Page 67 of Enemy Ex's Secret Baby

“Gillian, no! I’m fine! This is about you!”

I pause and lean against the counter. What the hell would have to do with me at her work event at a club in the valley? “You’re scaring me.”

“I want to start off by apologizing.”

“Oh my god, Kira, what’s going on?!”

“I ran into Martin.”

My heart drops. “What?”

“He was at the club. I don’t know who with or–that doesn’t matter.”

Martin Holtz. A name I hear so rarely. He was the reason Axel and I fell together in the first place. At least he was my reason. He’d broken my heart into smithereens right before the summer started. Hot girl summer went out the window. I was distraught. Thought I’d marry the man.

He has served as Stella’s father in my narrative. The perfect scapegoat. In the distress of finding out I was pregnant, I created a fake narrative. That we’d had one last time together that summer and it had to be him.

That was a lie. I haven’t seen Martin since the day he broke up with me.

“Anyway, I’m drinking, right. So, I see him and I go up to him and ask if he remembers me.”

I cover my face in horror. “Kira, you didn’t.”

“And he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Because he’s a piece of shit. So, I told him who I was.”

“Oh no.”

“And…this is the part that you need to be sitting down for.”

The anticipation is literally killing me.

“I told him that he could go to hell for what he did and he…”

No…

“He had no idea what I was talking about.” Kira gulps in some air. “So, I was like, ‘Leaving my sister to have your baby all by herself?!’”

This is it. This is my downfall.

“He was shocked. He didn’t know.”

I lied to everyone. I told them I’d tried to talk to him and he said he wanted nothing to do with me. With the baby. My dad wanted to chase him down and make him step up. I told him not to. I’d do it without him.

Because…he didn’t deserve to be implicated any further in my lie, even if he’d broken my heart.

“Didn’t you tell him, Gillian? You said you told him.”

I shake my head even though she can’t see me and finally ask in a strangled voice, “What did he say?”

Now, Axel peeks his head out from the back, a look of concern on his face. Shit.

“He stormed off. He didn’t say anything.”

Axel takes a step forward and mouths, “Is everything okay?”

Why does the timing of my life have to be so piss poor? Or so serendipitous it sometimes feels like I’m a character in someone’s computer game and they’re just putting me in absolutely insane situations? Here I am, on the phone, talking about the man I pretended to be the father of my child while the actual father of my child is standing here not knowing he’s the father of my child.

This mess is all my fault.

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