Karen stands up and walks over to me the second I come through the door. This is no coincidence. She’s here for me. I hold up my hand to stop her approach. “You are the last person on earth I want to see. I’d rather have a run-in with my stalker.”
I keep walking towards the elevators, hoping she’ll go away if I ignore her. I press the call button and cross my arms in front of me as I wait impatiently for a car. When the elevator doors open, I step in only to hear Karen shout out behind me, “I’m pregnant with Gavin’s baby!”
Rage, that starts at my feet and is working itself up through my body, takes over as I put my hand out to stop the doors from closing. I walk out, take a hold of Karen’s elbow and gently but forcefully drag her past the bank of mailboxes, where people are staring at us after her very public declaration. I pull her out the side door, onto a patio that overlooks the water. I stare at her harshly, my eyes blazing with anger. “What are you trying to pull now?” I ask.
She smirks. “He didn’t tell you, did he?”
Didn’t tell me? Gavin knows? She’s really pregnant? A nauseating wave rolls through my stomach and I’m sure my face has lost all color as she continues talking. “It’s true,” she says. “We were trying to get pregnant for almost a year before you showed up and ruined everything.”
“That’s not how I hear it,” I say, trying to remain calm, even though my insides are shaking so much I feel I could vomit on the bitch’s shoes at any second.
“I suppose not.” She goes to take a seat on a wrought-iron bench, making a big production of sitting down as if it’s hard for her, even though I can’t see any evidence of a protruding baby bump through her tailored clothing. She crosses her tanned, willowy legs. “But you should know by now not to believe everything that you hear,” she says with another smirk.
“You’re really going to say that,” I spit out. “After all the lies you’ve told—you really have the gall to tell me not to believe Gavin?”
She shrugs. “Frankly, I don’t care who you believe,” she says. “The fact is, I’m four months pregnant. And even if he leaves me, he won’t leave his child. Think about it, Baylor. He complained about missing seven years with your kid. Do you really think he’d miss one minute of this little baby’s life? He’ll come back to me when he sees what it’s like to hold his newborn baby. When we watch it take those first steps together, when it calls him ‘Daddy.’ When he feels what it’s like to bond with a child from birth—then he’ll know where he really belongs.”
She reaches into her purse and pulls out a black-and-white ultrasound picture. “Here.” She shoves it at me. “You can give this to Gavin to put on his refrigerator. The first picture of his precious baby.” She gets up to walk away, leaving me unable to move as I stare at the picture of Gavin’s child. His other child. The baby he will get to know from birth. The child that may very well rip him from Maddox and me.
Gavin finds me sitting on the edge of our bed with my cell phone next to me. I haven’t moved since I sent him the text telling him Karen came by. He didn’t ask why. He didn’t try to call. He simply said he’d leave right then, confirming Karen’s allegations that he already knew.
I’m still holding the ultrasound picture. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, in a voice that’s broken and hoarse from crying.
He takes the picture from me and looks at it, shaking his head sternly. “I was hoping to get concrete proof for you before bringing it up.”
“Concrete proof of what? You sticking your dick in her as soon as you returned from Chicago?” I yell.
“What? No!” He falls to his knees in front of me. “It’s not my baby,” he says. “I don’t even know if it’s anyone’s baby. She’s probably lying about the whole thing.”
“But you said she wanted a baby. You told me that months ago. And she said you had been trying.” I don’t even care that I wipe my nose on my sleeve.
He grabs my hands, still on the floor before me. “No, Bay. We weren’t trying. We weren’t even together that way those last few months. Whatever she said is total bullshit.”
I rip my hands away from his. “You lied to me. I trusted you and you lied.”
His face pales. “No . . . no, I didn’t lie, darlin’. I was simply trying to get the facts before coming to you. With everything that you’ve been through, I didn’t want you worrying about this.”
“So you thought you’d keep it from me. This huge piece of information that could change our lives.”
He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “It won’t change anything. It can’t. It’s not my baby, Baylor. If she were pregnant with my kid, which she couldn’t be because I told you, we used condoms every time—but if she were, she’d have to be huge by now, six or seven months probably.”
“How long have you known?” I ask.
He sighs and looks at the floor. “About a month,” he whispers. “She must have found out you were moving here. I’m sure that’s why she picked then to tell me.”
“A month?” I yell. “You’ve known for a month? I packed up my life, Maddox’s life, and moved here for you and all along you’ve been keeping this enormous thing from me?” I get up and walk out of the bedroom.
“You still don’t trust me, do you, Bay?” he asks, following along behind me.
I stop when I reach the living room. I turn to look at him but remain silent.
“You realize this is exactly what Karen wants, right?” he says. “She wants to break us up. Why do you think she only told me after she got wind of you moving here?” He gently pulls me over to sit on the couch next to him. “Why now, Baylor? If she’s really pregnant with my kid, wouldn’t she have told me as soon as she got the divorce papers?”
I close my eyes, causing tears to spill out and run down my already wet cheeks.
“You have to trust me,” he begs. “You know me. I love you. I’ve loved you since I was twenty. I would never hurt you. I have never hurt you. And if you believe her, if you let her lies rip us apart again, she fucking wins.” He pulls me close, kissing my hair. “I’m so sorry I withheld this information, but I’m one-hundred-percent sure I didn’t get Karen pregnant. There is only one woman I want to carry my child. There is only one woman I’ve ever wanted that with.”
I slump into Gavin’s arms. I breathe in and out slowly as he comforts me. “I believe you, Gavin. Of course I believe you. Just promise me you’ll never keep anything from me ever again. Even if you think it’s insignificant. If I had been prepared today when she confronted me, if I had known, I wouldn’t have stood there like the broken woman she wanted me to be.”
He pulls me onto his lap, enveloping me in his arms. “I promise,” he says. “I swear to you, Baylor. Never again. Never again will I let her hurt you. Hurt us.”
I nuzzle into the crook of his neck. “I’m sorry I accused you of sleeping with her after Chicago,” I say. “It was a knee-jerk reaction. Everything she said about you missing Maddox’s first years and how you’d never do that to another baby—I knew it was true. I knew that even if she’d tricked you into getting pregnant that you would never leave a baby you’d created. I had visions of that woman being bonded to you forever and it crushed me.”
“It’s not going to happen, darlin’. I promise,” he says. “She’ll be out of our lives very soon. I’ve got a team of lawyers and a private investigator working to disprove her claim. But medical records are private. Even though she says I’m the father; that still doesn’t give me the right to access them without her permission. And she hasn’t given me permission. What does that tell you?”
“You’re right,” I say. “I know she’s using this as a last ditch effort to break us up. But, God, Gavin, if she really does have a baby? All I can say is that I’m glad she’s rich and can afford the best nannies, because that poor kid will need someone with an actual moral compass to raise it.”
He laughs. Then he asks, “Are you okay? Are we okay?”
I nod. “Yes, we’re okay.”
He raises a seductive eyebrow. “Then how about we take advantage of this unexpected quiet time together?”
I giggle. “Is there any page in particular that you want to try?”
He laughs. “Every page,” he says, picking me up to carry me back to our bedroom. “I want to act out every love scene in every book you’ve ever written. I don’t care if it takes our entire lives to do it.”