They’ll know what I did.
The knife stops mid-slice, pressure against lime skin. My breath stutters. I picture Jason’s face when he finds out. Betrayal first, then rage. He’ll think I disrespected him, went behind his back. He’ll think I used him.
And then… I don’t know what. Will I lose the only family I’ve ever known?
I set the knife down carefully. My hands don’t feel steady anymore.
“Hey.” Charlotte’s voice is softer now. She leans her elbows on the bar, studying me. “Whatever’s chewing on you? Maybe ease up before you grind yourself down to bone.”
I make myself smile, but it feels wrong on my face. “Just a lot on my plate.”
“Yeah. But you’re not usually this…” She waves her hand at me. “Haunted.”
I snort. “Haunted, huh?”
She shrugs. “That’s the vibe.”
If only she knew. If only anyone knew.
But no one can. Not yet.
I push the limes aside and pour myself water instead of another coffee. My hands are shaking, so I grip the glass tight.
What if Jason cuts me off completely? What if this baby means I lose him? My oldest friend. My brother in everything but blood.
But Paige is having my kid. No matter what happens, I’ll always be in their lives.
That thought lifts me momentarily.
Chapter Twenty Three
Paige
The exam room is too clean, too white, too bright. I sit on the edge of the table in a paper gown with my clothes folded on the chair beside Ben, and I try not to think about how my feet don’t quite touch the footrest.
The paper crinkles every time I shift, loud and awkward, like it’s ratting me out for being nervous.
Ben sits in the single chair by the counter, elbows on his knees, hands folded so tightly his knuckles have gone pale. He keeps glancing at the door and then back to me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he looks away. He’s wearing a plain navy T-shirt andclean jeans and looks like he shaved by feel in the dark. The shadows under his eyes are worse up close.
There’s a square machine on a rolling cart in the corner, covered in a blue drape. A box of long, plastic-wrapped wands sits in a tray beside it. I don’t stare at them, but I’m aware of them anyway.
The nurse already went through the questions. Last menstrual period. Nausea. Vomiting. Any spotting. Any pain. Medications. Allergies. Past surgeries. She took my blood pressure and didn’t comment, which I’m choosing to interpret as fine.
I gave them a urine sample in a tiny cup with my name scrawled in Sharpie and washed my hands for way too long, the kind of washing you do when you’re stalling. Then she handed me the gown and said the doctor would be right in.
That was four minutes ago. Or forty. My sense of time is wrecked.
“You okay?” Ben asks quietly.
“No,” I say honestly. “But also… yes?”
His mouth does the thing it does when he wants to smile and thinks better of it. He nods like he understands. “You want me to wait in the hall when she—” He clears his throat. “When they do the exam?”
I consider the blue drape and the covered machine and the fact that my thighs are goosebumped even though I’m sweating. “No. Stay.”
“Okay.” His hands uncurl, and for a moment, I let myself really look at him. The line of his jaw. The worry there he’s trying not to let me see in his eyes. The way his knee bounces once, then stills because he catches it, and how he props his heel against the chair leg to keep it from doing it again. The way he runs his hand through his soft hair, the light strands catching the sun through the window next to him.
The clock on the wall ticks steadily. Every so often, a cart squeaks by in the hall, then fades.
