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But I didn’t look. I couldn’t.
“If it helps, I won’t tell him you told me.” I hated that my voice was wobbling. Why had he told something important to my brother before he told me? Didn’t I matter to him more than that?
“He promised he’d tell you this weekend. Just…you need to know. It’s not fair to you that he gets to pick his moment and you don’t have any idea.”
I grabbed my tea and sucked it down, deciding immediately I was going back to coffee, burned beans or not. This just didn’t have the kick I needed.
“Just tell me.”
“Christian has a daughter. She wants to move here.”
“What?” My mind was spinning but I felt as if I was a dozen steps behind. “Move here? How old is she? And he told me he’d been celibate for a long time…”
Was that a lie? How much else was too?
“He had the kid with his high school girlfriend. She didn’t allow him to be part of the kid’s life. Set conditions on it and he was scared she’d abort the child so he agreed to them.”
I shoved aside my tray as my stomach twisted inside out. “He didn’t get to raise his own child?”
“No. Sounds like he only got to see her periodically. But Reagan is almost eighteen now and wants to move here for college, I guess, and to have a closer relationship with her father.”
Reagan.
I shoved my hands through my hair, not paying attention to my ponytail. Dragging it apart with my restless fingers and then shoving it back into a messy bun. “That girl at the counter.”
Mav nodded somberly.
“She’s beautiful. She doesn’t look like him but she has…she has his smile. Oh, God.” I jerked to my feet, clapping a hand over my mouth before I rushed across the busy café to the back hallway that led to the bathrooms. I hurried into the ladies’ room and booked over to the stalls, hurling my lunch into the first toilet I reached. I used my foot to hit the flusher and slumped against the wall, clutching my already settling midsection.
What the heck? I’d been shocked about the news, no doubt, but to toss my cookies without warning? I didn’t even feel sick.
Thankfully, no one was in the restroom when I finally emerged to rinse out my mouth and to wash my hands and face. I looked drained. Big dark eyes and absolutely no color in my cheeks.
As if I’d seen a…Reagan. A special kind of specter.
Specter of girlfriends past.
Christian had a baby. Well, almost grown baby now. Some nameless woman had given him a child and she hadn’t even wanted to.
And I wished it was me. Obviously impossibilities like the fact that I’d been six at the time Reagan was born aside.
I wanted to be the one who gave Christian a baby. And this woman hadn’t even cared.
I closed my eyes as someone knocked on the door and gently eased it open. “Hey Honey, you okay, sweetie?” Vee peeked in. “Mav asked me to check on you.”
“Oh, I’m fine, thanks.”
“Are you sure? He said he was worried you were sick.” She pushed open the door wider and the sight of her swollen belly made me grab hold of the sink.
Oh, God.
Nope, nope, nope. People were capable of having sex in this town without it ending in a fetus. I mean, I knew of people who’d had sex here who’d never been pregnant. Not a lot, granted. Like Mickey. She had a fairly active dating life and she’d never suffered the consequences pregnancy-wise.
Yet.
I curled my fingers around the edge of the sink until my knuckles went white and blurted the first thing on my mind. “How soon can you find out if you’re pregnant?”
Vee’s big green eyes widened as she shut the door behind her. “Depends,” she said carefully.
