So I did the math. And suddenly wished I’d never learned how to add.

Twenty

The apartment was quiet when I stepped out of the bathroom. That should have been my first clue that something was wrong.

“Liv?” I called. There was no answer, and my skin prickled. “Kori?” I ducked back into the bathroom to grab the spare 9mm I kept between the two bottom towels stacked beneath the sink.

“She left to give us some privacy,” Liv called. I exhaled in relief and headed down the hall. I should have known better.

“We need privacy?” I leaned against the living-room doorway to find Liv waiting for me on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, gaze hard. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re Hadley’s dad?” Her voice could have cut glass. “When were you going to tell me?”

Every single hope of a permanent reconciliation I’d harbored in the past twenty-four hours died a bloody, violent death and a deep, numbing cold grew in my chest. “No, Liv, it’s not like that.” Damn you, Kori! I crossed the room toward her, but Liv stood and backed away from me, keeping the coffee table between us.

“Really? What is it like, Cam? Is it like you sleeping with my best friend at a party while Elle was telling me you’re probably going to kill me someday? Because that’s what it sounds like. Is that why Tower wants Hadley? Because he knows she’s yours, so she has a fifty-fifty chance of becoming one of the best name-Trackers in the country?”

“No.” I tried to round the coffee table, but she backed out of reach again. “Liv, I don’t know why he wants her. I don’t know anything about his project.”

“But she is yours?”

“I don’t know. I honestly have no idea.” I struggled to hold together the pieces of the life I was determined to reclaim, but they just kept slipping through my fingers to shatter on the floor between us. “I want to believe that if I had a kid, Anne would have told me. Six years ago. But I don’t know what to believe anymore.” And I’d never spoken a truer sentence.

“But there’s a possibility that she’s yours? And you didn’t tell me?” She shook her head, as if she wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t shake the thought loose. “Neither of you told me?”

“I can’t speak for her—I’m sure she has her reasons for not telling either of us, and I’m hoping one of them is that I’m not the father.”

Not that I was set against ever having children, but this wasn’t the way I wanted that to happen—missing out on the first five years of my own daughter’s life. Not even finding out about her until my boss tries to abduct her. I wanted to be a part of my kids’ lives. And I wanted them to be Liv’s children. Not Anne’s. The product of our life together, not a drunken mistake.

“But Liv, Anne and I didn’t…get together…until after you left. Not that that makes it okay, but for the record, I didn’t cheat on you. I would never have even thought about anyone else, ant8217;d still had you. And I wouldn’t have been drunk enough to make a mistake like that if I hadn’t just been hurt and humiliated by the woman I loved more than anything else in the world, without even a word of explanation.”

“Are you seriously saying it’s my fault you had sex with my best friend?” she demanded, and I felt her slipping away from me again….

“No. I’m saying I was out of my mind with grief when you left, Liv. I had a plan for that night. I…I had a ring.”

Liv blinked, then sank onto the couch, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore. “You had a what?”

“A ring. I was going to ask you to marry me. I had this whole cheesy moment planned. There was champagne, and a ring, and I was going to ask you at the stroke of midnight. But then you dumped me in the middle of the party instead, and when you left, you took my whole life with you, Olivia. Everything I ever had, and everything I ever wanted. All of it, gone. I couldn’t think straight. Then Anne was there, and she was hurting, too, and she wanted to go to a bar, but she was too drunk to drive. So I drove her and I tried to drink until I forgot all about you. And it worked—for one night.”

Liv stared at me in shock. As if she couldn’t form a proper sentence, or maybe even a single word. She swallowed thickly and stared at her hands. Then she met my gaze again, and this time when her mouth opened, words actually came out.

“Kori said you two hooked up while I was still there. She thought that’s why I left.”

I almost laughed at the absurdity of her statement. “Yeah. Because Kori was a pillar of sobriety that night, so her version must be accurate.”

“She was pretty drunk….” Liv conceded, and I grasped at the straw of belief she dangled in front of me.

“Olivia, I’m sorrier than you can possibly imagine for not telling you. I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know when to say it. There haven’t exactly been many good moments to blurt out, ‘Hey, remember when you left me with no warning and no explanation and ruined my entire life? Well, I got drunk and slept with your best friend, and there’s a very slight possibility that I might be her daughter’s biological father.’”

“Yet Kori found an opportunity,” Liv snapped.

“Kori waited until I left the room to throw a wrench into our reunion, and she did it to get back at us for dragging her into this. She doesn’t like being forced to do something. Anything.”