Liam suddenly looked like a shame-filled puppy.
Pull it together, dude.
“You know,” Jace went on, totally oblivious, “food, music, all the usual stuff. I’m breaking out the grill for the first time this year. Mom and Dad will be there too.”
Great.I had exactly forty-eight hours to glue my shattered life together—enough to survive a party with my two best friends, who knew I was secretly pregnant, and my brother’s best friend, who was secretly my baby daddy. Add everyone else I knew ontop of that, including my own parents, and things were going just wonderfully.
Maybe I’d get lucky and Liam would bail on this, like he had on everything else so far.
“Wanna grab a bite and tell me more about that shiner?” Jace asked.
I caught the hesitation flicker across Liam’s face, but he nodded anyway.
As Jace headed for the door, Liam lingered behind.
“Can we talk tonight?” he whispered. “I can come over after work.”
“Not a chance,” I whispered back. “Have a great day,Sheriff.”
I gave him a sarcastic wave before disappearing into the back, leaving him standing there alone.
When I entered the kitchen, I found Clara standing in the corner, quietly mixing cake batter, probably eavesdropping on the entire conversation.
The moment I saw her, my eyes widened—like it was the first time I’d actually allowed myself to express how I was feeling.
She caught my expression immediately and gave me a knowing look.
“I heard,” she said, watching me closely, waiting for me to say something.
“Perfect, so you already know that I’m completely and astronomically screwed,” I said, throwing my hands in the air with a sarcastic laugh. “A party—withliterally everyone I know walking around—half of them knowing my big secret and the other half totally oblivious.”
“Do you think Liam will actually go?”
“I don’t know. If he’s smart, he will, because Jace will get suspicious if he doesn’t. Then again, up until today, he’s been completely avoiding me, so maybe he’ll go back to his old ways and not show up.”
“Which one do you think is the better option?” she asked, nervously stirring the batter that was more than ready.
“Liam not coming—obviously. It’ll hurt, but it guarantees nothing happens between us that makes anyone suspicious. People will start asking why I’m looking at him like I want to murder him all night long.”
I was go-with-the-flow Molly McKinley. The girl who never let anything trip her up. And I had absolutely no idea what to do. My brain felt like it was short-circuiting.
“I think if Liam doesn’t show, you have to tell them what’s going on. Maybe not who the father is yet, but at least let them know you’re pregnant.”
I thought about her advice for a moment. It was a surprisingly solid plan. At the very least, it would eliminate half of the problem weighing on me right now. Maybe my parents would be disappointed that I was having a baby and the dad wasn’t in the picture,but I knew that eventually it would be okay. They loved me no matter what.
“I think I could make that plan work.”
“Maybe bake a lot of desserts to hand out before you break it to them,” she suggested. “If nothing else, they’ll be too busy chewing to yell.”
One could only hope.
Chapter 11 – Molly
I had baked exactly twenty chocolate chip cookies, two pans of brownies, and a dozen cupcakes to prepare for tonight’s shindig. If there was ever a moment I needed my baking skills to save my ass, it was tonight.
I didn’t hear from Liam again for the rest of the week, so I let myself hope he wasn’t coming. Maybe he was too scared to show up, like he’d been too scared to man up and take responsibility for the child he’d helped create.
Coward.
