“Dad,” I said, rushing over to him. I sat down beside him. “What the hell did she want?” It was still too early for the official divorce; they had to be separated for a year before it could go through.
What my dad said next made me so very confused: “This changes things, Laina. I hate to say it, but it changes everything.”
I didn’t like the way he said it, the weight behind it, nor did I like the heavy, sorrowful look on his face. He still didn’t focuson me; he stared at the floor as he took another sip from his drink. My dad never drank before lunch. Whatever she told him must’ve fucked him up.
But what? I couldn’t think of anything that would, according to him, change everything.
“What did she say?” I asked, glancing back at Mike, who cautiously entered the room, and in doing so, he caught my dad’s attention.
“Mike? I didn’t know you were here.” My dad sounded completely out of it. “Was I expecting you? Did we have a… a meeting?”
I met Mike’s gaze, then set a hand on my dad’s arm and told him the truth I’d danced around the last five months: “I’m seeing Mike, Dad. We’re dating. That’s why he’s here. He came with me when we heard from Kieran that Tessa was in the city.” I let that sink in, although based on the way my dad reacted—which was to say, hardly at all—I didn’t know if he actually heard me or not. The words might not have registered in his brain.
Damn. Whatever Tessa had told him really messed him up.
“Oh,” my dad said. “That’s nice. Yes, that’s very nice.” With a wince, he chugged the few small sips left in his glass and got up, wandering to the cabinet to pour himself another.
“Dad!” I yelled the word, causing him to jump. “What did Tessa want? Tell me what she said.”
He set the glass down on the small counter of the cabinet, then turned around to look at me. He sucked in a hard breath and then blurted out the thing that had him so dazed: “She’s pregnant.”
If the world could stop because of shock, surely it would have stopped right there. When those two words,she’s pregnant, fell upon my ears, I didn’t know if I wanted to be sick or if I wanted to laugh.
Tessa was pregnant. Literally the one thing that would save her, at least for now. It was comical, like some cheesy soap opera scandal that popped up out of nowhere, with no warning whatsoever.
“Do we know for sure she’s not lying?” I asked once I found my voice.I tried to think back to a few moments ago, to remember whether she’d had a belly, but damn it, I couldn’t recall. I’d been so focused on my dad.
“She’s sending over the documents from her doctor later. She’s… showing.”
I replayed the way she got up. Her belly wasn’t huge, but maybe, beneath that loose dress of hers, she did have a bit of a bulge that wasn’t there before. It still didn’t sound real. That meant, when the shit hit the fan five months ago, she was already pregnant, and she waited until now—until she was certain her pregnancy was viable and she had plenty of evidence to back it up, to resurface.
Well fucking played, that bitch.
“Fuck,” was all I could say right then. “What are we going to do?”
“What can we do?” He rubbed his face and sighed. “The things Tessa tried to have done… you, her brother—I still don’t trust her, but if she’s carrying my child—your sibling—then we need to learn to play nice—”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, I could, but I didn’t want to believe it, mostly because he wasn’t the one who was ever in danger from Tessa. I was. Kieran was. Who was to say, after she reintegrated herself into our lives, that she wouldn’t pick right back up on old habits?
And since she was pregnant with a freaking baby, there wasn’t anything we could do to stop her.
Oh, sure, there were some folks in this city that would kill her even while she was pregnant, but that was a whole different levelof fucked-up, and even I wasn’t there. I didn’t think Lola would be there, either. A baby was an innocent, basically a shield for the next few months—and then, shit, could we really get rid of her with a newborn to take care of?
This sucked badly.
“You can’t seriously expect me to play nice with the woman who wanted me out of the picture,” I said, making sure to remind my dad of her vile deeds. “She wanted me dead, Dad. She tried to have her own brother killed! You can’t trust her. Do we even know this is real?”
“Once I see the paperwork and talk to her doctor, I’ll know” was what he told me. He shook his head. “What else can we do? I won’t let her raise my child without me. I want to be in that child’s life. That child should know what it’s like to have a family—the family I could never give you.”
Though I knew my anger was at Tessa, she wasn’t here anymore. My dad was, though, and the more he said, the more ticked off I became. “So, what? I become your throwaway pancake?” When he only gave me a questioning look, I explained, “The first born. The one that suddenly doesn’t matter because something new comes along. You learned what to do and what not to do with me, and—”
“And I want to be better for this kid? Yeah, I do.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know I wasn’t a perfect dad, but I tried. God, I tried, and I’m sorry if you felt like you had to give up your childhood and be someone else in the spotlight, but sometimes life is full of sacrifices, and I don’t think I can walk away from this kid like your mother walked away from you.”
Well, how was I supposed to respond to that without sounding like a world-class asshole? Of course I never wanted any kid to lose out on having parents. My dad did his best with me, but the moment he started getting into politics, it was over. Everything changed. I had to become the good daughterthat never did anything wrong so the press wouldn’t be able to point to my dad and talk about how, if he couldn’t raise his own daughter right, how could he be expected to hold a public seat?
“I’m not saying Tessa and I will get back together—I’ll never be able to look at her the same way knowing she did what she did, but…” My dad heaved a sigh. “Someday you’ll understand.”
I wanted to tell him that I understood more than he could possibly know, that I knew more about this world and this city than he did, but there was no arguing with him right now. His mind was set. There was nothing either of us could do until he heard from her doctor and saw the papers, the ultrasound, whatever the hell it was, for himself.
