Page 108 of Once Upon A Small Town Secret
“I’m not here to hit you,” he says.
“Good,” I say, because humor’s the only tool I trust not to misfire right now. My voice comes out a little rough. “I bruise ugly.”
One corner of his mouth twitches like it wants to spread into a smile, but thinks better of it. He glances past me at the porch, at the house he’s been in a thousand times, and then back. “Can we talk?”
“Yeah,” I say, and step aside. “Out here’s probably better.”
He climbs the two steps and stands next to me, not exactly shoulder to shoulder, but both looking out over the yard.
He exhales, slowly. “Paige came by.”
“She told me.” I keep my hands at my sides because folding them makes me look defensive, and I don’t want to be anything but open, even if my body is bracing for another blow. “Thank you for hearing her.”
“It’s not about thanking me,” he says, but it’s not sharp. “She’s my sister.”
I nod and wait for him to continue.
He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m still pissed,” he says, simply. “I don’t know what the timeline is on me not being pissed.”
“Me either,” I say. “I’m sorry. For all of it. For not telling you. For the office.” The word tastes like a rusty nail. “For having you find out like that.”
He blows a breath through his nose that might be a laugh if our lives were different. “Yeah. The office.”
Silence again. I can feel the speech I wrote in my head trying to muscle its way up my throat—childhood, loyalty, panic, all the things that sound like excuses when you put them together. I push it down.
“I’m not going to give you a story,” I say. “Or an explanation that makes it neat. It isn’t neat. I screwed up. I hurt you. I hurt her.” My voice goes low. “And I’m going to be a dad.”
He flinches a fraction when I say it out loud, but he nods.
“I saw the picture,” he says finally.
I smile without meaning to, quick and gone. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He huffs something like amazement, like disbelief. “It looks like a bean.”
“I keep thinking of it as a comma.” I stare at the dark yard until it climbs into focus.
He makes a face like he doesn’t want to agree with me on anything and can’t help it. “Paige said you went to the appointment.”
“Yeah, there’s another one soon,” I say.
He tips his head, considering me. “You going to keep showing up like that?”
“Yes,” I say, and the word is definitive. “Every appointment. Anything she wants or needs. Not crowding or overbearing, but there.”
He rolls his tongue against his teeth. “And what about the rest?” he asks. “When it’s 3:00 in the morning and the baby has a fever and you had a slammed bar and you’re dragging ass. When it’s money. When it’s time. When it’s the part where you can’t hand the baby back and clock out.”
“I’m not clocking out,” I say. “On any of it. And I don’t want to.”
“Your dad did,” he shoots back.
“Yeah,” I say. “He did.” I let the hurt at that, hearing those words out of my best friend’s mouth, pass through me, so it doesn’t poison me forever. “I’m not him. I thought you’d figured that out by now.”
He glances at the faint bloom on my eye. “He left you standing in front of that condo with a key that didn’t work,” he says. “I don’t—I can’t—watch that happen to her. To the kid.”
“I know,” I say. “You won’t.”
His jaw works. He’s fighting with himself in there. I can see it in the way his shoulders hold tight, the way his hands flex once, then still like he’s coaching his own body to stay in place.
