Page 44 of Secret Daddies

I fell silent. Much as I wanted to have some argument to counter him, I knew he had a point. I had lied before, and there was no reason for him to think that I wouldn’t lie again.

“I told Devon the truth,” I offered him, hoping that would go some way to making him believe me. “I told him that he’s Matty’s father?—”

“Yeah, only after you had no choice,” he shot back bluntly. “Only because you were backed into a corner. If you hadn’t seen him here again, if you hadn’t had to work with him, would you ever have told him about Matty?”

I couldn’t even look at him when he asked me that. He already knew the answer.

“You don’t understand what it’s like,” I protested. “To do all of this alone, you don’t?—”

“I don’t understand?” he exclaimed. “I have raised my daughter as a single father for years, Maya, and you know that! I know what it’s like, I know better than anyone, and I know that no matter what you feel toward the people who helped bring your kid into the world, they deserve to at least know about them.”

I tore my gaze away from him. I couldn’t stand how he was looking at me, like I was some kind of monster. I should have just told him that I wasn’t pregnant, that he was seeing things, and we could have laughed it off like it was nothing…

“I can’t believe you would do this,” he muttered. He sounded like someone had reached inside him and pulled out all the pieces, left him empty. And I knew that person was me. I hated knowing that I’d hurt him so much, wishing that I could lift this pain from him, but I couldn’t. It was my fault, just like it had been my fault that I’d kept so much back from Devon when we first met again. Just like it was my fault that Matty didn’t have a father in his life. All of those were my choices, and I had to live with them, no matter how much they hurt, no matter how much I wished I had made different choices through the years…

“It’s not?—”

“It is,” he replied, cutting me off before I could make any more excuses. I grabbed his hand, a last-ditch effort to get him to understand that I hadn’t done this to hurt him, or any of them—to find some piece of our physical connection and use that as the thread back to one another, even in the midst of this mess.

He looked down at my hand on his, as though considering it for a moment. I saw something in his eyes, a glint that spoke to his desire to forgive me—to forget this and go back to what had been there before.

But then all at once, he dropped my hand and pulled away from me, shaking his head.

“I need to think.”

“Are you going to tell the others?” I asked, my heart stutter-beating in my chest. He just looked back at me, his eyes heavy.

“I don’t know.”

And with that, he turned his back and headed for the door of the trailer—leaving me behind to wonder what the fuck I was supposed to do now.

And whether I would ever be able to repair the harm that I’d done to him in keeping this enormous secret to myself.

22

MAYA

I closedmy hand around the coffee cup, staring down into it blankly. I knew I probably shouldn’t be having so much caffeine, but I needed something to take the edge off, and this was about the only thing I could think of that wasn’t going to get me into immediate trouble with my doctor.

“Holy shit, Maya, you look awful,” Lana told me bluntly as soon as she slumped down into the seat next to me. I managed a small laugh.

“Hey, thanks, good to see you too,” I joked back. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course I am,” she replied, waving a hand like it should be obvious. “But what’s going on with you? Your text sounded pretty urgent…”

Jesus, where the hell did I even start? With everything that had happened the last few days, my life had been flipped utterly upside down. What had started as the most amazing sexual encounter I’d ever experienced had completely fallen apart, and now all I could think about was how much I had fucked up.

It had been a couple of days since Taylor had confronted me about the pregnancy, when I had come clean to him about the truth—that, yes, I really was having a baby, and I had no idea which one of them it belonged to. Even now, that sounded insane to me. I was sure Lana was going to think I was the messiest, stupidest woman in the whole city, but God, I needed to get it off my chest to someone, and she was the only person I could trust not to judge me entirely for my bad choices.

“Okay, Maya, you’re starting to worry me,” she told me, leaning in a little closer and frowning. “Can you tell me what’s happening…?”

I honestly didn’t even know where to begin. She would think I was crazy if I came clean, but God knew I needed someone to talk to about all of this. Finally, I nodded.

“Yeah,” I breathed. “It—it started a few weeks ago, after you made that joke about me getting pregnant…”

I filled her in on everything that had happened since then, her face contorting into a million different expressions as she took it all in. It was clear this was the last thing she had been prepared for, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. It must sound downright insane. I had not only gotten involved with three goddamn movie stars, but I’d managed to get myself knocked up by one of them—and I didn’t even know which one it was.

Once I was finished, she sat there for a moment, just staring at me. It was clear she didn’t even know where to begin. I pressed my lips together, staring at her, wondering what she thought of me right now. Did she think I was some hopeless nympho completely incapable of keeping it in her pants? Or just an idiot for having so much reckless sex with guys that I should have known better than to go anywhere near in the first place…?

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