Chapter Twelve

Roman

I felt like my heart wasn’t beating as I watched the woman rush up to Bitsy and hand the baby girl into her arms. She was crying, her tiny eyes scrunched up in her face, but that didn’t change what I was seeing. Her coloring was so far from Bitsy’s. Instead, it was like mine. Her hair was dark and richly colored, tumbling around her chubby face in ringlets. Her skin was a smooth tan color, lighter than mine, but distinctly darker than Bitsy’s. When the baby looked up at me, tears still streaming down her cheeks, they were like looking at Nia when she was that little.

Holy shit.

“Roman, this is my daughter, Lorelei.”

Her daughter.

She had emphasized that the baby was hers, accentuating it almost as though she were already trying to push me away.

“Your daughter?” I asked. “Is she mine?”

Bitsy kissed the baby’s head, soothing her until she stopped crying and then cuddling her closer. She looked at me and I saw the hesitation in her eyes.

“Roman,” she started.

“Is she?” I demanded.

“Yes.”

I drew in a breath, trying to process what I had just learned. This was my baby. My baby. I had a child.

“I –”

“I have to go,” Bitsy said. “I need to get her somewhere cool where she can eat.”

She rushed away before I had a chance to say anything to her. I took a step toward her, but felt a hand touch my arm and turned to see an extremely pregnant woman standing to my side.

“Just give her some time,” she said. “Don’t rush her.”

I didn’t know who this woman was, but she seemed so sure of herself and I didn’t have anything else to go on, so I fell back. Around me the festivities didn’t feel as fun anymore. I walked away from the festival, returning to my car and driving back to the motel almost in a daze. When I got to my room I found Day changing the sheets.

“Well, hi there,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’m in your way. I’m just here making up your bed.”

She stroked her hands across the sheets, leaning over the bed and glancing back over her shoulder at me. I nodded.

“Uh huh,” I said.

She straightened.

“So, you’ll be staying for the second night?” she asked.

I started to tell her that I wasn’t, that I was going to check out early, but I stopped myself. I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t care if Bitsy was trying to run from me right then. I wasn’t going to let her.

“Yes,” I told her. “I’ll be staying for another night. In fact, I might be here for a while. Can I just keep an open account?”

Day looked like she was trapped between wanting to come up with something subtly inappropriate and wanting to maintain her businesswoman persona.

“I don’t do open accounts,” she said.

There was a touch of emphasis on ‘open’, but I didn’t let myself dwell on it.

“Can I pay in advance?” I asked. I saw the hesitant look on her face and I reached into my pocket to withdraw my wallet. I took out a stack of bills and tossed them onto the bed. “Cash.”

Day’s eyes locked on the money and then rose to mine. She picked up the cash and leafed through it.

“Well, it’s not something that I usually do, but for you…”

“Thank you, Day.”

As soon as she was out of the room, I dropped facedown onto the bed again. Everything seemed to crash down on me. The heat. The adrenaline. The baby. My brain seemed to shut down and I fell asleep.

When I woke up my stomach was growling. No tray of food had magically appeared at the end of the bed and I noticed that I had forgotten to put the leftovers from the night before into the tiny refrigerator tucked in the corner of the room. I was going to have to go out for dinner again, and that meant only one thing.

Ten minutes later I was walking through the doors of Bubba Ray’s again. He grinned at me from behind the bar.

“Well, if it isn’t my new friend,” he said.

The way that he looked at me told me that he had heard a certain bit of gossip in the last few hours and was eager to talk to me about it. I settled onto one of the stools in front of him.

“How are you doing tonight, Bubba Ray?” I asked.

“Doing just fine. And how are you, papa?”

My shoulders dropped.

“You heard?”

“There were some rumors,” he said.

“Rumors?”

“Well, sort of rumors. We’ve all been trying to figure out who Bitsy’s baby daddy was since she showed up here and started showing. She wouldn’t tell anybody, and of course we all had too much class to demand she tell us, but it’s a curious situation, you know?”

Super classy.

“Sure,” I said. “And she never mentioned me?”

“Not exactly,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

“No. She never mentioned you.”

“Great.”

“But as soon as we saw you, there were some mutterings. I mean, you have to admit that little baby looks like you.”

“Yeah,” I said, letting out a breath. “She looks just like my family.”

“So where have you been?”

There was a sudden edge of aggression in his voice and I snapped my eyes to his.

“What do you mean where have I been? I didn’t know about that baby. She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant.”

Bubba Ray looked at me for a few seconds and then nodded.

“That sounds like Bitsy.”

“Can you tell me about her?”

He let out a sigh.

“I don’t really know what to tell you. The Galloways are one of the oldest families in the Hollow. Their farm was actually here long before the official starting of the Hollow. There’s some dark stuff going on around that farm. Dark stuff.”

“Like what?”

“I really shouldn’t be the one to tell you, but trust me when I saw that you aren’t the only one who’s gone after a member of the Galloway’s and not been able to get through to them. Bitsy was different. She always seemed brighter, more optimistic, even after everything that she had been through. Then Gregory Finglass happened.”

Gregory. I had heard that name. Oh, shit. The Halloween party the night I met her.

“What happened with him?”

“Nobody really knows, to be honest. They dated for a long time. He wasn’t from around here, but they had met up at school. When he was getting close to graduation, they had a falling out and he left. That’s when she left the Hollow.”

“To go after him.”

Bubba Ray shrugged and grabbed a rag, wiping the bar almost absently like he needed to do something with his hands.

“She never said. She just up and went. We never heard from Gregory again, and when she would come to visit, Bitsy never mentioned him. Then about a year and a half ago, she just showed back up and moved back in with her Granddaddy. A few months later it was obvious why.”

I nodded.

“I didn’t know,” I reiterated. “She didn’t tell me.”

She didn’t even tell me her name.

I pulled a menu toward me and ordered dinner. I might as well settle in. It seemed I was going to be here for a while. I couldn’t just walk away, from the baby or from Bitsy. Even if it seemed like that was exactly what she wanted me to do.