Page 54 of Sugar
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AVA
Kasey looks at me, utterly dumbfounded.
I wait patiently for the words to settle, for the secret I’ve been keeping to finally make its crash landing. I wait for those brown eyes to squeeze shut in anger, for his jaw to tic and his neck to roll. I wait for him to start yelling about how I’m trying to trap him in a marriage without giving him the full truth. About how I’m still the reckless and irresponsible andselfishgirl I’ve always been.
But none of that happens.
Kasey just looks at me, frozen in shock. He looks and looks and looks. I don’t even think he’s blinking, but his face is shadowed in the dim kitchen light, and my eyes are too watery to know for sure.
“Kasey?” I ask, voice trembling.
His eyes flare wide. “I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head. Like this might be some kind of hallucination his mind is serving up to fuck with him. He looks at me again, squinting. I can see the way he’s internally working to piece this all together. “What did you say?”
I let out a quick breath, standing to face him as fear rattles through me. “I’m pregnant, Kasey. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you before now.”
His gaze drops to my stomach before rising again to meet mine. “How . . .” he starts, but stops, stumbling over his words. “But we . . . I don’t?—”
My heart breaks at his confusion. Shatters that his first reaction would be to think he might have something to do with it, even though we haven’t slept together in ten years. The proof of his shock is another deep layer of my own guilt and regret. “It’s not yours,” I say carefully, feeling something long dormant inside my soul wither and curl in on itself. “When I left Miami to come back home, I was already pregnant. I found out two weeks before I left.”
Kasey’s expression shutters, his face slackening. “Tobias?” he asks. It’s barely a whisper.
I nod.
He looks down at his feet, taking in a deep breath. “Does he know?”
I can’t help but cringe. “Yeah,” I answer softly. “He knows.”
Kasey looks back up at me, the question clear in his eyes.
“It’s what he used against me,” I explain. “With the partners. He told them I was ‘knocked up.’ That I was planning on keeping the baby and would be too distracted to commit to the firm in the ways it needed me to. It’s why they rescinded my partnership agreement.”
His eyes flash with a fierce intensity that siphons all the air from the room, the sharp edge of his jaw pulsing. “Isn’t that illegal?”
I shrug. “I could try to sue them for discrimination, but they’d bury me. They’re lawyers with way more resources than I have. It’s not worth the fight.”
“So, what? You just . . .losethe opportunity? You’re forced to walk away from everything you worked so hard for all these years?”
“They didn’t fire me,” I say. “They’ve actually sent over a dozen emails asking when I’m coming back. But I won’t ever be made partner—that’s no longer on the table.”
Fury flashes over Kasey’s face, there and gone in the span of a breath. He eyes my stomach again with scrutiny. “It’s why you were sick,” he says, almost to himself. He scrubs a hand over his jaw before stuffing his hands into his pockets, rocking back on the heels of his feet. “Wait, you said you’re planning to keep the baby?”
I nod. “Yes.”
And then I see it: his smile. It’s gone before I truly have a chance to catch it, but my heart knows it was there because it pounds furiously.
“How far along are you?”
I swallow. “Thirteen weeks. I just started my second trimester. The doctor in Miami said I’m due at the end of November.”
“How do you feel?” he asks, and there’s genuine curiosity behind his words.
“I’m okay,” I say. “The nausea has been a little rough, as you saw, but otherwise I don’t really feel any different.”
He nods, eyes falling to the ground again. After a long moment he asks, “What does this mean, Ava?”
“What do you mean?”
