“Ugh. Men.” She looked back over her shoulder. “No, she’s not here, Lukas!” she called out loudly.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“It sure looks like it’s your baby!” she yelled again.
“Pepper…” I warned. She was making this so much worse.
“Oh, you can prove it?” she called out and then threw a look back to me.
I nodded in confirmation.
“I’m not supposed to let you in,” she shouted. “But if you have proof, I know Eric would give you the benefit of the doubt and listen to you before making any snap judgments!”
“Hell no!” he yelled, but Pepper had already let me in.
“Thank you, Pepper,” I whispered as I kissed her cheek.
“Anytime,” she replied, following me through her foyer and into the living room where Eric sat on the massive couch, flanked by Porter on one end and Noble on the other.
“Get out,” Eric growled.
“It’s not his kid,” Porter said like it was the hundredth time. “I’ve been trying to tell him,” he said to me with a shrug.
“I thought you were here for me!” Eric snapped.
“I am. You’d regret hitting him once you realize that it’s not his kid.”
“I’m just here for the snacks,” Noble replied, grabbing another chip. “But I’ve told him it’s not your kid. Not with the way you’ve turned into a monk over that girl.”
“That girl is my sister,” Eric hissed.
“That girl is the love of my life,” I countered.
Eric moved to stand, and Porter and Noble both clamped down on his shoulders, sending him back to the couch.
“You have proof that baby isn’t yours?” Eric growled.
My hackles rose. Suddenly it was all too much. I’d fucking had it.
“Yeah, I do. And you know what? I’m not giving it to you.” I shook my head.
“What?” Eric stood, and the others let him. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve been one of my best friends for years, Gentry. Years. You know me. You know I wouldn’t lie to you, and I shouldn’t have to show you a fucking piece of paper to prove myself. I’ve proved myself to you every day since we signed those contracts.”
“Uh...Lukas, I mean, if you have the proof…” Porter raised his eyebrows in a hint.
“No, man, he’s right,” Noble countered. “There’s been zero proof that the baby is his. None but the word of that blonde. That’s it. Why the hell should Gentry take her side over Lukas’s?” He snagged another chip and munched.
Eric stared me down as the two debated.
I didn’t look away.
“Because it’s his sister. You have to respect that. He can’t just blindly trust because they’re friends. Not when it’s family,” Hudson said.
“Fuck that. Lukas is family. You’re family. I’m family. We’re all fucking family, except Lukas really is fucking the family...but come to think of it, Eric did too when he hooked up with Pepper,” Noble said.
Eric rolled his eyes.
I kept mine locked on his.
“So you’re telling me if one of us hurt your brother, you wouldn’t second-guess that shit?” Hudson reached for the grapes.
“One, Nicholas is capable of taking care of himself, trust me. And two, if one of you was fucking my brother, I think your respective ladies would have something to say about that. Plus, he doesn’t swing that way, so he’d probably have something to say about it, too.”
“I’ve seen Nicholas play,” Pepper added in, earning a raised eyebrow from Eric. “That man is definitely capable of taking care of himself. Have you seen those thighs? They’re the size of tree trunks. Man the NFL knows how to pick ‘em.”
Eric broke eye contact to shoot his wife a look that said he didn’t find that assessment appropriate.
Pepper just shrugged. “You know I love you, and I’d climb you like a tree any day, baby.” She tossed him a wink and went back to watching the game.
Eric’s jaw flexed as he looked back at me.
“Here’s the deal,” I said softly. “I’m going to say this once, only because they’re both right. You should trust me, but you should ask me to verify. She’s your sister. So here we go. Her name is Blair Williams. I slept with her once at the Labor Day party last year. That next morning, I went for a run with those two,” I nodded toward Hudson and Noble, “and he told me to keep my dick in my pants if I wanted to prove myself to your sister. Your sister who still had a boyfriend.”
“Truth,” Hudson confirmed.
“After that run, the next woman I touched was Faith. It was at the masquerade ball, and she was rebounding hard. That guy fucked her over.”
Eric’s jaw flexed again, but at least I knew he was listening.
“I stopped it. I walked away because I was already so damn in love with her, and she was hurting. She didn’t want me, she wanted someone, and that wasn’t enough for me. Not after being celibate for months and making the changes in my life I knew I needed to if I wanted to be worthy of her. The next woman after that? Faith. And Faith. And Faith. That’s it. I haven’t touched any other woman.”
Eric swallowed, and his shoulders dropped an inch.
“Do I have the proof? Yeah. And I’ll show it to her, but not you. You should be able to take me at my word, otherwise why the hell are we friends? Faith, I’ll fight for. I’ll humble myself. I’ll throw my fucking pride on the floor and get over the fact that I’ve never given her a reason not to trust me, and she still won’t. I’ll do that for her because I love her more than I love my own pride. But you? No. Either you believe me right now, or you don’t. Your choice. I’m done proving to you that I love Faith.”
“Damn,” Hudson whistled.
“If this was a rom-com, they’d be kissing right now,” Noble added.
“What’s it going to be?” I challenged Eric. “Do you trust me or not?”
He sighed, and let his head roll back, shutting his eyes. When he opened them again, he narrowed his eyes at me but nodded.
“Yeah, I know where she is. I’ll tell you.”
Chapter 20
Faith
“You want lunch?” Harper asked, hovering in the doorway of Sawyer’s childhood home. His mom had taken us in without so much as a blink when we’d shown up—me needing space to clear my head.
Which still wasn’t even close to clear.
“No, thanks,” I said, and curled myself tighter on the bed.
Sure, I knew I was being a bit…melodramatic, but I’d barely slept last night. I’d been too busy watching Lukas’s news break the internet. I kept hoping it would somehow be discredited. That one of the blogs or news sites would issue a retraction and explain that woman was a lying piece of tr
ash digging for gold, and Lukas hadn’t touched her.
But a retraction never came.
Only an endless stream of how he and the supermodel would have the most gorgeous baby on the planet.
I’d turned off my phone after the sixth site.
Shut down my laptop.
And luckily, Sawyer didn’t have a TV in his old room or I would’ve had to turn that off too.
Sleep still evaded me.
“Hey,” Harper said, sinking on the bed, her slight weight rolling me toward her. She smoothed her hand over my back. “I don’t even know what to say in this situation,” she said. “I can’t bash his character, like your ex, because…”
I uncurled from myself and flipped over to face her. She laid down on the pillow next to mine, facing me. “Because what?”
“Don’t hate me,” she said, her eyes wary.
“I could never hate you.” She had to know that. Especially when her and Sawyer hadn’t hesitated to take my sobbing mess of a self here not one hour after I’d “moved out.” Harper had driven us here and Sawyer had made an ice cream and bubble bath run. He’d bought six different kinds of bubble bath because he’d had no clue what either of us used, but it was a sweet gesture all the same.
“I can’t rake him over the coals like your ex because this wasn’t his fault.”
I narrowed my gaze. “He slept with a woman, likely unprotected, while he was actively trying to pursue me.” The words were clipped, pained. The fresh jab at the idea of him being bare inside that woman—something he’d said he’d only done with me—made me feel twenty times more foolish.
“I know, I know,” she said. “But he obviously didn’t mean to get her pregnant. Mistakes happen. But your ex? He chose to cheat on you. Chose to be the asshole.”
I rubbed my palms over my face.
“Lukas…when you two were actually together…it was like you were the only woman on the planet. Hell, even before you two even kissed. He called you his queen, Faith. And he always watched you like one too, like you had some kind of magnetic pull on him. Even Noble said Lukas had been pining after you long before you even broke up with your ex.”