by Aly Martinez
I picked up the small stuffed animal and turned it in my hand. “Why would you get a bat? I told you to get a fish.”
She shrugged. “They didn’t have a fish. But they had a bat, and since I’m out running your errands at almost eleven at night, you got a fucking bat.”
“A bat makes no sense though. What am I supposed to say? ‘And he’s a cute rabid animal for you to snuggle with when I’m not around’?”
She gave me a bored glare. “She’s a thirty-year-old woman. If she’s still snuggling with a stuffed animal when you aren’t around, you have bigger problems than it being a bat. Besides, with the stupidity that’s in that box, she probably won’t even notice the damn thing.” She arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing with this woman, Tanner?”
I snatched up the little velvet box and pried it open. I’d called the jeweler as soon as I’d had former-manager Gus escorted from the premises. He’d designed a few bracelets and such for my mom over the years, but this was the first time I’d ever commissioned him for a ring. It’d cost me a shit-ton of cash to get him to do it on such short notice, but she was worth it. So fucking worth it.
I smiled up at Andrea. “No. I have no idea what I’m doing with this woman. But that’s the best part.”
“You need to be careful. You haven’t known her that long, and after—”
“Don’t say her name. Do not even say her name in the same room as this ring. She gets no part of this. None. Do you understand me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It’s on you, man. You got my dinner?”
“It’s in the kitchen. One of the waitresses can grab it for you.” I lifted the ring box. “And thanks for picking this up.” I jutted my chin toward the bat. “And for that too…I guess.”
She smirked, offered me a salute, and then walked out the door.
I rocked back in my chair and picked up my phone.
Me: I’m leaving here in ten. You want me to bring home dessert since I failed on dinner?
Her read receipt never popped up.
I spent the next few minutes making sure everyone was good to close up and gave the kitchen manager my keys to lock up the front too. As I was walking out, I checked my phone one more time. She still hadn’t read her texts. I assumed she had fallen asleep.
The drive to her house from the restaurant was entirely too long. I was eager to see her, and as I looked at the ring box on the seat beside me, I was nervous too.
She was going to freak out. Probably laugh in my face. But, like everything with Rita, I was up for the challenge.
When I pulled up at her place, the house was dark, but it was the open garage door that set me on edge. With champagne under my arm, Batty, and the ring in my hands, I hurried up the walkway to her door and knocked.
She never answered.
After several more attempts, including ringing the bell and calling her phone. I started to get worried. She wasn’t a hard sleeper. Texts from Sidney or her brother had been enough to rouse her from a post-orgasm coma on the nights she’d stayed with me.
In true stalker form, I decided to go around to the backyard with hopes that she’d fallen asleep on the hammock. But as I climbed the steps to her deck, it was crushingly empty.
When Porter’s wife had died, a searing pain unlike anything I’d ever felt had stabbed me in the chest. We’d all been close with Catherine. It was unfathomable that she was gone.
But I’d never, for the rest of my days on Earth, forget the raw, hollow agony carved into my brother’s face the first time I saw him after she’d passed.
And the minute my gaze landed on Rita, who was wrapped in a blanket and lifeless on the ground, I experienced only two paralyzing seconds of what my brother had felt, and it was enough to put me in an early grave.
“Rita!” I roared, the champagne bottle smashing against the wood as I dropped everything and raced toward her.
She shot upright, makeup streaking down her cheeks, fear contorting her beautiful features.
A relief so massive that it made my head spin blasted through my system.
“What? What’s going on?” She was the picture of confusion as she scrambled to her feet. Her bare feet.
“Don’t move!” I shouted, but I was too late. She’d stepped on a broken shard of the champagne bottle.
“Shit!” she screamed, bouncing to her other foot before stepping on another piece. “Shit!” she screamed again.
I got to her in time before she had the chance to change feet again. Hooking her around the waist, I scooped her up off the ground, gave the door a shove, and carried her inside.
“Are you okay?” I asked, taking long steps toward her couch.
She blinked up at me. “What the hell was that?”
“A champagne bottle. Jesus, babe, you scared the shit out of me. Your garage was open and you weren’t answering the door. I seriously thought you were dead when I found you.” I set her down on the cushion and dropped to a squat in front of her. “Why were you on the ground?”
I watched the light in her green eyes dim into nothingness. It was almost as terrifying as finding her outside.
And then she slayed me with a whisper. “Is Shana really pregnant?”
My entire body got hard, my chest seizing like it had become encased in concrete. What the hell was I going to say? Yes. No. Let me explain. Or everyone’s favorite response on the topic: It’s not mine.
In the end, I didn’t have to say anything. My face said it all.
“Oh, God. She is,” she cried, tears tumbling from her eyes, each one like a razor blade to my soul.
I palmed either side of her face. “Listen to me. Just listen. I can explain. I can explain everything.”
She batted my hands away. “After everything you knew I was going through with Greg, you never thought to mention that she was pregnant?”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” I implored, desperate for her to believe me.
Abruptly, she stood up, pushing past me. “It matters to me!”
I ground my teeth as bloody footprints smeared on her hardwood. “Rita, sit down and let me look at your feet.”
