He forgot how to breathe. His pulse fired through his veins with the intensity of a machine gun. “Jesus. You should not have looked at that.”
“I know.” Her expression crumpled. She tossed her silverware down with a clatter and raised empty hands. “And I wasn’t trying to snoop, I swear. At least not forthat. I was looking for something else and found the letter completely by accident. But then I saw who it was from, and. . .”
His throat went dry. “Okay. But she wrote that a long time ago. Areallylong time ago.” Shit, why did he sound like he’d crawled across a thousand-mile desert without any water?
“Yeah,” Paige said. “But it’s obvious that whatever you two had going on back then, it was pretty intense.”
Well. He wasn’t about to touch that with a fucking hundred-foot pole. He plowed off in the first direction he could think of. “Why were you even in my room? Whatwereyou looking for?”
Her jaw worked. She held his eyes for an eternity. “My birth certificate.”
Static buzzed inside his head. “What? Why?”
“Do you really not know? You havenoidea why I’d be looking for my birth certificate? None at all?”
The silence turned to stone as he cast about for some sensible meaning in her question. “I don’t know? Do you need it for that internship you’re doing?”
She stared, then her shoulders lowered and she looked away. “Yeah. For my internship. Except then I found Aubrey’s letter. And I know I shouldn’t have read it, but it just... happened.”
He tried to smooth his violent breathing. “It’s... okay. Imean, it’s fine. It’s done. And I’m sorry if I raised my voice. I’m not mad. I just wish you hadn’t seen that. Like I said, it was a long time ago. Before you were even born.”
“Right.” She looked up through her lashes. “But you saved it, all this time.”
He flinched. “Okay. Yes.”
“You were in love with her, weren’t you? Like,reallyin love.”
Jesus fucking Christ. He wished he hadn’t walked into this one so blind. He tried desperately to remember why he made a point of never lying to his daughter. He should just deny it all. Get up, go get the letter, tear it to shreds, tell Paige he didn’t care anymore.
Except he didn’t move a muscle.
“Not,” Paige continued softly, “that it’s a problem. I mean, I realize you and Mom aren’t together anymore. And that you had girlfriends before her. It would be weird if you hadn’t.”
A trickle of air made it into his lungs. “It upsets you, though. Knowing.”
Paige picked at a fingernail. “That’s not the right word. It just... It caught me off guard, like I said. There was a lot going on that day.”
He stewed over that. “Was that when you mouthed off to Juan?”
She peeked up. “Juan?”
“Mr. Gallegos.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Mr. Gallegos? He talked to you?”
“Yeah. He called to say you hadn’t turned in your genetics assignment. And that you were pretty rude to him, even after he gave you an extension.”
She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, god. I was hoping you wouldn’t find out about that. I don’t even know why I said that to him. I was just... Like I said, there’s been alotgoing on.”
He pushed words out through a rusted throat. “More than just you finding Aubrey’s letter?”
“Yes,” she said, her emphasis so heavy that he wondered if they were talking at cross-purposes. She seemed to expect him to derive some meaning from that answer that he absolutely did not.
“Are you okay, at least? You’re not. . .” Fear gripped him, old and pure. “...pregnant, are you?”
She stared for an overlong moment, then released a burst of trembling laughter. “Oh, god, what? Pregnant? Really? No, not even close. You have nothing to worry about on that front.”
His jaw unlocked. Not that he would’ve raked her over the coals, considering he’d become a father at eighteen. But he wanted more for her. “Okay. So you talked shit to Juan because...?”
