Chapter Forty-One

Callum

 

I was swimming underwater with nothing but the roaring of the ocean in my ears. Voices came to me, as if from above, high above me, maybe in the sky. Maybe it was because I was floating?

Then I heard Harper's voice again, and suddenly I was back is Gray's bedroom, and Harper was telling us she was pregnant.

With a baby.

She didn't know whose.

My hand was shaking and I clenched it into a fist, hiding it from her.

My beautiful girl was hunched over miserably, her head in her hands and I wanted to take this sadness from her and make it my own. I wanted to break the misery in two and smash it to pieces so she'd never be sad like this again. The sight of her crumpled face was too much for me and I had to turn away.

I looked over her and saw Gray, and his face was the mirror of my own. Shock, confusion, and a little bit of anger.

Anger, because whose baby was it?

Which one of us was the father?

I grabbed the sheet and held on tightly. Before I lost it and punched the wall.

"It doesn't matter," Harper was saying. "This was just supposed to be a fling, you know? We had to know that it wasn't going to work. Three people together at once? Whoever heard of something like that?"

I wanted to protest, say that it was wrong. She was wrong. We were the proof that it could work.

But she wasn't wrong. We fucked it up, big time. And by not wearing condoms. Fucking hell, it was such a silly, stupid mistake, one that they teach you not to make an elementary school. What the fuck had I done?

What the fuck had we done?

I glared at Gray. His eyes widened and then narrowed and he glared back, probably thinking the same thing I was. Fuck you. You did this.

"You don't have to worry, like I'm not going to come after you for support or anything," Harper said. "But I am keeping it." She went on, and her fingers went subconsciously to her still taut belly. Or was is still taut? Just now I noticed a fullness that had never seen there before. Her slim waist thickened, like she was blooming. Now that I knew, I wondered how I could have ever not known. She cupped her hand around that tiny rise.  "I'll make it work," she said softly. "I swear."

"Like hell you will," I heard myself say.

Harper looked up sharply.

"You're planning on leaving, aren't you?" I said, rising up from the bed. "That's what you're doing right now. You're breaking up with us."

Gray looked at me and then looked at her, in a perfect double take.

"Don't you think...?" she started to say, but I waved her off.

"No I don't think anything, is this why you came today? Not because you missed us or anything like that. But because you wanted to tell us you’re pregnant and then disappear out of our lives?" I struggled to keep my voice from rising. "How the hell could you think we'd be okay with that, Harper? We fucking love you!" I was yelling now, for myself and Gray, and somehow, I knew he was thinking the same exact thing I was.

She shook her head, caught in her own plan.

"Where's your suitcase?" Gray suddenly burst out.

I looked around the room and remembered she'd come in with nothing in her hands but her purse. I looked at her, but she ducked away from my gaze.

"Where is your ticket?" I demanded. It was a struggle to keep my voice steady.

She looked up. "What are you talking about?"

"Your ticket!” I thundered. She jumped a little, and I hated myself, but I hated the idea of her leaving even more. "Give me your fucking plane ticket."

"Cal, watch it," Gray said.

"Go get her purse, Gray," I ordered.

Gray looked at me, then looked at Harper. His lips twisted and suddenly he left the room. I stared at her. "How did you think that we'd let you go?" I asked her, feeling tears prick the corner of my eyes. "How could you think after telling us this, you could walk out of our lives?"

"Because I don't know which one of you is the father," she gritted through her teeth. "Don't you see what that makes me? I have a baby, and I don't know who the father is? That's not the life I'm supposed to be living. I'm a fucking children's book author. I have a fucking morality clause, in my contract. I'm not supposed to be fucking around with two guys like some kind of two-bit whore!" she screamed, eyes blazing.

"Don't you ever call yourself that again," I seethed.

Gray reappeared in the doorway with a slip of paper in his hand. Harper's eyes went wide and she suddenly jumped up. "Give me that," she ordered.

"Your flight's today," Gray said in an anguished whisper.

"Give me that!" she cried, jumping up on her toes but he held it above her head.

"You we're just going to fuck us and run?" Gray said, horrified.

"I was coming to say goodbye!" she said harshly. "And it's not my fault that this happened."

"It's nobody's fault," I heard myself yell. "But it will be yours if you leave."

"We love you," Gray said, his voice catching. "Let us take care of you."

Gray, looked back at me. I nodded slightly, and then suddenly her knees gave out.

Gray caught her up in his arms and I went quickly over to her, and helped him get her back to the bed. "Are you okay?” Gray was asking. "Do you need some saltines or something? Are you dizzy?"

"I'm fine," she said in a wavering voice.

"No you're not, you're white as a ghost," I told her. "You take a nap, I'll call the airline and tell them to reschedule your flight."

"They're not going to do that," she mumbled.

"They will once I'm done with them," I told her. And I fucking meant it too. I was all set to go stomping out into the living room to search for my phone, blood boiling and ready to read the fucking riot act to some poor customer service worker, when the tell tale creak of my side door froze me in the spot.

"Yo!" came the worst fucking voice I could have heard at the moment. "How'd the first day go?" Everett sang out cheerfully. "I brought over some of the good shit.”

Then he rounded the corner out of the mudroom and stopped short to see me standing there in my living room, still stark-ass naked. "Dude, um..." he started, averting his eyes as we both fell silent.

But not fucking silent enough.

"Shit," came the distinctly feminine voice from Gray's bedroom. Rett's head whipped around and my heart sank right down to the center of the fucking earth when he saw her.

Harper, emerging from Gray's bedroom. Wearing my shirt.