Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

For a second it looked like she was going to say yes, but then her face fell and went blank. “No.”

Oh, Senor Suave, you’ve got a tale to tell me at some point!

“Shame, it’s life changing.”

Refusing to bend even with that, she pointed out, “You still haven’t told me why you’re so certain it’s yours. Like I said, in this day and age, a lot of men would call bullshit and demand a DNA test.”

The answer to this was so simple to me. “Because she’s Lily. Like I said, I’ve noticed her, I’ve seen how she acts, and I’ve only just touched upon who she is as a person. But even with that, I know the baby’s mine. She’s not the type to go around doing what we did, and I felt like shit while I was away in case she felt guilty for doing it, or if she felt like I considered her less than the awesome she is. I feel like I need to make that up to her, because at no point did I look at her as a one-night stand.”

“Good, because I’d kill you,” Beau told me straight faced. I didn’t doubt it for a second.

“I know we need to get to know each other, and I know we need to take this slowly, but I also know that she’s different and special. I thought about the baby while I was in jail tonight…”

“Maybe leave that out of the stories you tell your grandkids,” Beau suggested.

“I tried to look at it from the point of view of – how do I know it’s mine? But not once did it make sense to me or even strike me as possible.” Unable to hold her eyes when I said the next bit, I focused on the hole in the knee of my jeans from the fight in the bar and started pulling at the threads. “I know people look at me as a joke, like I walk around with my head up my ass, but I don’t. In high school, my best friend had depression and tried to commit suicide. It wasn’t until I found him unresponsive in his bedroom that any of us, even his family, knew he had a problem. When they got him to hospital, they cut his clothes off, and he had deep cuts all over his legs and scars everywhere.”

“Holy shit,” Beau whispered, shifting slightly, but I still couldn’t look up to see what she was doing.

“He always went around with a big smile on his face and was the joker in our group, so none of us saw the signs. During it, I started to think about shit like what problems I had, and I rationalized every single one that I had at the time, and not one of them was worth cutting myself or ending life for. I still do it, every damned day. Is this that big of a deal? No. Do I feel I have no way out? No. Would I be better off dead? Hell, no. I also got to see the effect it had on his family, the self-blame, the devastation, all of it, and I never wanted my family to have that.” I could still see it clearly in my head, his mom sobbing into her husband’s chest and blaming herself for not making him tell her every single problem that he had. “When I went home after it, my parents asked me if I’d ever felt like I didn’t want to be alive anymore, and for a moment I saw them in his parent’s shoes, blaming themselves for not doing more for me. I said no, and made a promise to myself that I’d never give them a reason to worry about me – well, in that way,” I added, wincing at what I’d put them through not just tonight, but over the years.

Beau burst out laughing. “How did they take you getting arrested? They looked ok about it.”

“Eh, they understood. They weren’t happy obviously, but they understood it. Plus, they found out they were going to be grandparents again, so they were onboard with that. We almost lost my grandpa six weeks ago, and I think it put life into perspective for them, so they’ve started to rationalize the weight and severity of things that happen, too.”

“I was relieved to hear your grandpa was ok,” Beau murmured. “I’ve met him a couple of times when he’s been here and he’s a great guy.”

Nodding my head, I didn’t voice what I really felt about it. Hearing the news about him had been like someone had sucked all the oxygen out of the world at the same time as tearing my heart out of my chest. My grandparents were my idols, they always had been, and although I knew life had an expiry date, I also knew that Hurst and Linda Townsend’s were decades away from theirs – something which I’d taken entirely for granted. Almost losing him had hit me hard, and if I’d stayed still after he’d collapsed and we’d found out how sick he was, I would have shattered – which took me back to the promise I’d made myself after Matt’s attempt at suicide in high school. If I’d shattered, would I ever have contemplated ending it all and putting my parents through what Matt’s had gone through? And at a time when they were going through hell at the prospect of losing Gramps? I didn’t want to even think like that, so I’d gone with Adam to find Scarlett and Tuck, and I hadn’t stopped the whole time.