Page 16 of His Bittersweet Regret

“What was mine?” I turned in the direction she had pointed and saw my brother, Ryker, grinning down at a short brunette with a juicy ass. That was all I could see of her. Jesus, the kid had similar taste to my own. A few years ago, that might have been me standing there with Opal.

“Well, obviously that’s my brother and some chick he’s been…” the girl with him turned so that she no longer had her back to me. When her profile came into view, I was shocked as shit to see that it was Opal. What was even crazier than seeing her on the street sharing a moment with my youngest brother, was the fact that she accidentally pulled her sweatshirt tight against her frame as she reached into her pocket for something. That was not the same figure Opal had when I left her, not by a longshot.

I stood and stared, unable to make my feet move. Unfortunately, the glass wasn’t as tinted as I thought, because my brother caught sight of me and grabbed hold of Opal’s arm to pull her away. He glanced from me to the woman who had been sitting across from me on my date with an accusatory eye, and then pulled harder on Opal’s arm.

Curiosity won out, and she turned to see what he was trying to pull her away from. The minute she saw me, her eyes widened and her left hand moved to her protruding belly as if she was protecting what was there. From me. Then those beautiful, warm chocolate-dipped eyes of hers swept over toward my date. I couldn’t decipher the look that crossed Opal’s face then. Mostly, because she turned quickly and finally allowed my traitorous little brother to tug her away.

“I’m sorry, Monica. We’re going to have to cut this short.”

“You didn’t know, did you?”

I shook my head and turned to go, but before I could leave, she pulled me back. “I’m not supposed to tell you this because of privacy laws, but her file said the father knew and didn’t want anything to do with the baby.”

That shocked me to my core, and I had to sit down to take a load off before gravity took my slackened legs out from under me in a different way. Opal was pregnant by someone else? She looked pretty far along. Had she wasted no time crawling into bed with someone after I left her? I just couldn’t see her doing something like that. Hell, I hadn’t been able to make it happen because she was always there, haunting my every move.

It didn’t help that I’d been playing her damned video of that song over and over when I was alone in bed at night. Every time the video ended, there was a moment where she swiped the tears from her face that was like a kick to the balls for me. The song was about me leaving her. I knew that. Any fucking moron who knew who she was had to know that. The sheer amount of pain she put into those lyrics, into the music, it tormented me day and night.

Now, I had to wonder if she was really as tormented as she seemed. How could she be pregnant with someone else’s kid? There was no way I could ever get over that. I loved Opal. Fuck, I was stupid to ever break up with her in the first place, but there was no way I could go back to her and raise someone else’s baby. No fucking way.

11

Opal

“Sorry, Opal. I don’t think he noticed anything except the fact that I was with you,” Ryker tried to appease me. That wasn’t why I was upset though. My ex, my baby’s father, was on a date with the woman in charge of making my obstetrical appointments. I felt sick. Literally, sick to my stomach, and by the time we got a few feet away, I had to stop and throw up in the bushes outside of Whitlock’s Watering Hole.

“Sorry, Opal. Shit! What can I do?” Ryker asked in a panicky voice, clearly brought on by my vomiting and tears.

I held up a finger, the universal sign for him to hush and wait. Once I was done, I swiped my mouth with the back of my hand and glanced over my shoulder. I figured maybe Marsh would have come chasing after us, but he hadn’t. I wasn’t sure what was worse, thinking that he would, and being disappointed, or knowing that he refused to leave his date behind to check on his pregnant ex-girlfriend one fucking time.

I was the woman he once claimed to love. The one he said would always have his heart. Marshall Kennedy was a goddamned liar. If he could abandon not only me, but his baby too, then he was never the man I thought I spent seven years of my life being in love with. It was almost eight now, but I refused to count any of the time after he’d walked out our door for greener pastures.

“I need to go home. I think it’s time I take my parents up on going to stay with them.”

“No! Please,” Ryker begged. “Please, don’t take my nephew away.” That just made me cry harder. The baby’s father should be begging me not to take his son away from him, not ignoring me for the staff at my doctor’s office. The same staff who knew good and well that Marsh was listed as the father and that he said he didn’t want anything to do with our baby. How a woman could know that a man abandoned his pregnant girlfriend and baby, and still want to date him, was beyond me.

“Ry, I can’t do this. I can’t raise a baby alone and I definitely can’t handle seeing him out on a date with the woman who sets up my baby doctor appointments.”

Ryker glared back in the general direction of the restaurant. “I knew that bitch looked familiar. I’m having a talk with Dr. Burns. She had to tell him something to make him not come down here and check on you.”

The poor kid was so adamant that his brother wasn’t a piece of crap human. I once believed in Marsh with that same unwavering naivety too. Look where it got me. Pregnant. Alone. Miserable. And all the while, he was out living his best life.

“I think I need to go, for my sanity, Ry.”

“Yeah? How sane are you going to feel with your hippy-dippy parents who left you too? They moved clear across the country and never looked back. When’s the last time they visited?”

“That’s a little cruel,” I told him as we continued walking, despite his words making me take a stumbling step. It was cruel, but true. My parents hadn’t been back once to visit me since leaving for the shores of Oregon. They always invited me to come there, but they refused to come back here – even to see their daughter.

“You have me. Bethany and her mom are here and they’re like family to you. They’ve been there all this time. What will they say if you up and leave them?”

“You’re an asshole to lay all that guilt at my feet right now, you know?”

“I’ll do what it takes to keep you and my nephew here,” he tossed back immediately.

“Even if it means making me completely miserable?”

“I’m sorry about that part. Maybe I can convince Marsh to leave and you won’t have to see him anymore. Problem solved.”

“You’d essentially throw your brother out of town for me?” I asked, slightly amused, even as the topic itself was heartbreaking beyond measure.

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