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“You divorced her? Truly?”
Phil shifts in his seat. “We just need to sign the papers.”
My eyes narrow. “Who needs to sign the papers?”
“Both of us.”
“So you’re separated but not divorced?”
“What does it matter?” he explodes. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Candice is leaning against the counter nearest us now, not even pretending to work, and she goes very, very still. I can feel her gaze on us like a physical weight.
“I’m just trying to get a sense of the situation,” I answer neutrally. “Does your wife know you’re here?”
“Ex-wife,” he bites out, and I decide not to tell him that technically, she’s still his wife.
I arch my brows.
He shuffles uncomfortably. “She knows I met someone.”
“Met someone,” I repeat slowly. “And the baby?”
“What about it?”
“Did you tell your wife—ex-wife—that you’d fathered a child?”
“How the fuck is this relevant?” Phil spits, throwing his hands out. “Lily, I’m here, and now we can be together.”
I almost start laughing. Phil is so far down my priority list, he isn’t even a blip. A cancer diagnosis does that to a person. A baby does that to a person. Puts everything in sharp focus. I was his side piece for months without knowing it, and when I got pregnant, he wanted me to get rid of it. Then he walked away and didn’t say a word to me for months. Now he wants us to play at being a happy family? Is he deluded? “We broke up, and I’m not interested in picking up where we left off. If you left your wife for me, you did it a few months too late.”
Phil’s lips lift in a snarl. “I’m here because you were too fucking dumb to take the pill properly and you got yourself knocked up.”
My muscles lock up. There’s something ugly in his eyes. I’m not enjoying the redness in his face anymore. This was fun for a bit, because I got to poke him and see the true asshole beneath the charming veneer. But I don’t like the turn this conversation is taking.
“That wasn’t a solo endeavor, Phil,” I hiss, anger arcing through me. “Takes two to make a baby.”
“Your fucking fault, Lily. And now that I know you’re sick, I’m trying to figure out if you’re even able to carry that kid to term. The doctor told me you need chemo, Lily. So you’re planning on poisoning our unborn child as well as putting it through the trauma of surgery? Some fucking mother you’ll make.”
I freeze. In just a few sentences, Phil has managed to cut to the core of my worries. It’s like he’s been able to take a scalpel to me and dig through my insides to figure out exactly how to make me hurt. Isn’t that what I’ve been telling myself? That I’m not good enough? That I’ll fail? That even though my medical team assures me these things are safe, I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m starting this whole motherhood thing off on the entirely wrong foot?
Tears well up behind my eyes, but I will not cry.
I. Will. Not. Cry.
This asshole might have donated his DNA to make this baby, but I will fight tooth and nail to make sure he can’t hurt it the way he’s hurt me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I found out I’m pregnant, it’s that I’m strong. I’m so damn strong I wonder why I ever thought I needed to run away. I didn’t find myself in all those international trips. I didn’t need to wander from country to country to figure out what I wanted.
I just needed a smack across the head with a two-by-four to show me what’s really important.
My baby. My family. My home.
I also learned that I have support. I have a whole army of women at my back that are there for me whether I need a laugh or a cry or food to stuff my face with.
“You’re nothing,” Phil hisses, his face twisted in a snarl. “A piece of ass I kept in Milan, and now I’m in this shitty town because you were stupid enough to get yourself pregnant.”
Dozens of cups fall off the counter and smash on the floor beside us in a cacophony of breaking ceramic. Phil startles, rearing back, and Candice leaps over the counter like she’s a teenager and not well on her way to her fifties. Her movement is graceful as she vaults over the edge, her face like thunder. My sister grabs a serving tray from the counter with both hands and holds it up near her shoulder like she’s about to bring it down on his head.
“It’s time for you to go,” she says deliberately, in a soft, calm voice. The menace in her eyes is unmistakable.
