Page 130 of Forking the Billionaire

“That part’s not important,” he said. “I think he would have told you. In his own time.”

Would he have?

I ran back through everything that happened that night, then before the wedding the next morning when he’d avoided me, then the way he’d looked at me during the ceremony. Finally, I ran through the conversation we’d started before he’d spotted the wine in the sand.

There’s something I have to?—

That’s what he’d said exactly when I’d said we didn’t have to make a big deal about our week-long tryst. I’d been trying to let him off easy; I wanted to let him say goodbye without making it complicated.

What if he hadn’t been trying to say goodbye?

What if he’d been trying to tell me about finding the costume?

It didn’t matter what he might have said, because he hadn’t said it.

“What are you thinking?” Sage asked. “You have that look.”

“What look?” I asked.

“Your analysis look. Like you’re running through your memory scripts,” she said.

“I am,” I said.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Ziggy said. “Everyone gets scared.”

I’d been terrified by the news that I was having a baby. I’d told myself it wasn’t possible, that it had to be a mistake. And I’d hid from the truth. Was it really so bad that Jasper had needed time, too?

Was it really fair to decide that he never would have told me, when that wasn’t what happened?

“What happened after he told you he was the father?” Sage asked.

I tried to swallow the lump forming in my throat, but it only grew.

“He said he never wanted kids.”

“Neither do I, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t step up if it came to that,” Ziggy said.

“That must have been difficult to hear,” Sage told me.

“It gutted me,” I said. It still did. “I told him to leave.”

I’d yelled at him. He’d tried to apologize and I’d cursed at him instead of hearing him.

“Is it possible he was trying to tell you that the idea of fatherhood scared him?” Sage asked. “That he wasn’t rejecting you and your baby?”

Ohmygoodness, what if that was exactly what he’d been saying?

“He abandoned me,” I said.

“After you told him to leave?” Ziggy asked.

“Not the island!” I looked back and forth between my friends, with their compassionate expressions.

And I realized that yes, I’d screwed up, too.

But that didn’t change the fact that Jasper had left. And it didn’t take away the pain he’d caused.

This baby was coming, so even if Jasper and I couldn’t figure out how to get along, we needed to figure out how to communicate.

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