Once I take that step, the rest come easier. I walk to the front door, take my cap off because I’m trying to be polite, then knock.
The father answers the door. He stares at me, tilts his head to the side, then turns back towards the table. “Rachel? I think this one’s for you.”
I go to step inside, and he plants a hand squarely in the middle of my chest. “How about you wait until she invites you, okay?”
I bow my head. “Okay.”
Rachel looks at me with curiosity more than anything. She flicks a glance at her father, then back at whoever is holding the baby, then to me. “I’m just going outside for a sec.”
“You’re sure, honey?” the man holding the baby,mybaby, asks.
A dull fire sparks in my chest, igniting, burning. This isn’t right. They’re excluding me and I’ve done nothing to warrant the treatment. I saved her from a monster. That should be a cause for celebration, not cold shoulders.
I close my eyes and move back a step, giving her room to come out on the porch. She shuts the door behind her. The action doesn’t make it seem likely I’ll being invited in tonight.
This isn’t a welcome. This is prelude to a dismissal.
“You’ve been on the news a lot,” she says with a small smile. “I wasn’t expecting—”
“You had the baby.”
She gives a slow nod. “That happens at the end of the pregnancy.”
Her flippancy sends another hot coal into the fire now burning inside me. “You didn’t think you should keep in contact about the birth? You didn’t think that as the father, I might want to be kept informed?”
Rachel breaks eye contact, staring at her feet. She drags the tip of her sneaker along the slats of the porch, kicking it against the mat when she’s done.
My hands fist and I force them to relax, only to have them do the same again, so I clasp them together, then fold my arms instead. It feels safer.
“Rachel?”
She looks at me, full in the face, and I can read it from her expression before she finds the words. “You’re not. Alec’s the father.”
I go to ask who the fuck is that, but it’s obvious. The man inside. Probably the man she was seeing all along.
One drunken fumble on the couch, one night, and I still believed her. Why was I so stupid?
No. Not stupid. Why was I so gullible? Why didn’t I question what she was telling me?
“You told me…” I shake my head as the words fail. She already knows what she told me. And when. She told me and she invited her arsehole of an ex around to the house to break the news to him in front of me.
The connections break apart, retreat, then plug back into their new sockets; the places where they should have been all along.
“You used me.”
My voice grows in volume and Rachel jerks back, fear showing on her face before she has time to conjure a more considered reaction.
She lied to me, got me excited, ignited my protective urges then pointed me at her abusive ex and let us fight it out. To the death, even if that wasn’t quite what she’d planned.
My dreams of a family rip out of me; like losing a vital organ.
“You used me,” I say again, not to hurt her but to cement the knowledge in my brain. My fingers dig into each arm so deeply, they’ll leave bruises. “You let me take the blame.”
“Nobody asked you to beat him to death,” she slams back, lip curling. “When you said you’d protect me, I had no idea you were going to do that.”
“Because neither did I.”
I twist around, burning. Burning so hot steam comes out of my mouth where it meets the cooling night air.
