“I’m sorry, Lainey,” I tell her. “For everything. For getting caught up with Brynn and blowing you off for Dom and our scheme. And for not telling you that I’m pregnant.”
“I know Brynn can be persuasive,” she says. “When I first started working at the Cockpit, she acted like she wanted to be my friend, too. But once she realized I wasn’t going to let her push me around, she ditched me. She made me the target of her terrible disposition and made Amanda the target of her cult.”
I giggle, but still feel some tension between us, which makes me feel terrible. She senses it too because her smile tips downward slightly.
“I will admit that finding out you were pregnant through other people did bother me a little,” she says.
“A little?” I ask.
“Okay a lot,” she admits.
“I’m sorry,” I tell my friend. “I was going to tell you. The same as I was going to tell him. Honestly, I’m still getting used to the idea of it myself. It wasn’t on purpose,” I say.
“It never is,” she says with a small smile.
“I just…I didn’t want anyone to know. Not yet, anyway. And then Brynn figured it out, and I couldn’t deny it. And from the sound of it, she told Rafe. Who told Dom’s dad. Who told Dom. And now…here we are. Broken up. Not speaking. Me living with you,” I sigh, then I look back to her again. “Which, by the way, I am very grateful for, considering how terribly I’ve treated you recently. I’m so sorry, Lainey.”
“It’s all right,” she says. “You’ve had a crazy life the last couple of months.”
“Yeah,” I nod, tears surfacing in my eyes. “And it has been crazy. How did a crush on my boss turn into an arranged marriage? And a baby?”
“It’s wild for sure. But…maybe it’s not so bad,” she says.
“Yeah?” I sniff. “How do you figure?”
Lainey scoots closer to me with a smile, and we nestle further into the couch. “Well, you didn’t get married for money. So that’s a good thing. Romantic or not, I don’t think you would have been happy at the end of the day knowing that after you said I do, you would be signing papers to call the whole thing off.”
“Yeah, maybe not,” I say. “But I also thought we were heading in a different direction than that. A detour from the original plan. I thought…I don’t know…that maybe we might not get it annulled. That we might stay married and that it could work out because maybe I…” I trail off as my voice cracks.
“Because you love him and you thought he loved you too,” she says, and the tears spill.
“Yeah…”
“Well, how do you know he doesn’t?” she asks.
“Because I lied to him about being pregnant,” I say soggily.
“You didn’t lie. You just didn’t tell him yet. That’s not lying. It’s waiting for the right time.”
“Well, Dominic seems to think that I was waiting for the money. Which I wasn’t. I was just afraid, you know? Afraid of being a mom. Afraid of what he would think. Afraid that once he knew, it would spook him, and he wouldn’t want the baby. Or me.”
Lainey wraps an arm around me. “I don’t think that’s how he is,” she tells me. “Even if he was a cold, douch-y, rich guy in the beginning. He’s proven to be different from that. I know because I have seen how you act when you’re with him. You’re not the type to fall in love with an asshole. You want true love. And I think you found it, which is scary in itself.”
“Especially when you aren’t sure they feel the same,” I say, wiping my nose with the back of my wrist.
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Lainey suggests.
“All I’ve done is try to talk to him,” I tell her. “And he doesn’t want to listen. He even took the ring back.”
“Maybe he wants to re-propose? Do it right?” She asks, but while Lainey is just trying to be optimistic right now, she’s really reaching.
“I don’t think so,” I shake my head. “I’ve never seen him that angry. I’d love for all of that to be true. But everything in me says it’s not. It might just be mid-pregnancy heartburn, but my gut is telling me that my baby and I are going to be on our own.”
Chapter 43
Dominic
“You won’t haveto worry about him anymore,” Niko tells me as we sit in his office at the Cockpit. “Rafe will never fight here again; that’s for damn sure. We might be pushing the legal boundaries on boxing, but I draw the line at weapons.”