“Fuck my feet. And fuck you too.”
With waning patience—at the situation and the fact that there was a situation in the first place—I cracked my neck before rising to my full height. “Listen to me. It’s not what you think.” Jesus, could I be any more cliché? “It’s not my baby.” Yes. Yes, I could.
She stopped pacing and stared at me. “You sound just like him, you know? Is there some kind of script they hand you when you knock up a woman?”
Lava hit my veins. I was nothing like that fucking douchebag. “That right there is why I never told you. Because I knew you were going to look at me just like you are right now. I’m not your fucking ex. I didn’t cheat on you with Shana. I didn’t even know women like you existed when I was with her or trust me, I never would have been with her.”
“Trust you?” she asked on a pained whisper. The blood was pooling around her feet now. Shit. She probably needed stitches.
“Please, just sit down.”
Her only move was to plant her hands on her hips. “You want me to trust you? We’ve been together for weeks and you never once thought to mention that you’re secretly supporting a woman who is carrying your child?”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. There was only a handful of people who knew I was paying Shana. My attorney had been adamant that it was our best chance at keeping her quiet—at least temporarily. It pissed me off to no end that she was getting a single penny from me. But it pissed me off more to imagine who could have told Rita.
“Who told you that I was supporting her?”
She laughed without humor. “That’s the part you’re stuck on? Who told me? Not the baby she’s carrying?”
“No. I’m stuck on the part that I have a restraining order against her because that woman is batshit crazy. And if she’s cottoned on to the fact that you’re important to me
, then I do not put it past her to drive over here and spill a metric fuck-ton of bullshit on you in order to hurt us both.”
“So you don’t support her?”
My jaw ticked as I seethed, “Who told you?”
We stared for several seconds, neither of us moving. But, this time, I won.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t your precious baby mama. It was Greg. He was here when I got home. Apparently, his PI found her.”
Of course it was Greg.
Fucking, fucking Greg.
“That’s it. I’m going on a volcano expedition next month,” I rumbled. “There’s got to be an active one somewhere.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “What?”
I waved her off. “What the hell did he want?”
“The usual. To tell me that he sabotaged me from getting into med school so his friends wouldn’t laugh at him if—and according to him when—I flunked out.”
My back shot straight. “What the fuck?”
“That’s not even the half of it.”
“So give me the other half.”
“No,” she snapped. “This isn’t about Greg. He’s a dick. We all know that. This is about you having an eerie amount of similarities with him.”
“Rita,” I warned.
“You had a million chances to tell me, Tanner. A million moments and you wasted them all.”
And that’s when I lost it. Two long strides carried me to her, where I boomed, “There’s nothing to fucking tell! It’s not my goddamn baby!”
I shouldn’t have touched her when I was that mad, but she had to get off her fucking feet. As gently as I could, I plucked her up, turned, and set her right back down. Then I backed up to give her plenty of space in case I’d scared her.
She didn’t look frightened as much as she looked downright murderous. “You need to leave.”
I kept my feet in place and bent at the hips to give the illusion of bringing us closer. “Fuck that. We are goddamn adults, Rita. So we are going to have a motherfucking adult conversation where you ask questions and I answer them. And while we are doing that, I’m going to take a look at your feet. Because I’m not real excited to talk about my bitch of an ex while you bleed to death right in front of my eyes.” I pinned her with a glare, daring her to argue.
She harrumphed. “I can take care of my own feet.”
“Probably. But you’re going to let me do it so I don’t peel out of my own skin while we discuss the dumpster fire that is my life.”
She didn’t immediately reply, but I could see the gears in her head turning. She was pissed. That much was obvious, but she was hurting too. If she shut down now, there was no telling if I could get back in.
“We’re worth a conversation.” I tapped over my heart. “You feel it the same way I do. This is worth saving.”
Her eyes welled with more tears. “I don’t think I can do this. If you lie to me…” She trailed off with a shake of her head.
I moved to her, taking her hand in mine before bringing it to my lips. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring this up since our first date, but it was just too similar to what you were already dealing with. If you’ll hear me out, you’ll realize it’s not similar in the way you think it is.”
“Is…” Her breathing shuttered. “Is this what you were trying to tell me that day we had sex?”
I nodded and kissed her hand again. “I’m not like him. Let me explain. That’s all I’m asking.”
She cut her gaze off to the side. “I can’t deal with her having your baby, Tanner. I just can’t. I’ll let you explain. But fair warning: I don’t think it’s going to change the outcome.”
“I swear to you it will change everything.”
Her greens came back to mine, staring and searching.
And my blues begged and pleaded with everything I had.
Losing her wasn’t an option.
“Oh, all right,” she finally relented. “There’s some bandages and antibiotic ointment under the sink in the bathroom. And grab the white towels. Those are the ones I’m leaving for Greg.”
My lips twitched, and she snatched her hand away, pointing an admonishing finger at my mouth.
“Do not even think about smiling right now. I’m pissed and your smile makes me smile, and next thing you know, it’ll be a year from now and I’ll be rocking your son to sleep. Put that damn thing away.”
