“Got gas? I mean, I have gas too. That was quite the meal.” He stood upright and patted his stomach.
“No! I don’t havegas. I mean, I probably will, considering the amount of food I just ate like I’d never before eaten a meal. But no. I’m just…thinking.”
“Well your thinking face looks just like your farting face. Just saying.” He shrugged and stepped back to close the door with a grin. Her phone chimed with a notification as Eli pulled the car away from the curb.
We regret to inform you…
She didn’t get the job. And while part of her was disappointed that she’d finally taken the leap, put herself out there, and landed flat on her face, she was mostly relieved. She’d have been the best candidate for the job, she knew that much, but it wasn’t the best time in her life to step up to more responsibilities. Maybe she’d try again when Mason went to college.
“What’s up?”
“Didn’t get the promotion.” She turned the phone screen toward him.
“You don’t seem too upset about it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I am. I mean, I’m anxious about who the new manager is going to be. I live in eternal hope it’s not another idiot asshole who needs his hand held through every goddamn thing. But I don’t think it’s the right time yet, you know?”
His warm smile gave her the affirmation she didn’t know she needed, and something relaxed in her chest. “You’re right. You’re busy enough as it is right now. Any more work, or demands on your time and I think you’d struggle.”
She absorbed his words. He wasn’t wrong.
“You’d make it work, you always do. But that doesn’t mean you should.”
Clare rolled her eyes at how well he knew her. She’d definitely have pushed herself to her limits if she’d been offered, and taken, the job. It was a mercy that they hadn’t chosen her—she’d have felt obligated to accept it.
He picked up her hand and put it on his thigh, giving her a squeeze. “You are exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
Her heart melted at his support. Did she want more from her career? Definitely. But the more she sat and took stock of her life, the surer she was that it just wasn’t the time.
“What about you? Any progress with…?” She wouldn’t say Denise’s name out loud—not least of all because the kids were in the back seat and she didn’t want to subject Eli to any uncomfortable questions.
“Lawyer is sorting it all out. I’m not sure how it’s all going to go other than cost a fucking fortune to resolve.” Elliott needed out of his dingy apartment and to clear his snowballing debts. The guy was drowning under a mountain of red bills thanks to his stupidly big heart and she couldn’t wave a magic wand to fix it.
Working in medical billing she knew how quickly things could escalate when it came to financial matters and while she wished she could help him, she wasn’t exactly rolling in it herself.
After some of the most delicious ice cream she’d ever had on her tongue, Elliott dropped them off at home. She was exhausted. Mason had passed out in the backseat, his head on Catriona’s shoulder as she frantically pounded her phone screen, but her eyes were heavy, too. What a great day.
Elliott didn’t want to stay—well, he did, but he had an early morning the next day, and when he stayed they didn’t do so hot at the sleeping thing. But she texted him goodnight before rolling over to go to sleep. In reply, he’d forwarded her tickets for their next date. A trip out to a cooking class that his dad had bought them to—and he was quoting—get Elliott the fuck out from under his feet.
Eli said he hadn’t been over there all that much, but it seemed enough for his dad to want to keep him distracted. For a while at least.
Right as she was dozing off, her cell phone chimed. Bolting upright as though the fire alarm had been clanging in her ears, she groped for the phone. Her stomach dropped as she read the message.
Elliott: Denise is pregnant.
Chapter 14
Elliott
Pregnant. Fucking pregnant. Granted if they’d had kids together, things would have been monumentally more complicated if they’d divorced. But one of the main reasons their marriage fell apart was because she’d said she didn’t want kids—after marrying him under the false pretense of having fucking kids—and now she was having a goddamn kid.
As it turned out, she did want kids, just not with him.
The whistle blew on the ice, and he was reminded that they were at the barn, in the third period of a game, and they were barely clinging to a 1-0 lead against Cedar Rapids. Try as he might to care, he just couldn’t find it in himself to give a flying fuck.
Fuck Cedar Rapids. Fuck hockey. Fuck everything.
Most of all, fuck fucking Denise and her fucking baby daddy.
