“Why not?”
He rolls his eyes. “How do I thrust when I can’t use my knees?”
Heat crawls up my neck as I think about him thrusting. “You let me do all the work,” I say, though to be honest I’m a little scared of bumping his knee the wrong way.
“Let’s give it another day or two. But I will take you up on the breakfast offer. Can you just help me out of bed?”
I don’t feel quite as rejected as the other day in the shower. That’s something, at least.
We make it to the kitchen and I help Luke settle into a chair at the table. I set another chair across from him to prop his leg up. “Do your stretches,” I say. He has a whole list of things he’s supposed to do four times a day to help rehab his knee. I set to work on the task of making breakfast, glancing up at him every few minutes to check that he’s doing his exercises.
He isn’t.
I want to badger him about it.
I don’t.
I set scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon on plates for us and join him at the table.
“This is going to sound weird, but I feel closer to you after our talk last night,” I say. I dive into the scrambled eggs. I might not be the best chef in the world, but I do make a mean egg.
“Not weird at all,” he says. “And I feel the same.”
I want to ask more. I want to expand on that.
But Michelle still lives here, and she’s the last person we’d want finding out about Luke’s past. I get why the brothers are so careful with their secret. If it ever came out, it wouldn’t just make them look bad. It would make their teams look bad...maybe even the entire organization.
The doorbell rings, and I head over to answer it. The mailman stands there with an envelope marked Certified Mail. “Is Luke Dalton home?” he asks.
“He is,” I say. “He can’t come to the door. Would you like to come in?”
He looks a little uncertain.
“He just had surgery and can’t walk,” I explain. “I can bring you to him in the kitchen.”
He nods. “Fine.”
I try to get a good look at the envelope but I can’t see who it’s from. It has to be the test results. I didn’t realize they’d come certified, so it’s a good thing Luke is home from the hospital.
My heart races. My chest tightens. My stomach turns, and I very nearly catch myself resting a hand on my lower belly.
This is it. The moment of truth. Either Luke Dalton is going to father two children a couple months apart or potentially just one pending my doctor’s appointment on Thursday.
I show the mailman out and when I return to the kitchen, Luke is eating his eggs while the envelope rests beside him on the table. He’s staring at it.
“You ready to open it?” I ask.
He shrugs but doesn’t say anything. How can he sit there so casually when in many ways, the fate of the rest of his life lies inside that envelope? This will tell him whether he can kick out the toxic woman trying to suck the life out of him...or it’ll tell him he’ll be co-parenting with her.
“You need me to?” I press.
His eyes lock on mine. “There’s just a lot riding on what’s inside that envelope, and I’m not sure I’m in a place to handle any more upheaval.”
I reach across the table and squeeze his hand as my heart pounds loudly in my chest. He doesn’t want any more upheaval...but I’ve got my own little secret that will send both of us into a tailspin once it’s confirmed. At least it’ll be a happy tailspin. I think. “I get that. But you know what? Regardless of what the paper in there says, either things stay the same or they get easier. Right?”
He nods, and then he shoves the envelope toward me. “You do it.”
I don’t hesitate. I tear open the envelope and pull out a small stack of papers.
I scan the top page, a little note thanking us for using their lab. I flip to the next page, where I see a chart with a bunch of numbers on it. I spot Luke’s name at the top, and then at the bottom I read the statement to myself.
My head buzzes as the results register, and then I read it aloud to Luke. “Based on an analysis of the STR loci listed above, the probability of paternity is seventeen-point-three-three-three percent.”
Luke’s brows dip. “Seventeen percent?” he asks. “But that would mean...”
“You share some DNA with the child, but not enough to conclusively state that you’re the father.”
Our eyes meet across the table and mine widen as I realize what this means.
“Jack,” he hisses.
CHAPTER 8
I clutch the paper as I stand from the table, anger permeating my veins and seeping into my bloodstream. How could she do this to him? And why would she do this to him?
I stalk furiously through the kitchen so I can go to her room and give her a piece of my damn mind when Luke’s voice stops me. “Wait.”
I halt in place and turn around.
“Let me handle this.”
“I was about to head to her room to kick her the hell out of here,” I say.
“I know exactly what you were about to do,” he says thinly, “and this is my problem to handle. I don’t need you tackling it for me.”
“It’s our problem,” I remind him as hurt stabs at me that he wants to do this alone when we’ve been in it together the entire time, all the way back to when I first saw the headline when I woke up one morning and was the one who told him he was having a baby with her as he was dripping with sweat from running on the treadmill.
God, those were such simpler times.
I set my hand on my hip. “Fine. Want me to go get her?”
“She’ll slither out eventually. Until then, I plan to enjoy my eggs in peace knowing that I didn’t make the biggest mistake of my life.” He holds up his glass of orange juice like he’s about to make a toast. “Dodged a bullet there.”
I hope he’s talking about sleeping with Michelle and not about having children in general.
“Aren’t you mad?” I ask, walking back to the table to sit. I push my plate aside. It’s not like I can enjoy my half-eaten breakfast now that I have this information.
He nods. “Furious. But she’s still my boss’s daughter. I can’t have you making things worse.”
“That’s not what I was going to do!” I protest.
“Oh, come on, Ellie. Yes it was. You were going to go kick her out of the house with joy.”
He’s not wrong there.
“Look, I’ve got enough problems. I don’t need you making one more.”
I glare across the table at him. “Fine. Enjoy your breakfast.” I stalk out of the room and head to my office to pout there.
Maybe I’m being mean. He’ll need help when he’s done eating. He can’t get from the table to anywhere else, especially not with how far out of his reach I stored his crutches once he was in position at the table—not to be mean, but just to get them out of the way.
I’m sure Michelle will come along to help.
I hate my bitter thoughts where she’s concerned, but I can’t help it. I want her out. Now. She’s provided enough distraction for Luke. Maybe if none of this had ever happened, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt. I realize that’s a real stretch since it was the fault of another player doing something dirty, but maybe he would’ve seen it coming if he hadn’t been distracted, if he would’ve had just a little more focus instead of being pulled in a million directions in his personal life between his family and Michelle.