Page 88 of Accidental Baby Daddy

“Lex,” he pleaded, but I’d made up my mind, my heart aching.

“We can be civil,” I continued. “We can co-parent, but we’re not friends, Oliver. We never were. And we aren’t anything else, either.”

“Please.” His words were soft, his brown eyes wide and filling with tears. My heart clenched in my chest, but I opened the door and ushered him out.

He kept staring at me from the doorway, and finally, I shut the door in hisface.

I leaned against it, sliding down to the floor as I began to sob.

All I’d ever wanted was for Oliver Stanhope to want me. To love me. To be his.

But after all we’d been through, how could that ever be my dream again?

I sat outside on the bench, waiting for the bus. I didn’t want to spend extra money on a ride-share app, and Gillian was at her job with her car. My mother had begged me to go to lunch with her and had offered to pick me up, but I wanted to be able to leave if I needed to.

I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of having lunch with her but I knew I should give her a chance.

I was nervous as hell. My mom had never been very close to me. She had done everything with my sister. Seeing her again made me feel like the same sad, rejected kid.

When I arrived at Joe’s Diner, she was already sitting down. She stood up and waved at me when I walked in and I smiled weakly, sliding into the seat across from her.

“You look great, Lexie,” she said. My mother was the person who had given me the nickname and it made my heart clench to hear her say it.

“Thank you,” I mumbled. We ordered our drinks and entrees at the same time because we’d been coming to Joe’s for years and knew the menu front and back.

“I’m so glad you were willing to meet up,” she said, smiling. “It’s been so long since you’ve been close enough to visit.”

I nodded slowly. “It’s good to see you, Mom.”

“You said on the phone there was something you wanted to tell me?”

I licked my lips nervously. “There is.” I put a hand on my stomach. “I think I’m going to move away from Wagontown pretty soon.” I put my hand on my belly.

She froze. “What?”

Her face was expressionless.

“I’m due in August,” I told her. “I want to have my new life sorted out by then.”

“What about Ollie?” she asked flatly.

I drew in a deep breath through my nose. “He still doesn’t trust me. I just can’t do this with him breathing down my neck. He can come visit our child once in a while if he wants.”

“Oliver?” she gasped. “That doesn’t seem like him. He was always crazy about you and he has a son now, so he understands what parenting is all about.”

“We’re not together,” I said quickly. “He doesn’t love me.”

“But you’re pregnant. Lexie, how could you do that to him?”

I stared at her. “How could I what?”

“Why would you keep your child from its father? That’s just cruel.”I sighed. This felt like so many other of our conversations. I felt the old bitterness creeping up.“Mom, you just don’t actually care about me, do you? You’re always thinking of someone else. It’s always that I’m inconveniencing everyone else.”

“ This is going to ruin your life, Lexie.”

I stood up, not caring that the food hadn’t arrived. “Great, Mom. Really great. Thanks.”

“Lexie, sit back down. I?—"

---