Page 17

Her eyes widen in horror. “Ewww!”

I can’t help but laugh as she wipes the inside of her lip with the back of her hand and inspects it carefully before running out of the room, shrieking in true diva fashion. The wails of despair echo down the hallway and I lean back against the headboard, rolling my eyes. Good God, that girl is so damn dramatic and ten bucks says that if her daddy is home, he’ll be up here in a few minutes to chew me out for teasing her so much. He should know by now that she gives as good as she gets though.

“Are you the one making my daughter scream like a banshee?” Ali asks, stepping into the spare bedroom she let me use last night before leaning against the doorway and crossing her arms over her chest. I laugh again as I nod.

“She tried to pout to get her way so I told her a bird was going to poop on her lip.”

“For fuck’s sake,” she whispers, rolling her eyes as she fights back a smile. She knows how ridiculous her daughter can be better than anyone else. “You’re lucky Logan is busy or he’d already be charging up the stairs.”

I flash her a grin. “Thank God for small miracles.”

She scoffs and pushes off of the door frame to make her way into the room. I watch her as she walks over to the bed and sits on the edge of the mattress, her eyes roaming over my face.

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“Sore.”

She arches a brow. “Anything else?”

“I don’t know, Ali,” I answer, fiddling with the edge of the blanket as I try not to think about what happened only twelve hours ago. “I was literally just woken up by your spawn so I haven’t given it all much thought yet.”

“You sleep okay?”

I nod despite the bizarre dreams that had me tossing and turning for hours and the three times I had to get up to pee.

“Here y’all are,” Carly says, walking into the room and I offer her a smile as she makes her way around the bed and perches on the edge of the mattress just like Ali. “How are you feeling?”

I scoff. “Y’all are so damn obvious.”

“What?” Ali asks, blinking in surprise, but I’m not buying it. I shoot her a look and she sighs. “Okay, we did want to talk…”

“I figured.”

“We just want to know that you’re okay,” Carly adds and I let out a laugh as I shake my head. After what happened last night, I know I’m not okay but it hasn’t really hit me yet either and I’m not sure when it will.

“I’m as okay as I can be.”

Ali sighs, her gaze flicking to Carly for a second before coming back to me. “And the baby?”

“What about it?”

“Look,” Carly says, her gaze flicking to Ali again and my brows furrow as I study them. Clearly, they’ve had another conversation that I wasn’t a part of and they have something to say to me now. “We started talking after you went to bed last night and… well, we’re just wondering why the hell you kept this from us for so long?”

After Logan came back into the house last night, we all sat around the table and talked for a while - the guys asking me for more details about the incident with Luca and the girls pestering me with pregnancy questions - but there are still secrets I’m keeping from them and they know it. Starting with the father of my baby. That is one secret that has to stay hidden for the time being though.

“Did you think you couldn’t come to us with this?” Ali asks. “That we wouldn’t understand?”

I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”

“Izzy,” Carly adds, looking unconvinced and a little irritated. “You’ve kept it a secret for over half of your pregnancy. How much longer was this going to go on? Were you going to give birth before you let us in on the secret?”

I take a deep breath as I start fiddling with the blanket again. “It’s complicated…”

“Yeah, that’s what you said last night but I still don’t know what that means,” Ali snaps, arching a brow and crossing her arms again as she waits for an answer that I can’t give her right now.

Shit.

This is such a damn mess.