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"I . . . " I patted my chest a few times. "Yeah," I finally choked out. "I'm fine. Great. So . . . she's having a girl, huh? Eva?"
He nodded slowly, eyeing me funnily. "Yeah. Actually, she refused to tell anyone the name she chose, but I caught her sewing it into something last week and she swore me to secrecy."
"Swore you to secrecy?" I scowled, still pressing my hand to my chest, trying to keep all the broken pieces inside from falling out, because shit . . . Tinker Bell was really having a little girl named Skylar. And I had nothing to do with it. "If she swore you to secrecy, then why the fuck did you tell me?"
Mason pulled back in surprise at my barked question. "Uh . . . probably because I didn't see how it'd matter if you knew. I doubt you'll ever cross paths with her again."
God, did he have to rub that into my face quite so hard?
Clearing my throat, I glanced down at the shirt in my hand. "Yeah," I said, my voice hoarse. "Good point." Waving my pukey clothes, I started away, needing to escape. "I'm going to see if this'll rinse out."
I don't remember the walk down the hall to the bathrooms. I don't even remember turning on the water in the sink. I just knew I suddenly looked up from the shirt I was scrubbing under the freezing running faucet and saw my own reflection in the mirror while I lost it.
"Fuck," I muttered and threw the slopping wet shirt at my image. "Fuck."
Backing up until my spine hit the wall, I gripped my pounding temples and slid down until I was sitting on the floor, holding my head in my hands and resting my elbows on my knees as I tried not to hyperventilate.
How could t
his be happening to me? Julian, Tinker Bell, and now Skylar all ended up being real people and none of them were fucking mine. Not my woman, not my children, not my anything.
They were supposed to be mine, damn it. My family. My happily ever after. Jesus . . .
Madam LeFrey hadn't been lying when she'd said she'd given me my hope back. For ten years, I'd blindly yearned for all these things, things I wasn't even sure I wanted. A wife? Children? That wasn't really my style, but I'd still craved them with every breath I had because I'd craved the way I'd felt in those glimpses. I craved the rush of love, the pride of accomplishment, the tenderness of being adored by others, of finally having somewhere and someone to belong to. And now . . . now there was nothing. No love, no happiness, no satisfaction.
My hands began to shake and I squeezed my eyes closed. I had gotten by for a full decade, banking on the mere hope that maybe those stupid glimpses might come true. I'd kept my nose clean, which was no small feat where I came from. It took a goddamn lot of effort to be good when you lived where I'd lived, where everyone around you cheated and stole to get ahead. It would've been so easy to follow that path. But I wanted to be a good person, a person who would eventually deserve my Tinker Bell.
Except there was no way in hell I'd ever be near good enough for that rich, pampered girl I'd seen on Facebook. Not that it mattered. She already had someone else. And the fucking prick had put a baby in her; he'd put Skylar in her.
My Skylar.
Throat closing over, I lifted my face to bump the back of my head against the wall. After concentrating on pushing air through my lungs, which beat the nausea away, I crawled back to my feet and fished my wet shirt out of the sink, soaking my hair when I slopped it on.
I had a shift to begin and an auction to win. My happily fucking ever after certainly wasn't going to come to me, so I guess I'd have to keep working my ass off to make up one of my own.
Chapter 8
EVA
"Okay, so I know I should totally be working on my final World Masterpieces essay tonight, but ugh, I'm too brain-dead." Reese plopped onto the couch beside me. "Let's watch a movie instead."
Leaning across me where I was working on my newest craft project to make a diaper holder to hang from my crib, she snagged the remote. "So what're you in the mood for? Jake Gyllenhaal, Channing Tatum, or Zac Efron? I'm voting for Zac since he looks the most like Mason."
Wrinkling my nose, I paused on the chunk of fabric I was hacking away at with a pair of scissors. "Mason looks nothing like Zac."
"Excuse me? They're both hot. That's close enough." Settling herself down, Reese tossed her legs over the armrest and used what little space was left of my lap as a pillow. I totally envied her for being so flexible. Someday, I'd be able to move like that again too . . . as soon as I got this extra thirty pounds off my waistline.
"They still look nothing alike." I went back to chopping, giving the fabric a ragged, fringed look.
"Fine. Then which actor do you think Mason most resembles?"
Ugh. I didn't care who Mason looked like. Ever since she'd gotten engaged¸ Reese had been even more annoyingly in love with him than usual. It was beginning to drive me batty.
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe a young Tom Welling, Tyler Hoechlin, or ooh . . . Danny off Baby Daddy."
"God, yes. Danny is hot. Mason could definitely be a Danny."
"I wonder what his real name is," I pondered aloud. "Danny, I mean." Poor guy probably got tired of people calling him Danny when he was actually someone else.
