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All the anger leaves his face. “My condolences, truly.”
“After she had Nora, we mended what was broken in our relationship. It’s not like you and I were a thing, but she knew my plan was always to make you … you know … before college. The fact that you and she had sex felt like a betrayal.”
“Her telling you that about me should have held you back from standing on the edge of assumption, but you just fell into the lie like there was no guardrail.” He pokes himself in the chest. “You should have asked me.”
“We stopped talking and even messaging and?—”
“Yeah, and now, I’m thinking I know why. Whit, that’s not on me; that’s on you.”
“That’s on me? You were busy; I was busy. That’s life.”
He stands up, shoves his hands in his pockets, and looks up at the sky.
“Your name was on Nora’s birth certificate.”
His head jerks to me. “Excuse me?”
“I was advised if I wanted to adopt her officially, I’d have to get a lawyer.”
“You thought I had a kid for five years and didn’t think to tell me?”
I shake my head, pull my feet up onto the edge of the seat, and hug my knees.
“Don’t do that shit, Whit.”
“Do what?”
He points to me. “Curl into yourself and hide when we have things to discuss, and one of those things is going to be the fact that Kal Seward isn’t going to raise a kid who has my name.” He pokes himself in the chest again. “Mine, not his.”
I pop up from my chair and stand toe to toe with him “So, you did sleep with Nelly.”
He holds up a finger. “One, I told you I never fucked your cousin.” Then a second finger. “Two, do I think Nora’s mine?” His head bounces up and down like a bobblehead. “Just as much as she is yours.”
I throw my hands in the air. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Means Nelly gave you custody, and my name’s on her birth certificate, so Nora’s just as much mine as she is yours.”
“But she’s not yours because I—” I snap my mouth shut when I notice his face has gone hard and his eyes are filled with anger.
Teeth clenched, he seethes. “Because I didn’t fuck Nelly.”
I step back, cross my arms over my chest, and look away. “I don’t believe you.”
“Whit, clearly, you didn’t catch the ball I tossed you earlier, but the minute you want me to prove it, all you have to do is ask nice.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He shakes his head as he turns and walks away.
“Where the hell are you going?”
He stops at the side of the back porch, then turns and walks toward me, holds up a hose, and sprays it on the fire, extinguishing it.
After he returns the hose, he says a sharp, “Good night, Whitley,” and heads up the stairs of the back porch.
Heck no, I think as I march up behind him, stomping my feet the whole way.
He knows damn well I’m following him, but he’s completely ignoring me.
