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Julian still fussed as I got him a new diaper. I knew he had to be starving, so I started for the kitchen to get him some food. But first, I paused at Tristy's
door and tried the doorknob to see if she was even home, because fuck, he'd been crying pretty loudly. How could she not have heard him?
She'd locked herself inside, so I hoped that meant she was still here, but I didn't break the door down to make sure. I still had Julian to take care of. I'd deal with her later.
The kitchen was a disaster. My new wife must've gotten the major munchies after I'd left for Forbidden. Bags of potato chips and empty cookie packages had been pulled down from still-open cabinets where they littered the countertop. Cans of soda were lying on their sides with sticky puddles splattered under them. And the dishes were probably at least two weeks old. But I had no time for fucking dishes.
Still seething as Julian and I fell into the rocking chair in the living room with a full bottle, I plugged his mouth with a plastic nipple and closed my eyes with relief when he finally stopped wailing.
"I hear you," I told him, exhaustion draining from my tense shoulders as I kept my lashes shut. "I'd like nothing more than a nipple in my mouth right about now too, kiddo."
But nipples in my mouth made me think of sex, and sex made me think of . . . yep. Just like that, there came Tinker Bell, flooding my head. Except I saw her as she'd been tonight. Not as she was from my glimpses.
Pregnant and defensive, nowhere near as happy as she'd been in any of my visions.
I could not believe she was real. Or maybe she wasn't.
Yeah, I liked that idea. The girl I'd met tonight couldn't be Tinker Bell. Not my Tinker Bell. She was just some doppelganger for the woman Madam LeFrey had shoved into my head. Lots of people had exact lookalikes in the world. No way could Eva Mercer be my soul mate. Except, shit, she'd been wearing Tinker Bell on her shirt. And she'd smelled like fucking lilacs. How could that be a coincidence?
In no way did I want to believe all that voodoo shit, like glimpses and predestined soul mates. If only that old bat had just been full of it ten years ago, wanting to scare a teenage boy into cleaning up his act, I could get past this. But everything inside me had seamlessly aligned into the proper place when she'd looked up into my eyes for the first time. It felt as if we belonged together, and not just because I'd spent the last ten years looking for her in every woman I saw. Eva Mercer and I had serious chemistry.
Damn, it was weird thinking of Tinker Bell as anything other than Tinker Bell. But her face finally had a name. A true, legitimate name.
Stunned I had not just one but several names to work with, I blew out a breath. Eva Mercer, Alec Worthington, Madeline and Shaw Mercer, Reese and Mason Lowe. I had filed each one into my head when I'd heard them tonight. I certainly hadn't meant to, but I'd turned into a sponge the moment I'd seen her, needing to soak up every detail.
When I spotted Tristy's closed laptop sitting on the arm of the sofa within reaching distance, I snagged it and situated it onto my lap.
Finished eating, Julian twisted his attention to see what I was doing, so I turned him around and sat him upright, propping his back to my chest so he could watch the screen with me.
"Better?" I asked.
He didn't answer except to reach his chubby fingers toward the keyboard when I flipped up the lid.
I chuckled. "Oh, yeah. You must be thinking exactly what I'm thinking. Let the typing begin."
I wiggled my fingers for a moment, acclimating myself to Tristy's home screen before clicking onto an internet search. The first hit for Eva Mercer was a Facebook page. I clicked into it and realized Tristy had never logged off, so I came in on her account. But it wasn't the Eva Mercer I was looking for.
Damn, I hated the disappointment that sucked the joy right out of me.
Using the Facebook search engine, I typed in her name again and scrolled through a page full of Eva Mercers before I spotted Tinker Bell about fifteen profiles down. My fingers shook as I hovered the pointer over her picture. God, did I want to do this?
Torturing myself by finding out more about her was stupid.
Nothing could ever happen between us. Being as pregnant as she was, she obviously already had someone in her life—Alec, the Prick, Worthington—and I was fucking married.
A derisive laugh choked from my throat when I remembered it'd only been earlier today that Tris and I had gone to the courthouse. Fate hated me. It figured I'd finally meet my soul mate on my wedding day.
"Fuck it," I muttered under my breath and clicked into her page. I'd dreamed about this girl for the past one hundred and twenty-five months, and I didn't know a single thing about her. I deserved some dirt. Anything.
Her profile picture was a selfie of her wearing shades and an electric blue string bikini on a beach, or at least somewhere sunny and outside. She had taken the snapshot from above and was looking up so the camera aimed straight into her generous cleavage. And my, what fine cleavage she had. Damn. Not a single tan line marred her perfect golden skin while the wind blew a few tendrils of sunbaked blonde hair into her face. She was so flawlessly gorgeous she took my breath away.
The cover banner showed a line of hot, plastic-looking girls with their arms draped over each other's shoulders as they all tipped their heads back to take what looked like JELL-O shots. Tinker Bell—er, Eva—was right in the middle of them. Her face was flushed as if she were already drunk off her ass.
Defeat ran like acid through my veins. This wasn't the kind of girl I'd imagined she'd be. My Tink had always been sweet, loving, family-oriented, untouched by rape.
Fighter must've found my fingers around his chest holding him upright interesting because he began to play with them. I let him wrap his hand around one and draw it into his mouth. As slobbery gums clamped onto my knuckle, I pointed to the picture of her.
"See that woman right there, kiddo? That was supposed to be your mom."
