Lana
We ride to the coffee shop in silence, battered by rain, Kade either unwilling or unable to say anything. His reaction confuses me. Of course, it’s a shock, but he’s chilly toward me, as though I have done something to hurt him. I don’t understand; I didn’t create this child alone. But Kade flinches when I put my arms around him from my place on the back of bike, grunts when I ask him for the helmet and then gestures for me to get it myself, and then when he parks outside the coffee shop, taps his foot impatiently. I half expect him to punch the wall, the way he’s acting.
We walk through hammering summer rain toward the door. The rain came suddenly and without warning; people in the park rush to nearby buildings, cramming into bakeries and coffee shops and restaurants. A few people crowd under the eaves of the town hall.
We sit in the café, order a coffee each, and I find myself thinking about the staff-members’ uniforms before I realize I am just trying to distract myself from the baby situation.
“Look, Kade—”
I’m about to tell him that the reason I kept it a secret was because I was scared of how he was going to react, that the reason I kept it a secret was that I didn’t think he’d understand. I’ll tell him that we conceived the child that first passionate night together and ever since then I’ve been desperate for the truth to come out. I’m just upset it came out in this way. As soon as Kade came in, Scud swaggered off, hands in his pockets, and Kade must not have been watching for very long because he let the freak go.
“Is it Scud’s?” Kade asks quietly.
Oh.
I lean back and look at him, anger of my own rising now. So that’s where this chilliness is coming from. He thinks I’ve been fucking Scud behind his back. He thinks my would-be assaulter and I have been having secret meetings, that I’ve been screwing Scud in the day and then waiting for Kade at night. I grip my coffee mug so hard it burns into my palm. I don’t care. Kade doesn’t know what just happened, but that doesn’t touch my anger. The man just tried to assault me. He insulted me. He belittled me. And now Kade sits there asking if I’m fucking the man, if the child is his, if . . .
“How dare you,” I mutter.
My dark tone takes him by surprise—heightened by the crack of thunder which accompanies my words. He tilts his head at me. “That ain’t an answer.”
“How dare you,” I repeat. “How dare you accuse me of that.”
“How dare I . . .” He seems to be about to shout at me, rising out of his seat, face red. Then he swallows the anger and drops back into it. He takes a deep breath and goes on in a restrained tone, but it’s clear he would like to shout at me. Shout at me . . . as if I have done anything even close to what he is suggesting. It’s not enough to have his VP try and assault me; now he himself is going to treat me like crap. “How dare I? How dare I, Lana? You told me you were going for coffee with your friend. And I come back in the middle of the day to see you and Scud in some kind of argument. Some kind of passionate fuckin’ argument. What do you and Scud have between you that you’d ever have an argument like that? I didn’t even know you’d said two words to each other. And then I come back and . . . and what the fuck, Lana. What the hell could you be arguing about?”
“So you think that Scud and I have been having an affair, and that I am carrying Scud’s child, and that that is what we were arguing about.”
He leans forward slightly, looking closely at me. The blue of his eyes is normally alluring. Now it is like two glinting sword-points are directed at me. “Well, were you?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“You don’t seem to want to answer.”
“I don’t want to answer because it infuriates me that you’d even ask!”
“That sounds like something a liar would say.”
“Take that back, Kade. Don’t you dare call me a liar.”
“Tell the fuckin’ truth then!” he explodes.
Several people in the café turn to look at the table, but as soon as they see the president of the Tidal Knights, they turn away.
“Stop speaking to me in that tone,” I say.
What I want, I know, is unreasonable in the current situation: I want him to apologize for ever doubting me and ask me to explain in a patient tone. But there’s too much emotion in the air, too much tension. Still, sitting here and being shouted at by Kade is not how I envisioned this moment.
“You think I would fuck Scud? Scud? Really? I hardly know the man.”
“You hardly knew me,” he mutters.
I push my chair back at that, the force of the words hitting me in the chest. My heart hammers and for a second I think it’s going to hammer right out and across the room, slapping into Kade’s face. That would be good. Use my heart to show how much he’s wounded my heart. I’m going a little mad; anger can do that to a person. He’s throwing the best night of my life in my face. He’s using it against me.
“Lana, I didn’t mean that . . .”
He keeps talking. On and on, telling me how he is sorry for that, he would never mean that, he spoke in anger.
“You said it,” I interrupt him. “You threw it in my face. So I guess we know now what sort of man you really are.”
“I didn’t fuckin’ mean it.”
He growls.
“Don’t growl at me,” I say. “I am disgusted with you. I am truly disgusted. I thought you respected me more than this.”
“You’ll have to leave the club,” he says. “If you’ve done what it looks like you’ve done, you’ll have to leave the club. I haven’t so much as looked at another woman the whole time I’ve been with you, and you won’t even answer a simple goddamn question.”
“The question doesn’t deserve an answer.”
I release my coffee mug. My palm is scalded red. I open and close my hand and the raw skin aches and sends pain shooting up my arm.
“You see—saying stuff like that doesn’t make me hopeful.”
I am so tired today of men looking as me as though it’s my job to make them feel some particular emotion. Scud with his expectant make-me-happy stare and now Kade with his expectant answer-my-question stare. And I should answer his question. It’s simple enough, despite what I say. But it’s the asking of it that annoys me. I trusted this man, perhaps I still do on some level, and here he is asking me if I betrayed him, willing to believe that I did. Not giving me the benefit of the doubt for a second.
I sip my coffee, lukewarm now, and watch Kade over the top of the mug. He works the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of another, clicks his neck from side to side, and all the while stares at me with those penetrating eyes. I keep telling myself: He is willing to believe I have been fucking Scud behind his back. Each time I think it, anger surges up in my belly like razor-winged butterflies, cutting through me, making it so all I want to do is lie down, hunched up, wait for the tension to pass. A cocktail of hormones and genuine outrage deep in my belly.
“It’s not my job to make you hopeful,” I say. “It’s not my job to make you trust me.”
“Lana. Listen. Tell me whose child it is.”
“Do the math, Kade.” I sigh. I am tired. The anger is making me weary. “I haven’t been with another man since we met—since over a year before we met, in fact. You are the only man I’ve been with.”
“That means . . .” His eyes move from my face down to my belly.
“That means your swimmers are the only ones who have come anywhere near my eggs, congratulations.”
Despite the sarcasm and weariness in my voice, I would let go of my anger if Kade jumped up, walked around the table, wrapped his arms around me, kissed me. I would let go of it without a doubt. This moment is too important for that. But Kade does none of that.
He says, “So there’s nothing going on with you and Scud.”
When he says that, all I can think is that for the rest of my life, when I remember this moment, it will be stained with that comment.
I stand up.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere—somewhere away from you.”
He gestures at the window. “You’ll get drenched.”
“Then I’ll get drenched. I can’t stand to look at you. You’ve ruined this. You’ve basically called me a whore to my face and I won’t stand for it.”
I march to the door, throw it open, and step out into the lashing rain.