Page 13 of How Good It Was (Excess All Areas 3)

Luke sat down on the side of the bathtub. It was his hands she’d remembered, with a tattoo of a large black bee on one hand, a moth with a skull on its back on the other. The wings spanned the width of his hands. His long fingers took her back to their single night in her Detroit hotel room. When she’d learned the difference between clinical sex and fucking, between feeling like a girl and being a woman. When she’d realised she needed a man like Luke to feel the heady rush of falling headfirst into bad decisions and liberation.

“Rough day?” he asked.

She took a sip of the cool refreshing water. “Rough couple of months.”

He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned toward her. “I’ve got questions. Lots of them. I’m not sure asking them all when I’m eight beers and two lines of coke in is a smart move. And I’m not so much of a dick that I’ll grill you while you’re sick. But do you feel up to answering the basics right now?”

Willow ran her fingers over her swollen and puffy eyes. She needed a shower. Sleep. Her eye masks with gold flakes in them. Anything so she didn’t look as feeble as she felt. She’d intended to be strong.

Unbreakable.

Impervious.

“I’ll answer as many as I can, but you should know I’m pretty exhausted. It was a long trip to get here.”

“Fair enough. Don’t get offended by this, but I think we should start with the obvious. How do you know it’s mine?”

She’d braced herself for that very question, knowing it would hurt when he asked it. First, she would have preferred to not look a mess and smell like eau de long haul. Second, she’d hoped he’d trust her, would somehow magically know she was telling the truth.

“It’s yours. There are some things about my life I don’t want to get into the press.”

Luke looked up around the bathroom. “Nobody in here but me and you. Think that’s as private as you can get.”

She wanted to tell him everything, but words stuck in her throat. Plus, he hadn’t agreed to the contract yet. And without it, she’d have to take him at his word, so she stuck to the basics. “I haven’t slept with many men, and I split with the guy I made the video about using your song in September last year. That’s seven months ago. He cheated on me, so there was definitely no contact between us after that.”

Nor would there ever be. She held back from telling Luke about the arrangement her father and Ansel had concocted.

“The only person I’ve slept with since then is you in February. Contrary to my behaviour that night, I don’t treat sex casually as I think my answers to your questions showed at the time. Unless this is the second coming of the baby Jesus, it’s definitely yours.” Their night had been a precious memory. One she’d tucked away in a corner of her mind, when the pressure all felt too much. Luke didn’t care about her followers or likes or what she could do for him. Just that her father had hurt her wrist. He’d asked for nothing. He’d not even left a number she could reach him on. Just a scribbled note on a water-ring-stained napkin.

Luke rubbed his hands over his face. The silence was deafening.

Yup.

Definitely zero excitement about it. She placed her hands on her stomach instinctively. If she was the only person in the world happy about her baby, she’d love the shit out of it so hard to make up for everyone else who didn’t.

In fact, it made it easier if he didn’t want it. There would be no long-distance custody fights or co-parenting agreements. Just her and her child.

Luke drew in a deep breath and stood, resting his hands on the counter either side of the sink, studying himself in the mirror. “How far along does that make you?”

“Technically ten weeks, but they call it twelve weeks because they date back to the date of your last period.”

“When did you find out?”

“I wasn’t really paying attention to my periods, but it was five weeks ago when the sickness really stepped up. I blamed food poisoning, but then I thought about my last period and you. I did a test the next day. Stewed about it, saw the ob-gyn that week.”

“But it’s fair to say you’ve had five weeks to get your head around this, right?” He glanced at her. “I’ve had an hour. You’ve probably thought through all the scenarios. What it means to you, to your career, your life. You’ve spoken to a doctor. You’ve had time to make plans. You need to give me time to do the same.”

“It’s not been as easy as you make it sound.” Willow’s eyes began to sting. She studied Luke whose face was giving nothing away. She wanted to say more, about what she’d learned about her father and what he’d been doing. But it still hurt to talk about, and she didn’t want to tell anyone in case word got out.

“That very first moment, though? When you did the maths in your head, or did the test or whatever, you didn’t have an ‘Oh, shit’ moment?”

“Fine. Yes. I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. But I knew I wanted to keep it, Luke. It was the one thing I knew for certain as soon as those two lines appeared on the test. I didn’t care what I had to do to make it happen, I wanted it. I organised everything to get away, booked a ticket, and here I am. I needed somewhere I could think about what to do beyond knowing I wanted the baby.” Tears spilled over and she batted them away. Freaking hormones. She hated crying in front of him. Hated looking weak.

“I was in a popular kid’s TV show for seven years and did a few movies until I was thirteen, and puberty meant I wasn’t a cute kid anymore. Now, I make money on Shamaze as one of their top content and trend creators, where I also have a bunch of carefully curated family-friendly sponsors. I could lose every single one of them by falling pregnant during a one-night stand. I have a baby to support, so I can’t afford that. I can’t care that you aren’t excited. I just need you to step up for me for twelve months. Pretend that we are happy about this. Social media never reflects real life. We just need to make it look good on camera.”

Luke blew out a breath, tugged her to her feet, and pulled her to his chest. “Look,” he said, gruffly. “You need to give me twenty-four hours. Let me think this through. Get my own mind straight. This is all a really long way from where my life is heading. But you’re safe here while we figure out what to do next.”

We.

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