Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

Wyatt found himself picturing himself riding in one with Lindsay snuggled beside him. In his fantasy it was night, and winter, and they were a couple.

Then Lindsay spoke, shattering the image-a good thing, because he wasn’t back in high school, daydreaming about a girl he couldn’t have. He was a grown man, for God’s sake…

Right. Daydreaming about a woman you can’t have.

Or could he?

When he heard what she was saying, hope came to life within him.

“It’s something I should have told you years ago. I should have said it as soon as I knew, but…I couldn’t.”

As soon as she knew? Knew what?

Oh.

Whoa.

All at once, he realized what she was going to say.

She was about to tell him that the feeling he had assumed was one-sided twenty years ago was, in fact, mutual. That she had figured out after they slept together that she was falling in love, just as he had. But she, like he, chose not to reveal her feelings.

His pulse quickened in anticipation.

Say it, Lindsay. Just say it.

But she was in no hurry to play her hand.

He did his best to coax her along. “It’s okay that you couldn’t say it back then. I mean, you can still say it now.”

He tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. She stared straight ahead, inhaled deeply, exhaled audibly, her nerves palpable.

He waited, fighting the urge to touch her fingers, take her hand, guide her along.

“It’s not easy.” She sounded almost…distraught.

“I know. Would it help if I told you I felt the same way?”

“What…?”

“I should have told you, too. But I didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I felt the same way, Lindsay. My God, I mean…I never expected that to happen that night. And when you took off afterward, I figured you weren’t interested in someone like me. So I kept it all to myself.”

“What?” she asked again, turning to look at him at last.

That was when he saw the utter confusion in her eyes, and his heart sank.

“Wyatt…I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing here.”

“I guess we’re not.” He shook his head. Fool!

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

She knows. She knows what I was talking about, even if I have no idea what she was talking about.

Terrific.

He had gone and let his guard down for an instant, spilled his guts, and all for nothing.

“For a second there,” she said slowly, “I thought you might have known all along…and that would have made this so much easier.”

“Made what so much easier? What the hell are you talking about, Lindsay?” he demanded, his patience fraying fast.

“That night-the night we-Wyatt, I got pregnant,” she blurted.

Her words swept through him like a tsunami.

Above the roar that consumed him, body and soul, he heard the rest. “I had a baby. The baby. Your baby.”

Keeping a careful distance, she watched Wyatt Goddard abruptly stop walking and rake a hand through his hair.

The motion knocked his sunglasses to the ground. He appeared not to notice.

Her hands tightened on the handle of the empty baby carriage she had just stolen from its vulnerable sidewalk parking spot outside a deli on a nearby side street.

She slowed her footsteps, not wanting to overtake them.

A breeze rustled the branches overhead, so that it was impossible for her to hear.

Lindsay faltered, touched Wyatt’s shoulder, then leapt back as if she had been burned when he appeared to brush her off with a brusque comment.

Lindsay seemed to be pulling herself together for a moment, then she said something else to him.

The breeze stopped and a snatch of conversation reached her ears.

She stopped pushing the buggy altogether and bent over it as if adjusting the nonexistent baby’s blanket.

“…so sorry, I just didn’t know what to…”

That came from Lindsay.

So, louder and more clearly, did, “Please, Wyatt, don’t-”

The wind gusted again, dammit.

Wyatt was talking, she saw, sneaking a glance in her direction as she fussed over the imaginary occupant of the buggy.

Then a couple of phrases reached her ears even though the leaves overhead were still stirring. They were separated by unintelligible comments, or protests, from Lindsay.

“How could you?”

“Dammit, Lindsay, I had a right to know.”

And finally, “So he’s in Queens?”

I was right, she thought triumphantly.

Wyatt Goddard had fathered Lindsay Farrell’s baby.

She only wished Jake Marcott were alive to know about his girlfriend’s shocking betrayal.

Ex-girlfriend, she amended.

Still, even when it was over between Jake and Lindsay that December of their senior year, people assumed it wasn’t over. You didn’t forget a longtime relationship just like that. Unfinished business still seemed to linger between them. Jake still loved Lindsay; Lindsay still loved Jake. Everyone figured that was the case, including Kristen Daniels, who dated Jake next-and last.

The rumor was that Jake dumped Lindsay because she wouldn’t sleep with him.

She had heard it many times during the two years they were dating.

When she realized Lindsay was pregnant, she assumed the rumor was obviously false.

Now, all at once, it was viable again.

Lindsay might not have been sleeping with Jake, but she was sleeping with Wyatt Goddard behind his back. How scandalous of her. How daring. And how cunning.

In fact…

It almost makes me admire Lindsay, she realized with an ironic smile, watching her watch Wyatt Goddard striding away.

But that doesn’t change what I have to do to her.

If anything, it would make it even sweeter, knowing that perhaps Lindsay Farrell’s true love hadn’t been buried after all in the Marcott family plot on that bitter February day.

No, it appeared that her true love was alive and well.

Look at Lindsay, bereft, standing there alone on the path as Wyatt disappears. Potent yearning practically radiated off of her.

Despite the obvious turmoil between them, she was probably still hoping they had a second chance.

Maybe she was thinking that together, they could meet the son they’d given up. That the three of them could walk off into the sunset and live happily ever after, a family at last.

Sorry, but that’s not going to happen, Lindsay.

You’re not going to live happily ever after.

You’re not going to live at all.

Oblivious to her chilling fate and the figure watching her from a distance, Lindsay gazed at Wyatt walking away.

Storming away, really, and she watched him go until he disappeared around a bend in the path.

Then the ache took hold, a longing so fierce that she actually doubled over, just briefly, hugging herself. When she straightened and looked around, she saw a heavyset woman with a baby buggy, poised behind her in the path.

She was looking up, at Lindsay, but she quickly looked down again, at the baby in the carriage.

Typical New Yorker. She probably thought Lindsay was in some kind of physical trouble, and didn’t want to get involved.

Whatever.

Lindsay didn’t need help. She was fine.

Just fine.

She took a deep, trembling breath, steeled her nerves, and walked on in the direction Wyatt had taken.

She wasn’t going after him, though; she knew better than that.

He needed time to absorb what she had told him. Time to cool off.

Maybe he never would.

But at least she had done the right thing at last.

That was what mattered here. All that mattered.

Lindsay had no business longing for something more with Wyatt.

Maybe not, but you are.

All right.

So she wanted more. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to see him again, she wanted him in her life.