The only way she was going to be rocking my son to sleep one day was if it was her son too—an idea that usually would have sent me off the deep end, but currently, didn’t sound all that bad.
Still, I didn’t want her to see my smile. So I did it walking to the bathroom to get Greg’s white towels to clean up her bloody feet. Poetic justice if you asked me.
* * *
I regretted not rushing out the front door on two gimpy feet, moving to Savannah, and becoming a shrimp boat captain the minute I saw Tanner’s smile when he walked away. I was clueless about what he could possibly say to change anything for us.
Even if I could somehow forgive him for not being upfront with me, I wouldn’t be able to stay. I wasn’t a monster who hated kids or anything. If he’d already had a child, it would have been a completely different story. But I wasn’t the type of woman who could stand to be the third wheel while he and Shana started the family I’d always wanted.
All the appointments. The birth. The time they would both want to spend with the baby after it arrived.
I wasn’t built for that.
And after everything Greg had put me through, I really wasn’t built for it.
When Tanner got back, he settled beside me on the couch and patted his lap. Letting him touch me was not my wisest decision, but with the adrenaline ebbing from my body, the wounds on my feet were making their way to my pain receptors.
I rested them one at a time across his thighs.
He groaned, crinkling his nose as he gave them a quick inspection. “Shit. I can’t see anything.” He pressed a damp towel to my sole, causing a surge of pain to engulf my foot. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” He peeked up at me, apology crinkling his forehead.
“I’m okay.” At least I was physically. Mentally and emotionally? Not so much. “When did you find out she was pregnant?”
“Two months before I met you,” he told my foot.
“And you broke up with her when she told you?”
He nodded. “She said she was pregnant and I walked her to the door, shut it, locked it, and have never spoken to her again.”
“That’s harsh.”
“It wasn’t harsh when you kicked Greg out though?”
I winced when he applied pressure to the towel. “Ugh.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” he chanted again. “I’m just trying to get it to stop bleeding so I can see how deep it is.”
I blew out a ragged breath. “It was different with Greg. He was cheating on me.”
“And Shana was pregnant with a baby that couldn’t have possibly been mine. Sooooo…”
“She cheated on you?”
Keeping firm pressure on my feet, he leaned back against the couch and shrugged. “I can promise you she was no Virgin Mary, but if that baby she’s carrying is mine, it was an immaculate conception.”
I twisted my lips. “Were you using protection?”
“Nope.”
“Then how do you know it’s not yours?” I sucked in a sharp breath when a thought struck me. “Can you not have kids?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never been formally checked or anything, but I’m pretty sure my swimmers are in good shape.”
My exhale rushed out; the audible relief was both surprising and embarrassing.
He smirked. “You want babies, Rita?”
I rolled my eyes. “My babies are not the topic at hand right now.”
“But you want them. Which is why you wouldn’t be able to stay if Shana was having mine.” His smirk turned into a smolder.
I nervousl
y tucked my hair behind my ear. “I want a family, Tanner. I won’t deny that.”
“Me too. Just so you know.” Cool and casual, he kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. “We’d make some good-looking kids together.”
We would. We so would. But the thought of it only made my chest ache. “And you and Shana?”
“I don’t know what our kids would look like, and it doesn’t matter because it’s never going to happen.” He removed the towel long enough to inspect my feet before putting it back.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“I don’t think you’ll need stitches.”
“You have a medical degree in your back pocket?”
His eyes danced with humor. “Babe, I was a boy who liked to cook in high school. I’ve gotten into enough fights to know what it looks like to need stitches.”
I wanted to laugh. He was funny. But it only made me sadder.
“How do you know it’s not your baby?” I whispered.
His smile fell. “Because we weren’t having sex.”
I blinked at him. Tanner and I had only been sexually active for a short while, but in that time, we’d had a lot of sex. On the nights I spent the night with him, he’d spend hours working me over with his hands and mouth before finally giving me his cock. Then he’d wake me up only hours later, slipping inside me from behind. And then, hours after that, he’d wake me up by dragging me on top of him. If neither of us had to work the next day, he’d lazily fuck me in his hammock. And more than once, he’d climbed into the shower with me, circling my clit with his slick fingers as he drove into me hard and fast.
The man was always ready, eager, and willing.
So I found it very hard to believe he’d had a long-term girlfriend he wasn’t sleeping with. “For how long?”
“The day she told me she was pregnant, it had been over two months.”
My head snapped back, shock not just registering on my face but my entire body. “Were you traveling a lot?”
He chuckled. “No. She practically lived with me too. I…wasn’t in the mood.”
“For two months?”
He didn’t answer as much as pivot around the question. “Tampons and shit randomly showed up in my bathroom during that time, so I knew she’d had her period at least once. The doctor confirmed it, saying she was only six weeks along. Shana knows good and damn well that the baby isn’t mine. Which is why she’s refusing a DNA test until it’s born.” He shifted uncomfortably. “My camp thought it would be better to shut her up with cash rather than let her drag my name through the dirt while Simmer was doing so well in the ratings. Not a single person on my team, including my own mother, believes me that the baby isn’t mine. It’s fucking disgusting.”