The Soul Mate (Roommates, # 4)

Mason

This was it. The end of the line.

After everything we’d been through-all the ways I’d thought fate had led her to me-Bren had walked away like I’d been nothing to her. Slowly, like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, I walked back into my office and asked my assistant to hold my calls until further notice.

Then, when I was sure I was completely and totally alone, I slid open the top drawer of my desk and pulled out the ring box I’d gotten just this morning. Inside, the diamond solitaire sparkled up at me and I studied the intricate silver filigree of the band, all while trying my hardest not to toss the damn thing across the room. My stomach cramped and I let out a snarl.

How could I have been so stupid?

She’d given me every indication she wasn’t ready, throwing up flags in every shade of red on the color wheel. And I’d chosen to ignore them all. Gritting my teeth, I shoved the ring back in my desk and stalked toward the door. I couldn’t see patients today, not like this, and there was only one place I knew I could go to calm down.

“Cancel my appointments. I’m not feeling well today,” I said to my assistant, then headed out the door and toward my car without looking a single person in the eye.

Revving the engine, I pulled onto the interstate, following the familiar highway exits until I pulled up in front of the brick building I knew so well. The trees in front of the place swayed in the wind, and I glanced at them briefly. Then I made my way to the door and used the knocker.

First once, then again, I raised the heavy gold handle and let it drop, waiting to hear footfalls on the other side of the door. On the third try, I finally heard the light pitter-patter of someone’s feet on the wood floor, so I took a step back and waited for my mother to open the door.

When she did, there was no way I could hold back a moment longer.

“I have to talk to you.”

She led me inside, and before she’d even begun to pour the coffee I was admitting to the entire sordid tale. The way I’d looked for Bren after our one-night stand, the imagined pregnancy, the trip I’d planned. Even things most men might not admit to their mothers, I told her, if only so that she might unearth some small detail I’d overlooked so I could make things right.

“Wow, this girl really seems like something,” my mother said when I was finally finished.

“She’s not just something-she’s everything.”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

Mom smiled sadly. “That was a lot for one person to take in in one sitting. I didn’t know I was almost a grandma, after all.”

I nodded. “I just don’t understand why she’d make an appointment with Marlene Thomas instead of me and then not tell me about it.”

My mother raised her eyebrows. “That’s the part you can’t figure out?”

“Well, yeah.” I shrugged. “Is there something else?”

“Are you serious?” She took a long sip of her coffee, surveying me over the top of her mug. “Sometimes you really are your father’s son, you know that?”

“I’m guessing that’s not a compliment given the impending divorce, huh?”

My mother smiled. “Your father is kind and smart and funny in all the best ways. But when it comes to women…well, frankly, when he told me what he did for a living, I couldn’t believe it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, first of all, mister, isn’t it obvious why she didn’t come to you or tell you?” She pursed her lips, then began ticking off items on her fingers. “A thirty-year-old woman with irregular periods. What do you think she went to the doctor for?”

I blinked. “I don’t…”

“Then they shouldn’t have let you graduate from medical school,” she said with a warm smile that took the edge off. “I’ve been married to a doctor long enough to tell you what that girl was doing and I don’t even have a degree.”

“You think it was a fertility thing?” I asked, flipping through the conversation with Bren in my mind as a cold ball of dread formed in my stomach. For the first time since I’d ran into her at my office, logic trumped emotion.

“Well, if you had a patient with her background, what kind of tests would you run?”

The truth of her words sank into my skin and I sat back, thinking hard. “But, okay, even if she went for a fertility test, why wouldn’t she have come to me?”

“The man whose baby she thought she was carrying not a week before? Hardly the natural choice, don’t you think? You told her you were disappointed about not having a baby. Do you think she wanted to make you the person who told her she might never have a baby?”

My breath caught in my chest and, slowly, I shook my head. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

“That’s the way it is.” My mother set her coffee down on the table between us, then rested back against the sofa cushions. “So, sweetheart, it makes complete sense why she went to Dr. Thomas.”

“But that’s not the part I should be wondering about?”

She shook her head.

“Care to enlighten me, oh wise one?” I asked.

She folded her hands together. After letting out one long breath, she said, “Haven’t you wondered what’s going on in this girl’s head that every time you get close to her, she freaks out and runs away?”

“Well, she told me she got weird about intimacy.”

“Yes, but why? What do you know about her past? Any boyfriends who left her? If her parents’ relationship was bad?”

“Shit.” Icy realization crept down my spine. The most important relationship a woman had was with her father. Bren had lost hers at a young age, before she’d matured into a successful adult and long before she was ready. I couldn’t even imagine what it felt like to lose a parent, especially during those angsty teenage years.

Mom continued on. “I imagine you told her about my cancer and the divorce, but she never reciprocated at all?”

I blinked, trying to focus in on my mother’s words in a way that might force them to make sense. “She lost her father,” I finally uttered.

Mom nodded. “She has a fear of abandonment. My suggestion is to go to her. The longer you let her stew in her thoughts, the more she’s going to convince herself she did the right thing by leaving you. Whatever is making her run isn’t going away anytime soon. In order to open her warm, loving center, you’re going to need to peel away her fear layer by layer. If she’s worth it, you have to try.”

I nodded. “I will. Thanks, Mom.”

She rose from the couch, giving my shoulder a soft pat. “Anytime. You actually caught me on my way out.”

I hugged my mother goodbye and set off for my place, the desperate need to see Bren almost making me pull a U-turn and go straight to her place. But I needed a moment to think, to come up with a plan-figure out the right words to say. I wasn’t about to let us end like this. I’d spent my whole life searching for my one perfect mate, and I’d finally found her. I just had to make her see it.

When I pulled to a stop in front of my place, Bren’s car was already parked outside. The sky outside was turning an ominous shade of gray and a rumble of thunder vibrated in the distance.

“Bren,” I breathed. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”