For a handful of seconds, I froze, my back still to her, with what would no doubt be a vicious retort on the tip of my tongue. I was a lot of things, but a coward wasn’t one of them. I let the door to the bar slam shut behind me without so much as a backwards glance in her direction, not caring if the act solidified my position in her mind.
I fired off a quick text to Harrison, letting him know that I was cancelling, and was barely seated on my bike before I started it, and gassed it out of the parking lot.
The trees were dark blurs, and street lamps whizzed by without ever truly coming into focus, as I raced down back roads going far too fast, but not caring enough to slow down. I needed the rush to drown out my thoughts.
The baby wasn’t mine. It couldn’t be. I wasn’t denying it because I couldn’t handle the responsibility; I’d been responsible for more than my fair share of crap since I was a kid. I was denying it because I was the last person on Earth who should be a dad. Well, second to last, and I wasn’t about to be responsible for screwing up some poor kid’s life before they’d had a chance to live it. And I would too.
For the sake of that baby, and for the sake of Darcy too, she needed it to not be mine.
EIGHT
DARCY
Why had I thought that would go any better than it had with Liam? Of the two of them, Archer was the more hotheaded. Not that I knew Liam all that well, or at all really, but he was a lawyer. In the movies, they always kept their cool, even when getting ripped apart in a courtroom. They were like robots—cold, lifeless, and too intelligent for their own good.
However, I did know Archer. Well, I knewofhim.
He was in the same grade in high school as Garrett, but the two had drastically different experiences—were drastically different people. Garrett was our school’s golden boy. He wasn’t the quarterback of the football team like people expected when they looked at him, but he was just as loved, if not more so. Everyone knew who he was, students and teachers alike, and they probably all had a story to tell about him. He excelledacademically and won “Everyone’s Best Friend” as an accolade his senior year.
On the other hand, with the exception of when Archer was getting called down to the principal’s office, or getting pulled from the cafeteria by the police, I think he could’ve disappeared from the school entirely without anyone ever noticing. Either he used to have five charcoal gray hoodies that were exactly alike, or he wore the same one to school every single day—the hood always up, his head always down.
Garrett and Archer weren’t exactly enemies, but they weren’t friends either. When I’d asked Garrett about him my freshman year, he told me to steer clear of Archer Mack. That he was trouble, and not the skip-school-for-fun, cut-class-to-smoke-a-cigarette kind either. He wasserioustrouble. But whenever I’d stolen glances at the mysterious, dark-haired boy in the corner of the cafeteria, that wasn’t the impression I got. I couldn’t explain it, but from what I could tell, he did well in his classes, he was polite to teachers, he minded his own business. He wasn’t the stereotypical high school delinquent mouthing off and playing pranks. Archer didn’t seem like trouble; he seemed like the boy who trouble always happenedto.
But right now, I was starting to think that Garrett might’ve been right about him. Not that I’d ever admit that to another living soul. But if Archer was the father of this baby, I was most definitely in trouble because he was a piece of work.
Shouting across the bar wasn’t my finest moment, but his refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he was the father was hitting me harder than Liam’s had. Our hookup at The Crooked Quill felt different, and maybe that was because sex with Archer was infinitely better, or maybe it was because I thought his “we should do that again” comment meant he liked me at least a little bit. Enough to at least have a civilized conversation with me like adults.
Regardless, his words stung. So, yeah, I called him a coward. Loudly. Across a near-empty dive bar.
Grabbing a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream out of the freezer, I made my way to the couch. I had Linnea on the phone in under a minute.
“How’d it go with Liam? What’d he say?”
Okay, I guess we were skipping right over greetings tonight.
“Oh, dandy. He called me a liar, denied any potential paternal claim, and essentially told me to abort it before it ruins my life.” I shoved a spoonful of ice cream into my mouth before I finished the sentence, the last few words coming out slightly slurred, as the dessert began melting over my tongue.
Lins hissed in a breath. “Yikes. Okay, well we suspected this phase of the plan wasn’t exactly going to go super great. When are you going to reach out to Archer?”
A sarcastic laugh bubbled out of me. “I already did. I actually just got back from that.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “You what? That wasn’t the plan! What’d you say? What’d he say?”
Gosh I loved my sister. “No, it wasn’t the plan. I stopped by The Crooked Quill for—”
“You went to a bar? Tell me you didn’t drink! You know the one glass of wine thing is a myth, right?”
I suddenly loved my sister a little less. “Will you shut up and let me talk?” I waited and took her silence as a begrudging yes. “No, I didn’t drink alcohol; I’m not an idiot. I was hungry and the only thing that sounded good was their bacon cheeseburger. Anyway, I was literally about to leave when Archer walked in, and I figured, why have two sucky days when I could have one?”
Her sigh is mainly apologetic, but also partly relieved, as if a small piece of her really expected me to say that I had a Jack and Coke. “Okay, sorry, I know you’re not an idiot. You just scared me for a second.”
I rolled my eyes and busied my mouth with another bite of ice cream.
“So, what’d he say?”
“Pretty much the same thing in a lot fewer words, and a whole lot broodier.” I waved my spoon in the air and lowered my voice to imitate Archer, but landed a whole lot closer to Batman territory. “The kid isn’t mine, it’s the other guy’s. I have nothing to give you.”
Linnea clucked her tongue. “Wow! Okay, so two for two in the asshole department. You sure know how to pick ‘em.”
