“You didn’t come home last night.” One corner of her mouth twitched. “I guess you’re going to tell me you were with Jackson again?”
“No.” To his amazement, he sounded calm. Steady. “I was with Aubrey.”
“Mmm. Finally being honest, I see.”
“Yeah, well. One of us has to.”
The amusement fell right off Tansy’s face. She straightened, slotting her toothbrush into the holder without wresting her gaze from the mirror. “What does that mean?”
“I’m sure Paige already asked, but can you roll your tongue into a tube?”
A harsh inhale skated through her teeth. She set both palms against the edge of the counter and squeezed. She didn’t answer.
His lungs corralled as much air as they could hold. Point of no return. “I’m not her dad, am I?”
To his shock, she answered without missing a beat, without so much as a flicker of her eyelids. “Not biologically.”
Nick swayed on his feet. Hot, white silence blotted out his mind.
He’d already known, on some level. But the confirmation still sent him spiraling into space, unbound by gravity, wheeling into an alien nothingness where he couldn’t tell up from down.
Tansy studied him in the glass. “You’re her father in every way that counts, though.”
When the spinning finally slowed, he forced his spine straight. He had to get through this, all of this, right now, or he’d never marshal the courage to ask the rest. “That night. When you picked me up off the road. What really happened?”
Her lips pressed together. “You mean did we sleep together?”
“Yes.”
Her knuckles whitened around the counter. “Which answer would be better for you?”
“The truth.”
She chewed on that for a while, maybe shaping the words before setting them loose. Maybe knowing her answer would push them past the breaking point. “You cried. About Aubrey. I tried to fuck you, to make it more believable, but you said you couldn’t. I couldn’t even get you hard.”
His throat closed. He was sucking air through a straw, now. But he hoarded the knowledge, a sliver of gold salvaged from the caustic storm raining from the sky. He wasn’t his father, after all. Thank fucking god. “You already knew you were pregnant?”
“Yeah. But... Paige’s dad didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He told me to get rid of her.” Her lip curled. “Which I obviously couldn’t do. And I needed to give her a better life than the bullshit I got. Which meant she needed a father. A good one.”
He had to will his next heartbeat into existence. “Who was he?”
Doubt swarmed Tansy’s eyes. “Does it matter?”
“I’ve spent sixteen years raising his child as mine. So yeah. It matters.”
She dipped her chin. “Okay. But you’re not going to like it.”
He groped for the wall to prop himself up. He had no idea how he was still standing. “Just tell me.”
She did.
The name pierced him, a mile-long needle pushed into his chest and pulled out the other side. He fought for a breath. “Are you kidding me? I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Don’t,” Tansy said. “Just leave it alone. He doesn’t know. He thinks she’s yours. I lied to him, told him I’d gone to the clinic. I printed up a fake bill and everything. And I made sure Paige hasn’t been anywhere near him, that he’s never had a chance to look at her too closely. I couldn’t risk anyone destroying this family. You and I are the only people who know.”
“We’renot, though. Paige figured it out.”
Tansy let go of the counter and spun to face him, her eyes wide. “How, because of this stupid tongue thing? No, she suspects, but she doesn’t know. Shecan’t. We’ll tell her—”
