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She kept glancing into her rearview mirror and her side mirror, her face a mask of worry.
The light turned green and Hastings accelerated as if she had somewhere to be. Or someone she didn’t want behind her.
The longer I stayed behind her, the more she looked in her rearview mirror.
I stayed where I was, falling farther and farther behind, wondering what in the hell her deal was.
Her car took an exit that took her off the road I was supposed to stay on to get me to Benton.
I looked once more at the car that was traveling fast down the road that would lead to Longview and made a split-second decision.
“I’m gonna break off,” I yelled. “I’ll catch up to y’all later.”
I didn’t give them a chance to argue.
Instead, I pulled the bike to the left and made a U-turn right there in the middle of the road before following the girl.
This time I didn’t try to keep up to her. I hung back, watching her make turns, and tried to make myself invisible.
When she finally pulled into a doctor’s office parking lot about twenty minutes later, I pulled into one a couple down from hers and parked the bike next to an air conditioner unit that was bigger than my bike.
Then I watched as Hastings and her sister got out of the car.
She looked up at the sign, placed her hand on her belly, and then walked inside without glancing around at her surroundings.
We were in the medical district of Longview.
The hospital was behind me, and this area had quite a few different medical offices around.
My eyes narrowed on the place that she parked in front of, and I got curious.
Which was always my downfall when I was a kid.
That was how I broke my first bone. How I ended up getting arrested when I was sixteen. And how I nearly lost my job before I’d even started.
But those stories died a slow, sudden death the moment that I read what was on my phone.
Typing the doctor’s name in Google, I waited for the results to pop up.
What I saw when I looked up the doctor’s name on the internet made me want to vomit.
And damn, was I pissed.
Why hadn’t she told me?
***
It was a full hour and a half before she finally showed back up.
She was holding a bag that was bright pink with blue stripes, and she was holding up a square of paper in her hand as she and her sister looked at it.
I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to control my temper.
She was nearly to me when she looked up and spotted me leaning against her car.
I looked from her to her sister and back.
“Have anything you’d like to tell me?” I asked quietly.
Too quietly.
I knew she knew instantly that I was pissed.
Her eyes narrowed.
“In case you were wondering, I already talked to my sister and compiled a message on what to send you.” She held out her phone and showed me the text. A text that included a grainy black and white photo of a sonogram.
My eyes went from her to her sister to the phone and then back.
“You should’ve told me when you suspected,” I growled.
Her eyebrows went up.
“I might should have,” she agreed, “but I didn’t because I was still wondering if I needed to worry you over nothing.”
Worry me?
I wasn’t worried.
At least, that wasn’t the dominant emotion I was feeling right then.
I held out my hand for the photo that she’d been looking at.
“Let me see it,” I ordered.
“This is my sister, Aurora. Aurora, the man that knocked me up,” Hastings said.
She handed the photo over to me, and I studied the small black and white picture that looked like a bunch of nothing.
“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” I admitted.
Hastings walked up to me on one side and Aurora on the other.
Together they pointed stuff out that still didn’t make a lick of sense.
“That’s the amniotic sac,” Aurora pointed.
“And that blobby thing right there is the baby,” Hastings said.
The moment that I closed my eyes, I felt both of them move away.
My hands were literally shaking.
And my fuckin’ heart was racing.
“I need some time to think,” I said, turning to Hastings. “And if I text you, you will answer.”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “Well, I guess that’s nice and all for you. But the same goes for me, buddy. If I text you, you should answer, too.”
Anger filled me up at her words.
I gritted my teeth. “I already told you I never got that message.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Well that’s just not my problem, is it?”
I didn’t know why her words bothered me.
But, I had a feeling it had a lot to do with the fact that she’d done her level best to ignore me when I didn’t want to be ignored.
