Dirty, Reckless Love (Boys of Jackson Harbor 3)
“Do you think that’s weird? Her moving home after all these years of hardly even visiting?”
“Brayden offered her a good opportunity.”
“Yeah, but there’s gotta be a reason she didn’t want to be here, and now she’s suddenly changed her mind.”
Colton shrugs. “It’ll be good for her to be closer to her mom. She’s had it hard for the last few years.”
Is there anything you want to tell me, Colton? I swallow back the question. I’d planned to ask Levi but changed my mind at the last minute. I’m not sure Levi would even know, but either way, I want to hear it from Colton instead. “Have you ever met her kid?”
He shakes his head, but that angry line of his jaw ticks. “I didn’t even know he existed until a few months ago.”
“When I was in the bathroom, I heard a couple of girls talking about Molly. Maybe they went to high school with her or something? They were really gossiping hard.”
He looks at me now. “You can’t believe the shit people around here say about Molly. Bitches like that aren’t going to make it any easier for her to come back.”
“It sounds like it’s pretty important to you. Her living here, I mean.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I can’t take care of her or help her with the kid when she’s so far away.”
That twists something inside me. Part of me wants Colton to worry about taking care of me and our kid, even though he doesn’t know I’m pregnant. That part is curling up into a ball, pulling a blanket over her head, and hiding from this conversation. The other part of me is sitting up and demanding answers. “The girls said Noah is yours,” I blurt.
He stills. When he finally nods, it’s so weird, as if I’m watching this from the other side of a TV screen. His reaction is more as if I’m delivering news and he’s processing it, and not like he’s confirming something that could change our whole lives. “Yep. Kid’s mine.”
Nausea lurches in my stomach, and I pull the car over and throw it into park so I can rest my head on the steering wheel.
“Don’t be dramatic,” he mutters.
“Kid’s mine. That’s all you’re going to say?” What a fucking screwed-up time to find myself knocked up. “Is this why you two have been spending so much time on the phone? Talking about Noah?”
He nods. “Noah, and how we’re going to get her to move home.”
My eyes burn with tears, and Colton just looks irritated that I’m bothering him with my questions. “How could you keep this from me?”
“Ellie, don’t make this about you. It’s nobody’s business but Molly’s.”
I straighten. “You don’t think that your baby mama moving back into town with your four-year-old son affects me at all? Your life is about to change. What happens when she moves back, Colton?”
“What do you mean?” He sounds tired. He’s checked out of this conversation. I know he’s buzzed and it’s not fair to talk about our future at this moment, but I’ve reached a breaking point.
“You never even told me you slept with her, and now I’m supposed to just be cool with that fact that she has your kid? A kid you found out was yours months ago but never told me about? None of this makes any sense. You’re not behaving like a normal human being.”
“How do you want me to behave? You want me to throw a fit? To scream at her for not telling me sooner? To bitch her out for not letting me protect her?”
I frown. “Protect her from what?”
He shakes his head. “It’s just been a lot for me to process. Get off my back.”
“You should have told me.”
“I just did,” he mutters. He glares at me. “Are you going to drive us home, or do I need to do it?”
I stare at him for a long time, and when I realize I don’t have the energy to get more from this conversation, I signal to pull back onto the road. I wipe the tears from my eyes and head home. I know without a doubt that if I weren’t pregnant, Colton wouldn’t be sleeping in my house after the way he’s ignored me the last two months, let alone after that conversation. But I am pregnant. And I’m terrified of raising this baby on my own.
“Listen, I’m sorry.” He reaches across the console and brushes my arm with his fingertips. The touch is so rare and so desperately craved that I practically melt under it. “I’m sorry. Molly and I wanted to tell you together. We were going to do it tomorrow. I just have a lot of other shit on my mind, too.”
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” I ask. He’s already pulled away, cut off the contact as soon as it began.
“Nah. You’re good.” He looks out the window again, and I can tell by the tense line of his shoulders and the set of his jaw that there is more. Plenty more. But he has no intention of sharing it with me tonight. Will he ever? Or have I become nothing more than a nosy roommate?