Page 48 of Under My Skin

Was Dani actually trying to tell me that I’d knocked her sister up? That the postpartum infection she’d died from was a result ofmynegligence?

No, there was no way that was possible. I knew better than to stick my dick in a woman without a raincoat. A raincoatIprovided, so there was no chance of her poking a hole in it to try to get an easy payday.

Wait. A payday. Was this Dani’s way of trying to get more money out of me? She’d taken her time. Told her sob story to make me care about her. And then waited for the right time to pull this bullshit on me.

Fuck me, I didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t want to believe she’d be so conniving and heartless. That narrative just didn’t jibe with everything I’d seen from her in the past several weeks. But I didn’t know what other explanation there was.

“What the fuck makes you think—” I started to growl.

“God, you really don’t remember her, do you?” Dani cut me off, letting out a humorless, watery chuckle as she swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “How many girls did you fuck last summer in West Palm Beach? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?! How many werethere that you don’t even remember their fucking namesor what they looked like?!”

Oh. My. God.

My stomach dropped to the floor as the realization hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Amara,” I whispered. “Fuck.”

The memory that had been trying to wriggle its way free ever since Malachi had mentioned Amara’s name. The reason Dani had looked so familiar to me when we first met.

Yeah, the extent of my relationship with her sister had been hooking up a few times in West Palm Beach, and then we’d gone our separate ways. We’dbothagreed on that. And yeah, I hadn’t really thought about her since then. But still. I should have known. I should have remembered.

As much as I wanted to deny what Dani was saying, I couldn’t. Because now that she’d jogged my memory, I knew in my gut that little boy was mine. The connection I felt to him was just too strong. So was the way all my worries had seemed to melt away last night the second I picked him up. And those big brown eyes and that cute little nose? They were mine.

Which meant she was right. Iwasresponsible for Amara’s death. I hadn’t been able to keep my fucking dick in my pants, she’d gotten pregnant, and now she was dead because of it.

How was I supposed to live with that? There was no fixing this. No making it right. I couldn’t bring Dani’s sister back from the dead. I couldn’t jump in a time machine, go back to that night at the bar, and tell myself to stay the hell away from Amara.

And the worst part was, even if I could have, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Because if I’d never met Amara and Dani that night, if Amara and I had never conceived Isaac, then I wouldn’t have been here now. I would never have gotten to know this incredible woman who was sitting next to me with tears andmascara streaming down her face and a hoarse voice from all the screaming and crying she’d done tonight.

“I know you don’t give a fuck about the girls you sleep with,” Dani sobbed. “I know she was just a number to you. But she wasmy fucking sister, asshole! And now she’s dead!”

“She wasn’t a number, Dani,” I choked out, unable to find the words to verbalize any of the plethora of burning questions in my mind. “I swear she wasn’t.”

“Right,” she scoffed. “And that’s why you gave her a phone number that forwarded to your fucking publicist.”

My hands started shaking and my blood turned to lava in my veins as another piece of this puzzle slotted into place and the picture started to become clearer. There were still parts of this story that didn’t make sense, but I had a feeling I could trace all of them back to one common source.

“Fucking Vicki,” I growled.

“Yeah. Fucking Vicki,” she bit out. “The woman you told to throw money at Amara for an abortion. And when she wouldn’t take it and said she was keeping the baby, you told Vicki to threaten her with pressing stalking and harassment charges and a defamation lawsuit if she didn’t stop calling and keep her trap shut about who the father was.”

Gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white, I took a long, deep inhale through my nose and tried my best to let it out slowly. I’d just spent the better part of an hour smashing and breaking shit to relieve the stress of this mess with my stalker, and now I felt like I needed to go do that all over again to process this grenade that had just been dropped on me.

But Dani didn’t need to see me explode. Because no matter how mad I wanted to be at her for not saying something the second she’d first walked through my door, I just couldn’t be.Not when she was this devastated. Not when she’d already been through so much.

And not when none of this was her fault. I needed to save my ire and direct it toward the one person whodiddeserve it: my two-faced rancid bitch cuntface of a publicist.

“It wasn’t me,” I rasped. “I didn’t know. She never told me Amara called my old number. I swear on my life, Dani, I had no idea. If I’d known…God, you have to know I never would have let her say or do any of that. I never would have let Amara – or you – do this alone. I’m sorry, Dani. I’msofucking sorry.”

Dani’s expression changed from ire to…fuck, I didn’t even know what. Defeat. Agony. Complete and utter desolation.

“She…not one time? Not a single one of our half-dozen phone calls?”

I shook my head. “She never said a goddamn thing. And she’llneverget a chance to do anything like this again. She’s fucking fired. Starting yesterday. From that whole motherfucking firm, if I have anything to say about it. But you know what? As fucked up as this is, one good thing came out of it. She brought us together. Because if she hadn’t suggested this ridiculous arrangement, we wouldn’t have found each other again. For God knows what fucking reason, she tried to keep my son from me, but she ended up helping me find him anyway.”

“No. She didn’t bring us together. She tore us apart.” Dani’s voice was thick with the tears that were pouring down her face like a waterfall. “I can’t do this anymore, Braden. I can’t keep pretending we’re living some perfect fairytale love story when the truth is so twisted and ugly. I can’t keep losing sleep wondering why you care so much about me when you didn’t want a damn thing to do with Amara after you used her and tossed her aside like garbage. And I can’t let myself keep falling for you when she died hating your guts.”

Just like that, a little spark lit up inside me.

---