“Hey,” I mumbled.
Just as I predicted, she let me have it.
“You asshole! What the hell is wrong with you? I just got off the phone with Cade and he told me what you did.” She hit me with one of the baguettes. “What’s gotten into you? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
I squinted in the bright sunlight. “You’re assaulting me with bread, and I’m the crazy one?”
She paused mid-hit. “Yes, you are! Because to do what you did you must be fucking crazy.”
She hit me again.
“I get it. I’m scum.”
“You’re not scum, Caleb. What you did was scummy.”
“It’s not what you think.”
Again, she whacked me with her bread bat.
“It’s always what we think. You guys think you can just say that and we’ll believe you—”
“I didn’t fuck her,” I interrupted her.
She stopped the bread assault and looked mildly surprised. “You didn’t?”
“No. For fuck’s sake, I might be an asshole but I’m not that much of one.”
“Then, what?”
“I missed the sonogram. I promised her I would be there every step of the way but I missed the sonogram because I was so fucking pissed at her for what I overheard. I let her down, okay, but I didn’t let her down by fucking someone else.”
“So you didn’t get balls deep in some club skank?”
“No.” I frowned. Why did everyone think I was such a douche? “Tiffani tried. She will always try. When she didn’t get any interest out of me, she spent the night with Grunt. He’s still passed out at the clubhouse. Ask him yourself.”
“Then why did you let Honey think you did?”
“Because if she thinks I am capable of doing that, then what’s the point in trying to convince her otherwise? She’s already made her mind up about me. I told her I wasn’t going to be with anyone. Yet she thinks the first chance I get, I go running in the direction of another woman. If that’s what she thinks of me—”
“Jesus Christ, Caleb, stop being such a fucking pussy,” she snapped, echoing her husband’s words of less than an hour ago. “You go and see your girl, and you let her know that you didn’t do anything with Tiffani.”
“She doesn’t want to hear it, Indy. She doesn’t see me as anything more than the sperm donor of her baby.”
Indy rolled her eyes. “When did you become such a fucking princess?”
“Harsh,” I replied.
My hangover was really ramping up in the heat of the day. My head pounded and I had to squint because everything was fuzzy.
“Oh, fuck . . .” Indy’s eyes suddenly went round. She paused and then grabbed the front of my t-shirt. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…”
“What?” I asked, a little confused.
She looked at me and then to the ground. My eyes followed and saw the puddle of water on the pavement.
“My water just broke!”
It took a moment for her words to register.
Then they hit me like a punch to the face.
“Fuck!” I had no idea what to do. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
But Indy didn’t hear me. She was bent over with pain and let out an almighty cry.
I dropped the sunflowers and searched for my phone, patting my cut and hoping like hell I hadn’t left it in the clubhouse.
Indy bent over in pain again. “Oh God!”
My phone was in the back pocket of my jeans and I quickly dialed 911.
“There’s no time . . . this baby . . . it’s coming . . .”
“Don’t say that!” I looked at her, alarmed. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
Her hand bit into my shirt. “You listen to me and you listen to me good, Caleb Calley. Your niece or nephew is about to spill out onto this goddamn pavement.” She gritted her teeth. “Now get me inside that goddamn florist before I give birth out here in the street!”
HONEY
“You know, he didn’t sleep with that girl,” Indy said. She was resting in her hospital bed with her newborn son cradled in her arms.
For someone who’d only given birth three hours earlier, she looked incredible.
“He didn’t?” I asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
Indy shook her head. “No. Grunt did.”
“Then why did he let me think he did?”
“He overheard you talking to Autumn. Heard what you said about him not being suitable. It hurt him. More than he thought, I guess, and he didn’t know what to do with it so he went and did what he has always done . . . get drunk and hang out with his club brothers.”
“Can I ask how you know all of this?”
She looked sheepish. “I might have assaulted him with bread.”
I laughed. “I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds awesome.”
She smiled. “I saw him, not long after you did. By then Cade had already told me what had happened at the clubhouse between you and him. So when I came across him at the market, I attacked him with my baguette.”