No answer from my friend.
“Carly.” I shut the door behind me. Shoot, something had dropped in there. What if she’d fallen? Or hurt herself? Stubbed her toe? “Carly, can you hear me?” I trotted down the hall, keys jingling in my hand, and stepped into the living room. “Carl –”
I cut off and shuddered a gasp.
Bain stood in the center of the room, eyes as blue as the Hawaiian ocean, sharp, gaze laser-focused on me. His cotton t-shirt tugged at the packed muscle beneath it, and his arms were bare of sleeves for once, exposing a vast range of tattoos, crawling up his tanned skin.
Sex with him twice and I never saw those. He never took off his shirt.
“Hazel,” he grunted.
I gripped the doorjamb and steadied myself. What the fuck? “How? Why – what are you doing here?”
“I think you know what I’m doing here,” he said, and his nostrils flared. “Did you think you could hide the truth from me?”
The words reminded me of Carly’s back in Hawaii. Ice seeped through my veins. “How did you get into my apartment?” I squeaked. “Did you break in?”
“Break in, huh? Because I’m an ex-con. Yeah, I get what you’re saying. However, if you think you’ll be able to push me out of my child’s life on some vague belief that I’m not a good influence, you have –”
“Wait,” I squeaked. He knew. Of course, he knew. Why else would he be here?
For one sweet second, I’d believed he’d come after me for another reason. God, what a dumb assumption. The silence swelled between us, and, finally, I moved across the space and took a seat on my ratty, worn sofa.
He didn’t. He watched me, towering, imposing in all his ruggedness. I could still taste his lips, smell his skin if I tried.
“Are you going to sit down or just stand there all morning?” I asked.
He blinked at me and didn’t move.
“You can be angry with me if you want,” I continued, wearily. “I didn’t keep this from you on purpose. I’ve only found out, actually, a week ago. I was figuring out how to go about contacting you. I was figuring out a whole range of things.” I removed the camera’s strap from my neck and placed the device on the coffee table. “So, you’ll forgive me if I didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity to contact a guy I knew for the entirety of a day to tell him, oh, hey, like, I’m pregnant by the way, just so you know. No biggie, guy who I don’t really know at all.”
The corner of Bain’s lip twitched, then settled.
“Which is on me, I guess. I shouldn’t have slept with you in the first place. It was reckless and stupid.”
“Fuck that,” he said.
“Huh?”
Finally, the hunk of man strode toward me and took a place on the sofa at my side. Up close, with his cologne spiking in my nostrils, and that gaze hot on my face, I experienced the same flush I had the first time he’d spoken to me.
“It wasn’t a mistake,” he said. “What we did. Nothing happens by accident.”
I blinked at him, gulped. How was I supposed to deal with this, now? He was here, and I’d do my best to put up a brave front, but what we’d shared, just those two times, and the little conversations in between, had meant more to me than two years with Jacob.
And here was Jacob’s brother, oh god. This was wrong on so many levels.
“Okay,” I said, at last, and focused on the knees of my worn jeans – yeah, that had happened, no sexy dresses today. “Okay, so obviously you know I’m pregnant. You’re here because, what? You want to be a part of the baby’s life?”
“Yes,” he said, right away. “It’s my child.”
“But you’ll want a paternity test,” I continued. “Which is totally fine. I’m happy to do that. And it’s great you want to be involved, but it’s important for you to know that you’re not obligated to be.” It was the speech I’d prepared on and off for the past few days as I worked up the courage to call him and ask to see him.
“I’m glad you’re going to keep it,” he said, softly.
My spine stiffened, and I spun toward him, at last. “Keep it! Of course, I’m going to keep it. Why wouldn’t I? It’s my baby.”
“Relax,” he said. “My brother mentioned you hadn’t decided what to do yet.”
“Your brother –” Of course. Carly had told her fiancé and her fiancé had told his brother, and now, this was the situation I was in. “That’s fine,” I said. “It’s fine that he decided to tell you, because I was going to do that anyway.”
“Were you?” he asked and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought lies of omission were all the rage in our weird-ass relationship,” I snapped.