Page 82 of Imperfect Match (Imperfect Match 1)
She drops her face into her hands and cries harder. I want so badly to comfort her, but I can’t. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. Even though it kills me to see her in pain—especially knowing that I’m the one hurting her—I can’t give in on this.
“You’re breaking my heart,” she sobs.
It’s another knife through my chest, the biggest one yet, but I don’t pull it out. “In the end, the people you love always do.”
Then I turn around and walk out of her kitchen, out of her apartment, out of her life.
I slam the door to my apartment and go directly to the fridge to grab a beer.
“What’s wrong with you?” Leo asks from his spot on the couch.
Without answering, I twist off the cap with an angry jerk of my wrist and tip up the bottle.
“Did you and Willow have a fight?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snap, then drink again.
“Okay.” He goes back to his bag of popcorn and movie.
But suddenly I do want to talk about this. Leo would understand, right? He’d agree that my having kids would be the worst fucking decision I ever made. He would know that there are people who were meant to be fathers and people who were not. He and I did not get the good dad genes.
“She’s completely out of her mind,” I say.
My brother glances at me. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“She lied to me.”
“She did?”
“Yes. She told me she canceled that appointment at the fertility clinic, but she didn’t.”
Leo ponders that. “Huh. Kind of unlike her. To lie to you, I mean.”
“I might not know her as well as I thought I did.” I take another long pull on my beer. “For example, I never thought she would be the kind of girl to think she could change me. I thought she understood who I was and wanted me anyway.”
Leo stands up and ambles over to the counter with his popcorn bag. “What does she want to change?”
“She wants me to be the kind of person who can be a dad. And I’m not.”
He shoves a handful of popcorn in his mouth. “She wants you to be the dad of some other dude’s kid?”
“No.” I drink again. “She asked me to be the father.”
Leo’s eyebrows shoot up. “No shit.”
“No shit. It’s ludicrous.”
As he chews, he appears to think hard about it. “So how would that work exactly? Would you be the guy that jerks off in the lab or would you just have sex the regular way to get the kid?”
“It’s not going to work at all, Leo, because I said no fucking way! I don’t want to be a father at all, with or without Willow!”
“So was she mad?” He shovels another fistful of popcorn in his mouth.
“Yes, she was mad. But she’s got no right to be. I never lied to her. I never led her to believe I wanted kids.”
“But you knew that she did,” he points out.
“Yeah, but that seemed like something she would do way in the future. I don’t understand why she can’t just be happy with me for now!”
