I laughed. “Well, I’m glad you can’t read my mind.”

When I met her gaze again, she had an eyebrow raised.

“I don’t think it’s hard to guess.” She tipped her head down toward my board shorts.

Right.

I was soaking wet. And had basically nothing to cover what I was thinking.

“I suppose not,” I said and adjusted myself under her scrutiny.

Her cheeks heated, but she didn’t look away. “You can’t distract me from why you asked me here.”

“I could try,” I said with that smirk on my lips that I knew was her undoing.

“Okay. You probably could,” she conceded. She bit her bottom lip, as if contemplating whether or not she’d let me. “Don’t know how much it’d help.”

I blew out a harsh breath. “You’re right. Remember last weekend, when we talked about my parents’ divorce?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I thought it was because of my father’s cheating.”

“It isn’t?” she asked skeptically.

“Well it is.”

“Say more.” She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arm around them as she listened intently.

“I couldn’t figure out why my mom finally broke. She’d known about the other girls for literally years. Eve should have been the final straw, and somehow, it still wasn’t.”

“So, what did he do?”

I sighed heavily. “He got the new girl pregnant.”

My jaw dropped. “He didn’t!”

“Yep,” I said through clenched teeth. “The fucking idiot.”

“Wow. I can’t believe he was that reckless.”

“Neither can I.”

“Ashleigh is in her late twenties. He can’t want a newborn in the middle of all of this.”

I held my hands before me. “I said the same fucking thing. But it’s kind of too late, isn’t it? The deed has already been done.”

“Gross.”

“And now, I’m going to have a fucking half-sibling.”

“Not the baby’s fault.”

“Obviously,” I ground out. “It’s my father’s fucking fault. It’s always my father’s fucking fault.”

She sighed and touched my arm. “Do you know who the woman is?”

“No. I’m sure I’ll have to meet her at some point. And I don’t blame my mom for saying enough is enough. This isn’t something she can just ignore, like all the others. This is a very tangible reason not to be married to him anymore.”