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“Never would be great with me. We can just keep on ignoring it, you’re good at that,” I snark.
“Can you make time after your mom takes Sadie but before your date?” He says the last word like it tastes bad in his mouth. Comical, since I’m sure he’s been out with more women in our time apart than I could have even imagined having time for.
“Be here at four, leave promptly at six so I have time to get all sexy for him,” I say, and he glares at me with so much disdain. I love that he hates the idea of me giving attention to another man. Being touched by another man. Fucking another man. “I’m hoping to get lucky.”
It’s only a small amount of the discomfort I’ve felt since he started hanging out with Trina.
“Let’s go eat dinner with our daughter and your friend. We’ll discuss the rest later. But you need to unblock me so I can contact you like responsible co-parents.”
“Ooh yes, sir.” I leave him in the kitchen in favor of a chicken bacon ranch slice of pizza with a toddler that has red sauce smeared all over her cheeks.
Dinner is awkward but amicable, neither of us willing to make waves with an audience. By the end of the meal, Sadie is comfortable enough with both Cillian and Erin that she’s crawling from lap to lap and hand feeding them pieces of pineapple.
Watching her with Cillian stomps my battered heart even more. After I’d decided to keep my pregnancy, I started researching everything I could about being pregnant and having a newborn. My social media algorithms hardly showed me anything that wasn’t baby related.
My first ever panic attack happened because of those algorithms. A video came up of a father sleeping face-to-face with his infant child and she was suckling on the tip of his nose in her sleep. I was so emotional over it that I decided that it was time to call Cillian and discuss me being four months pregnant. I’d planned on doing it before my due date anyway. Whether he wanted to talk about it or not, we had shit to work out.
My nerves were like livewires, so I started by unblocking him on Instagram. I was going to scroll through the past couple months of his life while I tried to compose myself. Except, many of his pictures had Trina in them and it was clear to me that their relationship was no longer just friendly. Whatever happened after that video call had progressed, because she draped herself all over him on camera and he didn’t seem to have any problem posting such things for the world to see. Even knowing I could see them, after our fallout, hadn’t dissuaded him.
The stroll through images of his life didn’t make me miss him, as I’d thought they would. They made feel insignificant, so alone, and unlovable. And if I was unlovable, how could I bring a baby into that life? How was I going to raise a child in love and keep her from knowing that her father wanted nothing to do with her? That he’d rather spend his life with a conniving woman instead of us. The thoughts spiraled.
I ended up in the emergency room that night, having no idea what was happening to me. I thought I was having heart failure and that fear only made things worse.
I wish I could say things got better from there, but they didn’t. They got far worse.
“Breathe, babe,” Zander whispers in my ear as he stands. It brings me back to the present, and to Cillian piercing me curiously. “I’ll help you clear this up.”
“Th-thanks,” I stammer as I grab empty plates and follow Zander into the kitchen.
“You good?”
“Yeah, just a trip down memory lane.”
“That been happening a lot?”
“No, surprisingly. The last few days have been crazy.”
“Can I make it a little crazier? But in a good way.”
“Always,” I answer. There isn’t much I’d deny him, but especially not my confidence.
“They’re talking about making me captain,” he says, almost shyly.
“That’s not crazy, that’s amazing,” I say, stepping into his arms so I can hug him while I rest my chin on his chest. “You deserve it, you work harder than anyone else on the team.”
“Thank you.” Zander presses a kiss to the tip of my nose at the same time Cillian walks in.
“Is this who you’re going out Saturday?”
“You have a date Saturday night?” Zander, like the best friend he is, just smiles.
“I do. Ty will be in town.”
“Ooh, you have that kind of date. Be safe, have fun,” he says, then presses another kiss, this time, one on my lips.
“Jesus Christ,” Cillian mumbles. “How many guys are you dating?”
“As many as I can,” I answer, turning my head to look at him but not leaving the comfort of Zander’s arms.
