Page 96 of Who's Your Daddy?

He waits for Dylan to get in the backseat before he drives off. A thick cloud of tension settles in the car. Scott keeps glancing over at me. Dylan is shooting daggers at me from the backseat. It was too much to ask him to keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself because five minutes into the drive, I get another outburst from him.

“I still don’t understand how you could just tell her to leave like that. It’s nine o’clock at night, and now she’s walking around the streets by herself. Do you know what could happen to her, Peter?”

The panic I hear in his voice resonates with me on the deepest level because he’s echoing every fear and worrisome thought running through my head right now. “Shut up!” I snap. “Just shut the fuck up.”

“Why would you do that?” he shouts. “There’s absolutely no justification that could—”

“You wanna know why?” I shift in my seat so I can look at him. “Today she told me she realized – just out of the blue – that I’m not the father of her baby.”

Scott slams the brakes hard enough for all of us to fly forward. “What?”

“Yeah,” I reply, keeping my eyes on Dylan. “And the guy who owns the country club is, in fact,nother father, but her ex-boyfriend.He’sthe one who impregnated her. She also told me that herrealparents died before she turned eighteen, so she never graduated high school. And as the perfect cherry on the top, she informed me that she also lied when she told me she was twenty-four. She’s actually only twenty. She was lying to me from the moment we met. So, forgive me if I was less than thrilled when I found all this out. Forgive me if I lost my shit and all rationality and told her to fuck off. I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.” The silence that ensues is loaded, pensive. I look over at Scott. “And if you want to throw in anI-told-you-so, now is not the time.”

“I figured.”

“Good. So, now that we’ve cleared all that up, can we please stop talking and focus on finding her?”

Dylan nods, still angry but fully understanding my reasons. “Sure thing, Pete.”

We go to the motel, and the manager informs us that no one has checked in tonight. Next, we go to Tori’s. She hasn’t heard from Lia since the gender reveal party. She calls Shontelle, who also hasn’t spoken to Lia in the last few weeks. I even suck in my pride and call Rafael just to make sure I don’t leave any stone unturned. That phone call ends with me hitting yet another brick wall.

Dylan calls about a dozen hospitals in the area as we drive around. I call every police station. No luck there either. We drive to every homeless shelter we can think of. We drive all the way to my beach house. Nothing. No sign of her. It’s like she disappeared off the face of the planet.

It’s almost six in the morning when Scott stops in front of my driveway again. The early morning sun peeps through the clouds in the distance. I say nothing as I drag my weary body out of the front seat and shut the door.

Scott opens the passenger window and lowers his head so he can see me. “You okay, Pete?”

“Fine.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Don’t bother. I won’t answer.”

“Okay.”

He says something, but I ignore him and walk toward my front door. I hear his car pulling away once I’m inside. An echo reverberates off the walls when I shut the door, reminding me of just how empty this house is now. I stand there for a long time, motionless.

I can still smell her. The last remnants of her perfume linger in the air. I still can’t believe that this has happened. Yesterday, I went to a charity event, and when I left here, my life was perfect. Yet here I am, not even twenty-four hours later, and everything has turned to shit.

With heavy legs, I walk to the kitchen to get a bottle of water, and my heart sinks when I get to the fridge. I knew they were there, yet somehow, I was completely unprepared to see them. My eyes move over the ultrasound pictures, eventually settling on the very first one we took in Dr. Cheng’s office.

“That’s his heartbeat? Doc, that’s my baby in there?”

“Yes, Papa, that’s your baby in there.”

My hands tremble as I lift them. Slowly, I remove the pictures one by one, each memory adding more weight to my chest. My throat is so tight I can barely swallow. By the third one, I give up, turning away from the fridge because it’s killing me to do this. It’s like I’m erasing them entirely from my life, and I’m not ready to do that.

After a few steadying breaths, I resume the task, forcing myself to push through it because having this staring at me every day is just going to be a constant reminder of how this woman fucked me over.

When I’m done, I collect the pictures into a neat pile and take them upstairs. It’s almost indescribable what happens to me when I walk into the nursery. My heart plummets into my stomach and my blood cools so quickly I lose all feeling in my hands. I look around, taking in every detail. The 3D characters on the wall. The black crib with the glow-in-the-dark stars. I once saw my future in this room, and now all I can see are the ashes of my dead dream.

I want to go on a rampage and destroy everything in here, smash it with a baseball bat, and leave nothing in my wake except shattered glass and splintered wood. But I can’t bring myself to do that, and that only infuriates me more.

I want to scream. I want to climb up the highest mountain and shout out all my frustration to the world. Yet at the same time, I want to be swallowed by the silence. I want to fade into oblivion. I want to disintegrate into a million tiny pieces just so I can escape this pain.

But in the end, none of those options are available to me. All I can do is shut the door on the life I’ll never have...and move on.

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