“She had the paperwork, the positive test results.”
“Still–”
“She’s really knocked up, Ava, okay?”
She sent him a sharp look. “You know even better than I do how easy it is to fake stuff these days. She could be lying. You need to go with her to an appointment, find out for sure–”
“Why? She’s getting rid of it.”
Ava’s lips compressed; she glanced over at Mercy. “She’ll have to have your consent to put it up for adoption. If one of the parents wants the baby, they get first dibs.”
“Dibs?”
“Do you want her to give it up?” Mercy asked. “Or was that just her idea?”
“Guys,calm down.”
“You tell us you got your girlfriend pregnant,” Ava said, “and you wanna be all ‘calm down’ like I’m the irrational one?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh, and that makes it so much better.” She rolled her eyes, but snapped back to serious before he could retort. “You need to think about some stuff. Some heavy stuff. And you need to do it fast, because babies don’t wait.”
“What’s there to think about?”
“Bro…” Mercy said carefully. “I think if you were all settled in your head, you wouldn’t have wanted to talk to us about it.”
“If you wanted her to get rid of it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Ava added.
“I…” It crashed over him again, as fresh and painful as it had been when Tonya told him that morning. “She’s awful,” he muttered, wiping his hands down his face. “She thinks she’s better than everyone in the world. It isn’t that she can’t take care of the baby – I could forgive her that. It’s because it’s mine, and it doesn’t fit into her rich world.”
He lifted a helpless glance to his sister. “She’s just like my mom.”
Right before he closed his eyes, Ava’s face transformed with tenderness and sympathy. And then his lids clamped down, because he was pretty sure if he didn’t screw them shut, he’d start blubbering like a pussy.
He felt her skinny hands on his shoulders, squeezing ineffectually. “It’s alright.” She kissed the top of his head. “We’ll figure it out.”
Mercy’s callused palm closed over his wrist, and he was overwhelmed by the knowledge that, whatever happened, he had the two of them. He didn’t deserve them, but here they were, and he was going to hold tight.
~*~
He didn’t remember drinking, but the bottle of screw-top, cheap-ass red wine he’d bought on the way over was more than half-empty, so he must have been putting the stuff away as he sat here. The guy at the desk had snootily informed him that Mr. Byron was “out for the evening,” and that if Tango wanted to wait, he’d have to do so in the parking garage. Guess they didn’t want a guy with twelve earrings and countless tattoos hanging out in their lobby and throwing off the posh elitist vibe.
He didn’t blame them.
The wine he hadn’t intended to share – he would never offer something so pedestrian to Ian – and he’d parked his ass on the concrete step by the elevators, resigned to wait.
His head weighed a hundred pounds by this point, and his vision fuzzed and faded his surroundings like an Instagram filter.
He heard Ian before he saw him, the distinct beat of his stride, the sharp clip of his dress shoes on the tarmac. The shiny Ferragamos came into view, saddle-colored and spotless; then the slender, tailored pants, dove-gray. The long legs, the narrow waist, the perfect cut of the shoulders, and finally Ian’s angular face, its corners tweaked with worry, as Tango let his head fall slowly back on his neck.
“Having a bit of a sit-down?” he asked.
Tango took a long, messy swallow of wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, fingers trembling.
Ian turned and said something to Bruce, his bodyguard, and the giant thug moved a few paces away, giving them some distance. Then Ian dusted off the curb with a pocket square and sat down beside Tango, close enough so their elbows touched, close enough for his expensive cologne to fill Tango’s nose. His knees were at high angles, his legs too long for sitting on the ground like this. His wide blue-green eyes glittered in the dim security lights.
He said nothing, only waited.
