if you really want to be the kind of woman who lies and manipulates to steal a married man who doesn't even want her." The kindness from her voice earlier is gone now.

"What?" Heat blazes in my cheeks. She thinks I'm here to tell her lies? In an attempt to ... steal George from her? Does she know we slept together?

"He told me you were being rather immature about everything."

What exactly did he tell her? I feel like they've been laughing at me behind my back, and it feels... ugly.

Her lips quirk. "Darling, I'm not sure what kind of man you thought George was, but he's happily married with a daughter he adores. He doesn't want you."

"I'm so sorry. You have no idea how awful I feel, and I regret what I'm here to say, but it's nothing but the truth."

She holds up a hand. That's when I notice the ring on her finger. The ring I thought he'd gotten for me. The one he told me he was taking to his safe deposit box. Such a liar. "Stop. Please. My husband already told me that you threw yourself at him and he turned you down. And now you're trying to rewrite history so I'll-what? Step aside and you can keep him for yourself? Stop while you're ahead. I'm embarrassed for you, and this whole scene is insulting to me and to my husband."

"I'm sorry. I... What?"

"What do you want from me? Pity? Poor little grad student fell in love with her professor and doesn't want to let him go." She shakes her head. "He told me about you. How you're so scared of what's next that you're looking for a man to take you under his wing. I think he made it clear that he will not be that man when you tried to take him to bed."

I feel like I've been slapped, but at the same time, anger makes my nails bite into my palms. That fucking liar told his wife I tried to sleep with him. Is this some crazy dream? Am I still in bed with Easton? Maybe I fell asleep and only dreamed about making excuses to leave. Maybe I haven't actually left for Chicago yet. But I swallow, lift my chin, and say what I have to say as clearly as I can. "I don't know what your husband told you, but I'm only here because I thought you deserved to know the truth. George and I have been sleeping together. Until last week, we were in a relationship."

"Sure you were." She sighs. "You're a lovely girl, and I know why you'd be interested in my husband. I wasn't surprised when he told me you came on to him. You're not the first student to get romantic delusions."

My face is so hot, and I can't decide if I'm embarrassed or angry or some other emotion that strikes in the middle of this Bizarro World alternate universe I've found myself in. She truly believes that George turned me down and I'm here because I'm jealous.

"I know it can be intense to finish a dissertation, and I'm sure you're dealing with a lot of emotions right now. But I'm not sure what you hoped to accomplish by barging in here and trying to ruin a good marriage. Do you think this will make him want you?"

I grab my purse off the floor and slip it onto my shoulder. "I'll leave now." I stomp toward the door but stop when my hand is on the handle. Slowly, I turn around. "If you knew the truth, if you'd listen, you'd be as angry with him about this as I am."

"Child-"

"No. You don't get to treat me like a little girl. I'm thirty years old. This isn't about me having some crush on your husband. The problem here is that he never told me he was married. Not when he started sleeping with me. Not after. I didn't know about you until last week." Her jaw drops, and I think I've finally shocked her, but I push past my mild satisfaction at that and keep going. "If you were wise, you'd hear me out. We both deserved to know the truth, especially considering he and I were having sex without condoms. By keeping the full truth from me, he denied me the choice that should've been mine to make, and now I'm pregnant with a married man's baby."

"You're... pregnant?" She's pale. She actually looks like she might be sick.

I shake my head slowly. I'm not done. "And by assuming I came here to lie, by assuming I'd go to such disgusting lengths because I want him, you're only enabling a lying womanizer. Shame on you. If you want to believe him, go for it. Personally, I want nothing to do with him."

Something flickers across her face, but I'm too angry to analyze it. I've said what I needed to say. I'm done.

Easton

Me: Come over for dinner? I'm grilling steaks.

Shay: Not tonight. I'm tired.

Me: You could come over and nap? My bed is pretty damn comfortable if you recall.

Shay: I just need a night at home.

I want to ask if she's sure everything's okay, but I already asked that when she left my house this afternoon. I want to ask if the idea of Scarlett moving here is freaking her out, but I already asked that too. I want to tell her I love her, but I'm a little afraid that this time she might not say it back.

