Page 76 of The Wrong Boss

“You have that look on your face like you’re choking on your own guilt,” Hailey pointed out.

I jerked, meeting her gaze. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, Carrie. You always do this. You agonize over things that should be simple. Now spill. What’s going on?”

“I was just thinking about how you two”—I glanced at herbump—“soon to be three, deserve your own space. You deserve privacy.”

“Carrie, you know you’re welcome here. We love living with you. It helps our finances, for starters. You pull more than your own weight. And besides,” she added, stroking her belly, “you’ll be a built-in babysitter!”

I laughed, then glanced at the stairs, thinking of Evie. “I guess I owe you about forty thousand hours of babysitting duty by now.”

“You owe me nothing,” Hailey said. “We’re family.”

My heart ached. How would I have made it without her and Seth? Me, who was weak and selfish and cowardly. I didn’t deserve to have such good people supporting me. I didn’t deserve my daughter or my cousin or my life.

“Carrie,” Hailey said, scooting closer to me. “Something happened, didn’t it?”

I slugged my wine and put the glass down. Then I took a deep breath, faced my cousin, and said, “I slept with him.”

She inhaled, wide-eyed. “Oh,” she said.

“And I haven’t told him about Evie.”

“Oh,” she repeated.

“And he ended his engagement.”

“Oh,dear.”

I leaned back against the couch and groaned. “Then this morning, I’d just about worked up the courage to tell him everything, and he got a phone call saying his fiancée got in a car accident and is in the hospital.”

Hailey blew out a long breath. Apparently even she was beyond words. Groaning, I slapped my hands over my face.

“Okay,” Hailey started, ever the pragmatist, “that’s okay. The timing is terrible, but, you know, the show must go on.”

I split my fingers and looked at her through the gap. “That makes no sense.”

She tilted her head back and forth. “Well. Fine. But this is salvageable!”

“He kept telling me that he couldn’t believe I came back into his life. He talked to me like—like?—”

“Like?”

“Like he’s in love with me!” Tears welled in my eyes and I brushed them away. My hand shook as I picked up my wine glass, and I tasted none of the drink as I drained my glass.

When Hailey spoke, her voice was so, so gentle. “Why does that make you want to cry, Carrie?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

She reached over to rub the space between my shoulder blades. “All right,” my cousin said, dropping that line of inquiry, probably sensing that I was lying to her. I knew exactly why it made me cry—it was because I was in love with him, but I’d screwed up so monumentally that I’d pretty much guaranteed we’d never be together. How could we, when I’d lied by omission for this long?

As if she could read the direction of my thoughts, Hailey asked, “Why didn’t you tell him right away, Carrie?”

“Because I’m a coward.”

“I don’t think that’s it. A coward wouldn’t be able to raise a little girl as well as you’ve raised Evie.”

“You and Seth have helped with that.”

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