Chapter 7
Bryan showed up at the hotel the next afternoon.
Alessa opened the door because she already knew it was him. He had called four more times between last night and this morning, each one declined. He had sent three more texts, all of them variations of the same message. Let me know where you are. We need to talk. Please Alessa.
She had almost been impressed by the please. Bryan Hart did not say please easily.
She stepped back and let him in. He walked in and looked around the room quickly, taking in the modest space with an expression she couldn't read. His eyes moved over the flickering lamp, the untouched room service tray by the window, the small bag she had packed sitting in the corner.
He looked back at her.
"Why are you in a hotel?" He asked.
"Where else was I supposed to go Bryan?" She replied, folding her arms across her chest.
He opened his mouth and then closed it again, because there was no answer to that question that wouldn't implicate him directly.
"You could have called me." He said finally.
"I did not want to call you." She replied simply.
He exhaled and ran a hand over his face. He looked tired. She noticed the shadows under his eyes and the slight tension in his jaw that he got when he hadn't slept properly. She hated that she still noticed these things about him. She hated that three years of studying this man had left marks in her she couldn't scrub out.
"Sit down." He said.
"I'm fine standing." She replied.
He looked at her for a moment, then sat down himself in the chair by the desk. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked up at her.
"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked.
"I didn't know." She said.
"You had no idea? No suspicion at all?" He pressed.
"I thought it was stress. I have been under a considerable amount of it recently." She replied. The edge in her voice was quiet but it was there.
He had the grace to look away.
"This changes things." He said after a moment.
Alessa laughed. That same dry, hollow sound that she barely recognized as coming from herself.
"Does it?" She asked. "Because forty eight hours ago you were extremely certain about what you wanted. You had already signed the papers. You had already planned Lydia's move in date. You had a whole timeline, Bryan. I don't see how one phone call from a doctor changes a timeline like that."
"Alessa—"
"You pinned me to a wall." Her voice cracked on the last word. She hadn't planned to say it. She had promised herself she wouldn't bring it up tonight because she needed to stay composed and saying it out loud made it suddenly very real and very present again.
The room went still.
Bryan's expression shifted entirely. The careful neutral mask slipped and underneath it was something that looked almost like pain.
"I know." He said. His voice was very quiet.
"That was wrong." He added. "I was completely out of line and I know that."
"Out of line." She repeated the words slowly, tasting how inadequate they were. "That is what we are calling it."
"I'm sorry." He said.
Alessa stared at him. Three years she had wanted to hear him apologise for something. For the coldness. For the dinners eaten in silence. For the way he sometimes looked through her like she was made of glass. She had never gotten a single one.
And this was how it finally came.
"What do you want Bryan?" She asked, tiredness settling over every word.
He stood up.
"Come back to the house." He said.
She blinked.
"What about Lydia?" She asked.
"I will handle Lydia." He replied.
"That is not an answer." She said, shaking her head slowly. "That is you telling me not to ask the question."
"You cannot stay here Alessa. Not in your condition, not in this—" He gestured around the room briefly.
"My condition." She said softly. There was something almost sad in the way she said it, like she was still getting used to the word herself.
She turned away from him and walked to the window. She pressed her fingers lightly against the glass and watched the car park below, people moving in and out of their ordinary lives.
"If I come back, what exactly am I walking into?" She asked without turning around. "Because the last time I was in that house, you were scheduling me out of it. Do you understand how that felt? To be given a deadline to vacate your own home like a tenant behind on rent?"
Bryan said nothing.
"And after the baby is born?" She continued. "What happens then Bryan? You go back to your plan? You marry Lydia? And I become what, a visitor to my own child's life?"
She turned around and looked at him.
He was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on him before.
He opened his mouth.
Then he closed it.
He had no answer. She could see him searching for one and coming up empty.
"I need more than come back to the house." She said quietly. "I need to know what you are offering, because I will not walk back in there without knowing exactly where I stand. I did that for three years and it nearly destroyed me."
Bryan held her gaze for a long moment.
"Give me time to figure it out." He said finally.
She looked at him for a long time before nodding once.
"You have until tomorrow morning." She said.