And me, I suppose.
I heave out a breath.
I can’t get mad at him for wanting to handle things his own way. I’ve heard of pregnancy hormones before, and maybe this little spat is my first real experience with them.
I draft up a statement to post on his social media, and after a while I head back to the kitchen to show it to him and get his final approval before posting. He hasn’t asked for approval since my first few posts, but I feel like this is one he’ll want a little control over.
He doesn’t apologize for his comments when I slide into the chair across from him, but I guess I didn’t really expect him to. Instead, I let it tug at my thoughts. Letting these things build without confronting him is going to get ugly, but he’s recovering from major knee surgery along with the devastating loss of his football season—and potentially his entire career. I’ll give him a pass on a stupid comment that I’m sure he didn’t even mean.
“I drafted up a little thing to post to let your fans know you’re okay,” I say, and I shove the paper in front of him.
He glances over it, and before he gets a chance to respond to my hard work, Michelle waltzes in. “Good morning, everyone,” she says brightly. She has no idea what we know.
“Morning,” Luke mutters. I glance around the table and don’t see the envelope with the test results. How’d he do that? He couldn’t have gotten up from his chair. He must be fucking Houdini. My gaze finally lands on his, and he shakes his head just slightly to remind me to keep my mouth shut.
“Good morning,” I say sweetly. The last good morning you’ll be spending here, you evil bitch.
She sets about making herself a bowl of yogurt with some berries, and then she joins us at the table. “How’s the knee, big man?” she asks.
Big man? Is that some pet nickname I never knew about? Gag me.
“Hurts. Where were you on March thirty-first?” he asks without preamble.
Her eyes dart from her yogurt to him and back again to her bowl. She looks guilty. “I don’t remember, Luke. That was almost six months ago.”
He narrows his eyes. “Stop acting like you don’t know. Tell the goddamn truth for once.”
Her brows dip. “What, exactly, are you accusing me of now?”
Luke blows out a breath. “You know, I thought it was strange when you showed up in Hawaii with my brother. Even stranger that you were so adamant that this is my baby. But the strangest thing of all is that there’s no way I was so drunk on the night of April fifth that I would’ve had sex with you, especially not when I was so angry with you after we broke up. So you either need to tell the truth about that night we were together, or you need to tell the truth about who else you were with at the end of March.”
“I, uh...” she stutters and stammers a bit. “You and I were together, Luke.”
He shakes his head. “You know, the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that we weren’t. What I think happened, and you feel free to correct any details I might get wrong here, is that you were with someone else, had a feeling you might’ve gotten knocked up, and decided to use that to try to get me back. You came here that night, and you slipped me something that made me pass out because I sure as hell wasn’t drunk enough to fuck you. Then you found a way for us to wake up naked together and you left me to make assumptions.”
Her jaw drops. “How could you even say that to me?”
He pulls the papers from his lap where apparently he’s been hiding them. “Because these DNA results show that there’s only a seventeen percent chance I’m your baby’s father, which tells me that either you and I are related or you fucked someone in my family.”
Her eyes widen as she realizes for the first time that she’s caught.
A sense of vindication washes over me.
“You might want to have Jack’s DNA tested,” he says. “And since I can’t throw these papers at you before I storm out of the room thanks to my fucked-up knee, you can see yourself out. Oh, and move the hell out of my house by the end of the day.”
She stares across the table at him, and then she looks at me. “It’s her, isn’t it? She did this. She turned you into this monster I don’t even recognize.”
“No, Michelle,” he says. “That was all you.”
“My dad will be hearing about this,” she says, standing up as she tosses her spoon down on the table.
Real classy, Michelle. Use your damn father against a man whose career might be over anyway.
“You do that,” Luke says, his voice escalating. “You make sure to tell him how you used me, lied to me, and manipulated me. I guarantee I won’t be the one to come out of that looking like the asshole you’ll try your hardest to paint me as.”
She glares at him. “Your career is over. I’ll make sure of it.”
“You have no power,” he says dismissively. He’s not scared of her threats, and I’ve never been prouder of him. He shifts in his chair and winces at the movement. He hasn’t had his pain pills yet this morning, and he probably needs them even more after this conversation with Michelle.
“Get out,” I say to her through a clenched jaw. “Luke needs a calm home to recover in, and you’re not welcome here in it.”
The look she gives us both tells me this isn’t the last we’ve seen of her before she spins on her heel and stalks out of the room.
“I hear Denver’s real nice in the winter,” Luke calls after her retreating figure.
If our suspicions are true and Jack is actually the one who knocked her up, then she’ll still be part of Luke’s extended family. But who knows what that even means at this point—it could very well mean that he might see his niece or nephew once a year, or maybe not. Maybe he doesn’t want anything at all to do with his family anymore—especially not when Jack went behind his back and helped Michelle keep up the lie.
“You okay?” I ask, nodding toward the hallway she just disappeared down.
“Fine,” he mutters.
“I just mean about the news.”
“I know what you meant,” he says shortly. “And it’s fine.”
Few things are more unconvincing than his tone, but I let it go.
Seems I’m doing a lot of that lately. I’m starting to wonder how many things I should let go before it’s one too many.
CHAPTER 9
I’m in the kitchen cleaning up our breakfast dishes less than an hour later when Michelle comes slithering back in. “Can we talk?”
I helped Luke move to the couch a little while ago, and he’s still angry. Now isn’t the time, but I guess she thinks an hour is enough for him to cool down. Maybe I know him better than she does, because I know it’s not nearly long enough. Forever might not even be long enough to forgive what she did.
“About what?” Luke grunts, and it’s nice to have his moodiness directed at someone other than me.
She stands in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest, and it’s maybe the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen her. But it’s still fake. It’s a game, and that’s all any of this ever was to her, which is a real shame considering there’s a baby involved.