Now she laughed. It was a cold, cruel sort of laughter. “I see she has you wrapped around her little finger.”

“Excuse me?”

“She had your posters plastered all over her bedroom wall as a teenager, you know. Completely infatuated. I suppose it’s no surprise what happened. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she planned all this from the very beginning.”

A weird feeling crept over me and I hesitated, unsure what to say next.

She was lying. She had to be. Eilish would never plan something so calculated. She wouldn’t. Christ, it was like the phone call with Sarah all over again, only without the person on the other end actually giving a damn about me.

“You’ve got a sick mind, do you know that?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked Cara, like butter wouldn’t melt. “I’m only trying to let you know how much Eilish adores you and how she’s wanted to marry you since she was a young girl. Now all you have to do is man up and propose. It’s really quite simple, Bryan.”

“I’m hanging up now,” I told her.

“Don’t you dare—”

I pressed the “end” button before she could finish her sentence, my gut all twisted up in knots. I wished I’d never answered the call. Doubts crawled all over me, like spiders spinning a web.

Yeah, I’d found the idea of Eilish having a teenage crush on me a little unsettling, but mostly cute. What I didn’t find cute was the notion of her planning to bed me, to get pregnant.

This is madness. You love her.

But then, my insecurities took hold, my past mistakes. I’d been wrong about people before and it had cost me not just money, but entire chunks of my life, too. Sarah’s warnings rushed back as well, her words a foreboding echo in my mind.

The majority of women you used to sleep with were users. They encouraged your addiction because keeping you shitfaced meant they could run around spending your money. Remember Jennifer? Remember Kylie?

I pulled at my hair, unable to make sense of my thoughts. Did I believe Cara and Sarah, or did I trust the Eilish I knew now, the grown woman as opposed to the teenage girl?

This was nuts. Of course I trusted Eilish.

Then again . . .

I may have trusted her, but could I trust my own judgment? By her own admission, she hadn’t been a good person when she was younger. Was that her way of telling me she’d done this on purpose?

How could one phone call send a perfect day spiraling so far down the toilet?

Fucking hell.

Again, I wished I’d never answered that bloody phone call. But I knew what I had to do. Even if I did trust the Eilish I’d come to know, I needed to put this doubt to rest. Set straight everyone who thought they had a say in our relationship so that we could finally be happy together. In the grand scale of things, that’s all I really wanted. To be with Eilish, the reserved girl who always surprised me with her humor and sass, the one who snuck a peek at medical journals between washing the dishes and taking care of our son, the one who understood my love of home comforts, who looked into my eyes and seemed to see right into me like no one else ever had.

And in order for us to be together we needed to talk about what really happened five years ago, what she hasn’t told me about her life since then, and maybe I needed to get the goddamn paternity test, if only to shut up Cara Cassidy and Sarah and anyone else who thought they had a say in our business.

Chapter Twenty-Four

ECassChoosesPikachu: What does not kill us merely lowers our defenses for the next shit storm to finish us off.

SeanCassinova to ECassChoosesPikachu: I still have my “Free Hugs” sign.

*Eilish*

“I don’t understand.” I moved the cell from my left hand to my right, cradling the phone against my ear. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”

It happened on Tuesday.

Monday came and went without seeing or speaking to Bryan, but that wasn’t unusual. Mondays were busy, catching up with the team after the weekend, setting the priorities and schedule for the week leading up to the game.

I’d texted him on Monday evening, just a quick note letting him know I was thinking about him.

Eilish: Missing you today.

Bryan: Are you free for lunch tomorrow? We should talk.

Eilish: Not tomorrow, we have the roundup. Wednesday?

Bryan: Wednesday works.

Eilish: Good. I’ll miss you until then.

He hadn’t texted back.

I missed him every second of every day we weren’t together. I missed how grumpy he became around teenagers at the park and how particular he was about his tea. I missed how books about birds got him excited and how proud he’d looked giving Patrick a kid-sized housecoat and fur lined slippers.

It disconcerted me. We hadn’t been physically intimate, yet I still felt out of control, but in a different way. Instead of sex, seeing him was my new drug. Seeing him, talking to him, learning about him, laughing with him, and taking care of him eased the ache, but his light kisses and thoughtless touches had been torture.

Things weren’t getting better, they were worse. Much worse.

Maybe you do love him, you loon. Maybe this is love. Maybe you should trust him and yourself.

And then this.

“Certainly,” the woman said. “I’m Bryan Leech’s solicitor, Ms. Cassidy. I’ll be representing his interests in the custody case between you and Mr. Leech.”

“The . . . custody case?” My ears were ringing and something had invaded my chest, making it impossible for me to breathe. I rejected these sensations, convinced I was overreacting.