“Were you looking for me just to stare, or was there a point—” I started, wanting to get whatever this was over with so that I could drink my beers in peace, but she cut me off.
“I’m pregnant.” Darcy’s voice was quiet, but her words ricocheted through me, tearing their way from my ears to my brain like shrapnel from a bomb. Because what she’d dropped on mewasa bomb. “And it might be yours.”
If Ralph thought I was quiet earlier this morning, it had nothing on the stillness emanating from me now.
Pregnant.
Ice replaced the blood in my veins, freezing everything in me until I was numb with pain. I couldn’t move—couldn’t breathe. My heart raced at a thunderous pace in my ears, every beat more deafening than the last. My hand tightened around the beer bottle as panic flooded through me, and part of me expected it to shatter in my grip. I was typically calm in stressful situations, my fight-or-flight response always firmly locked in the fight mode—it’s part of what made me a good firefighter—but in this instant, the urge to flee was more than tempting.
No. There was no way she was pregnant with my kid. It wasn’t possible. We’d had sex one time. The odds of that resulting in a pregnancy had to be infinitesimal.
But not impossible,a voice in my head reminded me and I quickly silenced it.
She raised her eyebrows expectantly. “Hello? Did you hear me? I said I’m—”
I held up my hand and tried very hard to keep all the feelings raging through my body out of my next words. “I heard you.”
She sat back in her seat. “Well?”
I glared at her. “I thought you had an IUD.”
Offense morphed her features, and I couldn’t blame her. There was no gentleness to my tone, and the statement was dripping with accusation, even though if what she said was true, I was just as much to blame.
“It expired. I didn’t know and my doctor’s office had the wrong phone number, so they couldn’t reach me.”
Of course it did.
But wait . . . Her words replayed in my head.
“What do you mean itmightbe mine? There were others?”
Darcy’s gaze narrowed and her expression turned murderous. “I know you’re not about to slut shame me right now considering we are both well aware of your extracurricular activities.”
“I don’t give two shits about how many people you slept with. That’s not what I was asking.”
Some of the poised tension left her muscles, but her expression remained irate and she hesitated a moment before speaking. “There was one other around the time frame my OB gave me.”
Something in my gut hardened and twisted at her confession, but the rest of me was relieved, if only marginally.
“It’s not mine.”
Her mouth turned up in a sarcastic half-smile. “Funny. He said the same thing, and I’m not all that religious, so it’s got to be one of yours.”
I leaned forward slightly, my voice low. “It’s. Not. Mine.”
Darcy met me in the middle, her forearms pressed against the table mirroring my own position.
“Saying it slower doesn’t make it anymore true. You just sound like a jackass.” She sat back in the booth and took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t want anything from you—”
“Good because I’ve got nothing to give.” I chugged the rest of my beer, grabbed my helmet, and exited the booth so fast I moved the bench backwards.
The slamming of my beer bottle on the bartop had the bartender rushing over with my tab, confusion and concern etched across his features. He glanced over my shoulder to Darcy and then back to me, apparently reading the situation as fine enough not to need his involvement. I haphazardly scrawled my signature at the bottom, and went to storm out of the building, but Darcy’s voice cut through the dangerous brew of emotions bubbling beneath the surface.
“You’re seriously not even going to talk to me about this?” Darcy called from where I left her in the booth.
“No,” I rumbled loudly back, still making my way to the door.
“Wow! You know what? You’re a coward, Archer! A fucking coward!”
