Page 45 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

CHAPTER 18

KAI

“Oh, my goodness! This is the most exciting thing ever!” Jess said, clapping her hands together and practically jumping out of her seat.

“We’ll have to do a second toast,” Jason said in much the same mood. “Congratulations, guys! That’s awesome.”

Kai was stuck. That’s how it felt. Like he was physically stuck in place, his blood not even pumping anymore, frozen from head to toe.

A baby. Amy was having a baby. He and Amy were… the excitement reared up, the thrill of the thought of having a baby with Amy, of having a family with her. The sheer, unadulterated joy of it all was right there, within reach, but the look on her face…

She had looked so depressed all night. Amy had hidden it from the others well, but Kai had noticed it as soon as he’d seen her in the restaurant foyer. Looking at her now, right next to him but feeling so far away, he thought she might burst into tears at any moment. The question had just fallen out of his mouth. He hadn’t even consciously thought about saying the words. They’d basically said themselves, but it was painfully obvious that Amy had had absolutely zero intention of saying anything about being pregnant in front of Jess and Jason. And Kai had messed things up for her, again. Now if they were going to untangle the mortifyingly awkward moment, she would have to pretend everything was fine on his behalf, again. Always covering up his mistakes because he was too much of a coward to face the consequences and set things straight.

Enough. It was enough. No more.

Besides which it was already clear that Jess at least knew this wasn’t your typical, happy pregnancy announcement. Things were already disintegrating.

“I mean, congratulations?” Jess asked, not sounding so sure anymore if this was something they should be celebrating or not. “If you don’t want congratulations, that’s fine too, I guess?”

“No, congratulations are fine,” Amy said, sounding mortified not matter how much she tried to sound upbeat, her cheeks and ears turning bright red.

“Oh, good,” Jess said. “Then why is everything suddenly really tense and awkward?”

“Um, well…”

“I can answer that,” Kai said with firm authority in his voice, and all of them looked at him in surprise. Amy was the most surprised of all. Kai steeled himself and plowed on ahead.

“I have some things to set straight,” he said. “More of a confession than anything.”

“Kai…” Amy said, her voice barely above a whisper, looking frantic. “You don’t have to.”

“No, I do. I do need to do this because I’ve dragged all three of you around and around in circles, and I need to man up and untangle it all.”

Jess looked confused. Jason looked stern, but like he was listening intently. Amy looked horrified. She even shook her head just a fraction, wanting to keep helping Kai even now. And that small action from her was just more proof that Kai needed to step up and take some responsibility, no matter the consequences.

This was going to hurt, and it was going to hurt bad. But he had only brought it on himself.

“I’ve been… well, I’ve been a whole lot of things,” he said, only able to meet Jason and Jess’s eyes in small glimpses, and right now he couldn’t bear to look at Amy at all.

“Kai?” Jess said, sounding like she wanted to give him a hug.

“Let him talk, Jess,” Jason said gently, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles. “I know you want to help but let him talk. Go on, Kai.”

Jess sat back in her chair with her lips pressed together as if to keep herself from talking, and Jason didn’t sound remotely upset. It might have been Kai’s imagination, but the man almost sounded supportive… God, all of these people were just so good. He owed them the truth.

“So, back to the beginning,” he said, “I called Jason the night of our initial meeting and canceled at the last minute without any real reason, and you were upset, understandably.”

“But weren’t you out celebrating with Amy?” he asked, still level and controlled. “Because of the engagement?”

“Well, no, I wasn’t, because there wasn’t an engagement. There never has been.”

It hurt to say out loud. He knew it would. And it hurt even more when Jess looked between him and Amy with wide eyes and when Jason sat back in his chair with an appraising sort of expression. But at the same time, Kai felt a ten-ton weight lift off his chest, and he could breathe properly for the first time in months. Now that the hardest part was over, the words came naturally, waiting to be brought to light and purged.

“I did cancel last-minute to go be with Amy because she was catering our high school reunion and she was nervous and… anyway, the short of it is, I went there instead of our meeting. We pretended to be engaged at the reunion as a joke. Just to see people’s faces who had bullied us all throughout high school, but those people don’t even matter. It was funny. We were being ridiculous. It was all just a laugh we had for an evening. But then the tabloids got hold of the photos and of the lie — because they always do — and published it everywhere.

“You saw it, Jason, and called to offer congratulations and to offer another shot at this merger because you’re a better human being than I am. And I should have told you the truth right then and there. I should have cleared up what had happened. But I so badly wanted to save face that I clutched onto the second chance you had given me and dug myself a deeper hole. Then I dragged Amy into it as well, and because she’s the best friend anyone could have asked for, she said yes to playing along with it. All just to help me out because I couldn’t clean up my own mess.”

He looked to Amy then, for the first time since he’d started confessing to all of this, and she looked like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide and unblinking, sitting perfectly still in the chair next to him. Kai did what he’d been wanting to do for so, so long. He reached out and took her hand in his.

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