“I didn’t hear that much about you or anything. Reginald never mentioned you except once, and it was lucky he did, or I wouldn’t have known how to find you to come and beg you to help.”
I don’t mean to search his face, but I guess I do. He sighs this long, drawn-out, windy gust.
“I’m still extremely thankful that you did. I know I came to you, and my guilt trip game was strong, but you did have a choice,” I add.
He watches me like he’s trying to figure out if what I just said is code for something entirely different. I’ve never been good at silence or doing anything awkward, so I let my mouth run on.
“It’s not my place to say this, but I do know Reg’s mom a little better, and I can see why maybe things didn’t work out between you two. You said you’d been used before, and that’s what put you off believing me. You thought I was there to extort money as some kind of sham orchestrated by Reg and Candice. That’s dark, but if it was bad before or after Reg was born, I can understand why you reacted the way you did.” I’ve confessed this much, talking so fast that my words all cram together, so I might as well just keep burying myself. “I thought you were a first-class jerk, and I cursed your ass seven ways to Sunday, all while I drove back to Harrisburg that morning. I’d like to apologize to you right now. And if my curses took hold and have anything to do with your tummy, I’m doubly sorry.”
His brows crash down. It’s the first frown he’s given me through everything I just said. He should not look so adorable with a side ofpanting hotnessjust by lowering his eyebrows like that. “It was solely the cabbage. I’m feeling much better now.”
“Did Candice hurt you?” Whyyyyyy can I not shut up and just eat this cheesy goodness with the questionable bread?
It takes him a minute to answer, and I’m about to blurt that he doesn’t owe me an explanation when he seems to make up his mind about something.
“I was sixteen, and it’s a long story. The thing that hurt wasn’t that I felt targeted or used. It was that she threatened to tell some pretty nasty lies to anyone who would listen if I didn’t pay her every month and stay away from her child. She wanted my money, not me. Her family would have liked the connections, but she found a way to be free and live her life without answering to anyone. She didn’t, to the best of my knowledge, help her family out at all. They’re old money, and they’d run out.”
Okay…what? How did I not know any of this? I’ve never met Reginald’s grandparents.
My lunch is totally forgotten, and I feel sick to my stomach. I can’t imagine how I would feel if someone treated me that way.
“That’s…I’m so sorry that happened to you. What makes it even worse is that she doesn’t care about helping her family. I always knew she was self-absorbed, but that’s an entirely new level. I wish Reg knew.”
“I don’t want him to know these things,” Warrick says sharply. He scrapes a hand over his bearded jaw, the facial hair bristling against his fingertips. He moderates his tone, glancing over at me sheepishly. “He needs to formulate his opinion himself, and it’s hard to do that with family. I thought maybe he’d see it as he got older and would want to reach out, but even so, there are things he should never know.”
“You were young when you had him.”
“Yes. We were both sixteen.”
Not only can I not imagine someone using me like that, wounding me, but I would never have recovered if it happened to me so young. I can’t even comprehend bringing a child into the world at that age. I can barely even think about doing it now, and I’m twenty-four.
He looks like he’s fighting a battle with himself. Just when I think that’s it, he’s not going to go on, and we’re dropping the subject, he does.
“I thought I was in love. I was sixteen, so what did I know? We dated for a while. We were teenagers, and I thought she felt the same way about me. We did what people calledfoolingaround, I suppose, but it was never that kind of fooling around.”
I’m not the only one who is scarlet anymore.
“I was scared of disrespecting her. I might have been a teenager, but I was also infatuated with her. I thought she’d hung the entire galaxy. I wanted to wait until marriage. I was probably the only sixteen year old who even considered such a thing. She…” He has to look away, fixing his eyes firmly on the kitchen windows that overlook the sprawling backyard.
“She told me one day, months later, that she was pregnant. It wasn’t possible. But she didn’t try to convince me it was possible or anything. She had a plan, and that plan didn’t involve my innocence or the facts. Only the things that could be perceived as. She went right to my parents and said I’d taken…taken advantage of her. Then, she demanded they pay to keep her quiet. She’d already told her friends and her family that she was having a baby, and I was the father, but she said she’d keep quiet about the other stuff if she got a big payout. The thing about old-money families is that they care primarily about their reputation. Even if we were new money, threats of that nature wouldn’t have just ruined my life and tainted my family. It would have destroyed the business.”
Ugh, that sick feeling is growing more and more legit with every passing second. I’m worried I have gas issues now, and I certainly haven’t eaten any cabbage.
“My parents wanted us to get married, but she refused. She rode it out until Reginald was born and then demandedadditional payments to keep her quiet. If I lawyered up to try and fight her, she’d make sure I never saw him again.”
“Oh my god!” I yelp like I just set my palm on a hot burner.
“You believe me?” he asks. His whole body is on lockdown, so tense and stiff that it’s like he’s been cryogenically frozen and would shatter with a single touch. I can tell how much that question costs him. It flays me wide open, seeing the painful vulnerability on his face.
“Why would I not believe you?”
He shrugs like it is nothing. “My own parents didn’t.”
That injustice tears my chest in half. I can’t even imagine something like that happening to me, not just that kind of accusation but any accusation, and having my family not be there for me. There’s nothing they haven’t stood behind me on, including, most recently, almost becoming fish food.
What Warrick is truly saying slowly trickles past my immediate anger and astonishment.
“You’re not Reg’s dad,” I whisper-yell.