Shay

I got back from Chicago around nine and went straight to Teagan and Carter's. Carter is helping Easton with the equipment setup in his new theater room, and Isaiah is visiting his grandmother. I knocked twice before strolling right into their house and sitting my pregnant, emotionally exhausted ass down on their couch.

"Here. You look like you could use this." Teagan emerges from the kitchen and hands me a bottle of beer.

"No alcohol for me."

"Still the stomach thing, huh?" Shrugging, she returns the beer to the fridge. "Coffee?"

"I'm actually trying to cut back on my caffeine intake too."

This shocks her. "You really must be feeling ill. But honestly, the coffee is probably harder on your stomach than the alcohol, so good call."

There are a dozen excuses I could

easily use to not drink alcohol or

caffeine, but now is really as good a

time as any to share my big

my

with my best friend. I clear throat "About that... I went to the doctor this morning. It turns out an explanation for my

exhaustion. A... pretty obvious one that also explains the nausea and food aversions."

Her jaw goes slack and she lowers herself into the chair. "You're pregnant."

Tears burn at the back of my eyes. I know if I speak I'm gonna open up the floodgates. I really don't want to cry again today, so I just nod.

"Holy shit." She puts her beer down and rushes back into the kitchen. She yanks open the freezer. "Ice cream?"

I nod again and watch as she fills two large bowls with chocolate peanut butter chunk swirl. My favorite.

She doesn't say another word until we've each eaten several bites. "Are you okay?"

I'm sure she must have a thousand questions, but I'm so grateful she chose to start there. "Yeah. I mean, I'm getting there, at least."

She watches her bowl as she pushes a spoonful of ice cream around. "It's definitely George's?"

I laugh. God, for a blessed moment

in the doctor's office, the possibility that it was Easton's crossed my mind. No, not possibility-dumb hope. "It's George's." I put my ice

cream down on the coffee table net

"Easton and I talked Sunday, and I decided I wanted to stay in Jackson Harbor and give him and me a chance. And now instead of going out on dates with him and replaceing a job in the place I really want to be, I need to figure out how I can blow them away at my L.A. interview so I can start over somewhere else."

"Wait. Is that what you want to do? Start over?" She shakes her head. "Why? I don't understand."

Because I'm too ashamed to raise a married man's child in front of my mother. Because I'll do anything to avoid disappointing her like that. Because I can't ask Easton to raise another child that isn't his. "It wouldn't be unexpected, would it? It's what I'm supposed to do next."

"The only thing you're supposed to do next is figure out what makes you happy." Teagan puts both of our bowls in the sink before returning to the living room. "You didn't answer my question. Is that what you want?"

"I've spent the last eight years of my life working on this PhD. I'm a good teacher. I'm a grown woman. I can do this."

"Of course you can. I have every faith in you, but why move to L.A. if you don't want to live there? Why leave your family?"

"Because I can't look my mom in the eye and tell her I'm having a married man's baby." I close my eyes and hot tears stream down my cheeks.

"You didn't know, Shay. Just explain. Your mom will understand."

Shaking my head, I open my mouth to explain, but can't. I can't speak the truth Easton broke me with. Saying the words feels like a betrayal to my father's memory. "The whole thing makes me feel like

an idiot, Tea. It's like I'm looking at a map with a million different roads, and the only rule is I can't stay where

I am. I see all these options, and everything's confusing, but there's one thing I know for sure."

"What's that?"

I meet my friend's eyes. "The timing and logistics might be awful, but when I sat in the doctor's office and she started asking me about my periods, my biggest fear wasn't that I might be pregnant; it was that I might have something terrible wrong with me that would keep me from having kids. I want this baby."

She takes my hand and squeezes it. "Then start there, but don't assume you have to leave. Your mother will love you and this child no matter what."

"And what about Easton?" My voice cracks.

"I don't know, baby. I think he's the only one who can answer that."

"Will you come with me to my ultrasound tomorrow?"

She pulls me into a hug. "I wouldn't miss it."