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REESE: Meet in the hall.
I pocket my phone.
“Taking a leak!” I call over to Coach Driscoll. He looks irritated, but if he’s sticking to his guns about keeping me on the bench, he’ll deal with it. If I’m not going to be on the ice, there’s other shit I can handle.
Holly is just the most pressing shit in the shit pile at this point.
At the very least, she does meet me in the hall. Her body is snatched tight in a red dress that barely covers her thighs. The only thing that keeps her from looking like a street walker is the black coat that at least hits her knees. But even with that on, she’s all legs, lean and seductive.
“You know, if you’re this desperate to get with a hockey player, I know a guy out there that would take you without a second thought. You and him would be perfect together.”
Holly smirks. She slips into my space, her honeyed perfume wafting up into my nostrils. If this were a movie, the scent would wrap around me like evil tendrils, beckoning me to her.
But this ain’t a movie and I’m the one in control here. I push her away.
She pokes out her bottom lip in a deceptively innocent pout. “I don’t want a hockey player; I want you. My husband.”
Snarling, I grab her by the arm and drag her into Coach’s office. I snap the door behind us and turn to her.
“I’m not your husband,” I declare. “You and I both know that.”
She isn’t put off in the least. She smiles, sickly sweet. “Come on, Reese, I’ve given you plenty of time to come to terms with reality?—”
“You mean the reality that those documents were forged and those pictures were a bunch of photoshop bullshit?”
Her smile wavers. Then her true nature comes out. Her eyes narrow, mean as a pit viper glare. She folds her arms over her chest and holds her chin up high. “You’re lying. Saying anything to get out of the responsibility?—”
“You really think that, with the kind of lawyers and resources I have access to, I wouldn’t have found out sooner or later that all that was a bunch of bullshit? That I wouldn’t have people looking into you?” I tilt my head. “You’re not my wife, any more than you’re Violet’s mother. You did something to make the lab lose the results, didn’t you?”
Holly scoffs. “You’re a real piece of work.” She flips her curled hair over her shoulder, leveling me with those squinted eyes. “Maybe I was just desperate, you know. It’s hard for a single woman with a baby out of wedlock and a father who won’t step up.”
“The fuck you mean, ‘won’t step up’? I’ve been raising her ever since you dumped her on my doorstep like an unwanted puppy!” My voice raises, crackling with anger. How the fuck is she going to take the high road here?
“You wouldn’t understand. You’re not a woman.”
“Nah, I’m not fucking evil is what I’m not. As far as I’m concerned, you’re not Violet’s mother, just like you’re not my fucking wife?—”
“I’d hold off on that assumption if I were you.”
Holly’s smugness returns. I hate looking at her face with that expression. It’s so condescending—like she thinks I’m a fucking idiot. She reaches into her coat and pulls out a folded stack of papers.
“The testing lab contacted me a few days about them losing the results. They still had little Violet’s samples because she’s had two tests done there—shame on you, thinking she wasn’t yours. All I had to do was resubmit. I just got these in today.”
I snatch the papers from her, scanning over the information there. It looks legit. Damn near identical to the documents I’d gotten when I did my own paternity test.
And it says that there’s a ninety-nine-point-eight percent chance that Holly is Violet’s mother.
Practically irrefutable.
Acid builds up in my throat. Holly comes up to me, sliding her hand along my chest. “Don’t look like that, darling. We can be a happy family. I already had this submitted to your lawyer this morning?—”
“Get the fuck away from me!” I shove her away. I have to keep as much distance between this crazy bitch and me as possible. “This doesn’t change anything. You gave up your rights to her?—”
“Not legally,” Holly interjects. “I just… gave her to her father for some time.”
“I’m not letting you near her.”
“Ree-eese.” She draws out the syllables of my name, giving me another one of those annoying, condescending looks. “I would stop fighting this if I were you. It wouldn’t look good for you, keeping the mother of your child away from her daughter after getting proof. There’s so many ways I can spin this in my favor and so few ways that you can come out of this looking like the hero. So why fight it?”
