Page 92 of Who's Your Daddy?

“Li, take a breather and calm down. We can talk about this in a few—”

“No. You need to listen.” I don’t know how to tell him. Should I ease him into the discussion or just give it to him straight? Peter has always been straightforward, so I opt for the latter. “I don’t...I don’t think...the baby is yours.”

“What?” His eyebrows furrow together. “Wait. Back up a second. What did you say?”

Saying it the first time was hard enough. Saying it again with him looking at me like that drives a dagger right into my heart. “I said...it’s not your baby.”

Barely a whisper, but the impact of those few words is cataclysmic. The world, the life we’d been building, falls apart around us as if it’s been hit by an earthquake.

He’s shocked and confused, staring at me to see if this is some kind of cruel joke. When my face confirms that it isn’t, he just sits there, looking blankly at nothing as he tries to absorb the shock and recover from the blow. He’s so still. Not moving. Not even breathing.

“Peter, please say something.”

The silence stretches on for another full minute before he’s able to speak.

“If...” He clears his throat because his voice is strained. “If I’m not the father...who the fuck is?”

The words are soft and measured, and it’s his calmness that lets me know how livid he really is.

“It’s...it’s my ex.”

“Your ex.” He drops his head, raking a shaky hand through his hair. “So, what?” He keeps his eyes on his shoes instead of confronting the betrayal I know he sees on my face. “Did you and him hook up when...you left here and went back to the motel? Was it then? Or were you still seeing him while you were staying here wi—”

“No,” I say quickly. I know he’s asking that because both of us were under the impression that was the general time of conception, yet we were so off. “It happened, like...beforeyou and I even got together. A few weeks before. I had no contact with him after we hooked up. The last time I even saw Teddy was the day we met.”

His head snaps up to look at me. “What do you mean, the day we met?”

Oh, crap! I didn’t mean to blurt that out. I just wanted to deal withthistoday and then get allthatout at another time...after he’d come to terms with this news. But now that it’s out, I can’t keep lying about it.

“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Again, I breathe through the cramp in my side. “That day at the country club...that guy...the man you saw...that wasn’t my father...That was Teddy...my ex.”

He’s flabbergasted, visibly reeling from shock. “That guy’s, like...twice your age. That’s your ex?”

I nod and silence falls upon us again. He’s so still it’s unnerving. I’m waiting for the explosive reaction. I can see the tightness of his jaw, the way the cogs are turning in his head as he processes all this information.

“So, you’ve been lying to me since day one?”

I let out a helpless sigh because I have...but I also haven’t. “It started off as a...miscommunication that I didn’t want to rectify because...because I was so humiliated that you saw him speak to me like that. But I didn’t lie. I told you that very first day that I was coming out of a bad relationship.”

Those jade eyes lock on mine, and he is seething. “When you said you were coming out of a bad relationship, I thought you meant you guys broke up, like...a month before. Not that I just witnessed the fucking breakup six hours before I had sex with you, Lia!” The anger I’d been waiting for is surfacing, and he runs both hands through his hair to keep calm. “Knowing that tiny tidbit of information would have made me question whether this kid was mine at the beginning of all this.”

This kid.The words are abrasive, so cold and unfeeling. It’s not like him to talk this way.

“That night you went toGrit...you were there to get him back. But like an idiot, I stepped in and messed up your whole plan...and then everything became my problem. Fuck, why did I stop you? None of this shit would’ve happened if I’d just...”

He leaves the sentence hanging, but he doesn’t need to complete it. It’s obvious that he regrets everything that happened between us. The dagger in my heart twists another ninety degrees, ripping me open.

Tears run down my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” That question is laced with enough acid to dissolve my apology into nothingness. “You’ve been lying to me formonths. You knew all along that he wasn’t mine, and you didn’t—”

“No, Peter. It wasn’t like that.” I rush toward him but stop dead in my tracks when his icy glare pins me in place. “I swear, I didn’t know. I only found out this afternoon when—”

“Don’t,” he whispers, standing up. His jaw tightens and his hands clench as he tries to keep his rage from spiraling out of control. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”

“I’mnotlying.” My voice is high-pitched, desperate for him to listen. “You can even call Dr. Cheng. I spoke to her this afternoon...and she told me that we...we somehow miscounted the weeks, so—”

“No,Imiscounted the weeks. You knew from the beginning exactly when the fuck you screwed him.” He says it with such disgust, such disdain. He can’t even look at me anymore. “And you should’ve alerted me to this possibility when we found out at the motel. But you didn’t. You just continued to lie to me and string me along in this mess. Why? Because he dumped you, and you were looking for another sucker to take on his responsibility? Because you thought if you kept it a secret, you could extract whatever you wanted out of me?”

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