“We’ll be in there if you need anything,” he said.
Mom shot Ashley one more hard look before she and Dad left the room. Gage was still in my arms, looking like he was drifting off to sleep. As much of a pain as this situation might’ve been, one look at his sweet face was enough to calm me down. I did my best to keep in mind that he was at the center of all of this, not me.
“OK!” Ashley was right back to being excited. “So, we need to figure out all that stuff that I just brought up.”
I nodded behind me. “Let’s go to the living room.” Without waiting for her response, I started back toward the big sitting room, settling down onto the brown leather couch. Ashley followed, sitting down next to me, a little too close for my liking.
“Alright. You know what? This is actually going to be kind of fun. You and I are back together. You know, after I found out that I was pregnant with Gage, it got me thinking about you and me. I started thinking about how silly it was that we’d ever broken up in the first place.”
We would’ve had to have been dating for us to “break up.”I kept that thought to myself, not wanting to make an already volatile situation even more so.
“Anyway, now that I've brought Gage into your life, maybe we can pick things up where we left off?” Her grin deepened, turning more sensual, more seductive. “I mean, Idoremember us having all kinds of fun together back when we were seeing one another. Think of all the fun we could have again.”
As if her implication wasn’t extremely clear, she placed her fingertip on my forearm and dragged it along slowly. Didn’t seem to matter that I was holding her son; Ashley was shamelessly flirting all the same.
I moved back, putting some space between us and making it certain with my body language that I wasn’t happy with what she was doing.
“Let’s get one thing straight—my Mom is right; before we start talking about anything else, we’re going to get the matter of paternity sorted out. Nothing personal, but I'm not about to rearrange my life for a child I'm not even sure is mine.”
Once more, Ashley’s expression flashed to something else. This time, the anger was back, pure fury. She stood up, her hands in little fists.
“This is disgusting! Calling me a whore just like your mom did!”
I stood up, too. Ashley was getting more unstable by the moment, and I backed up to put a little space between me and Gage and her.
“That’s not it.”
“How is it not? You’re suggesting that I've been with so many men that we need to make sure that he’s yours! Well, guess what? I might’ve been with other guys, but the timeline matches up! He’syours! I know it!”
“Then let’s be certain. OK? We’ll have a paternity test done, and if it shows that I'm the father, we can take it from there.”
She turned her eyes into harsh little slits, and for a moment I was sure she was going to fly off the handle and do something rash, her baby in my arms or not. I held Gage closer, tilting my body a bit away from her in case she did something truly crazy.
More tears poured from her eyes, and a wailing sounding as she cried.
“You think I'm a liar!” she screamed. I’d lost count of how many rapid emotional switches she’d made since coming over. Really, there was no point in keeping track. Ashley shrugged her shoulders hard, letting the backpack drop into her hand. Once she’d had it firmly in her grasp, she flung it in my direction. I held Gage close, grabbing the bag out of the air before it came near him.
“Well, fuck you!” her words boomed through the house. “To hell with you! You’ve been out of your son’s life since he was born, maybe it’s time you finally spent some quality time together!”
Without another word, she turned and bolted out of the room, toward the front door. Mom and Dad stepped out of the kitchen as I followed Ashley.
“Screw you!” she shouted as she pulled the door open and stormed out.
I stepped over to Mom. “Can you take him?”
“Oh, of course.” I held out Gage and Mom gently took him. “It’s OK, sweet boy; you’re fine now.”
Gage safe, I hurried out the front door just in time to watch Ashley storm across the lawn, stomping her feet as she rushed to her car. Once she was next to it, she turned toward me and stuck out her middle finger before pulling open the drivers-side door, getting in, then slamming it shut. The engine turned over and, just like that, she drove off.
I was stunned. I had no idea what to say or what to think, as her car vanished around the block.
“Doesn’t look like that went well.”
I shook my head, turning toward the voice.
It was Piper. She was over on the far side of the porch, standing where I hadn’t been able to see her when I'd come out. Not only that, but Mick was also standing there with her.
“Valentino, let’s talk.”
