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He nodded. “I’ll need to know how, I guess. I mean, I should know, right?”
“I suppose so.” I walked ahead of him, hoping to hide whatever he might potentially see in my eyes. More fear. Guilt. Attraction.
Good grief, I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. Not even when we were in my semi-dark bedroom. Not ever again, I chided myself.
Hell, as far as I was concerned, I didn’t want to ever have sex again. Not if it meant another nine months of torture. I loved Jeremy, but pregnancy had sucked. Big time. So my interest in sex, even with the hottest man I’d ever met, was less than zero. If there was a negative to indicate my interest in sex, I would use that.
“Do you think you and I could go somewhere?” Zeke asked as I made Jeremy’s bottle. “So we can talk.”
“Go somewhere?” I glanced over my shoulder in confusion. “Can’t we talk here?”
“Well, sure, but I’d like a chance for us to reconnect. Get to know each other again, you know? I hate how we left things and I’d like to fix that.”
I turned and slowly lifted my gaze to his.
“Zeke, I’m not sure what you think will happen here, but this is about the baby. There is no connection between us, beyond him. We won’t be friends or fuck buddies or anything else. The only thing we’re going to share is Jeremy.”
17
Zeke
I hadn’t had any expectations when I made the trip to Minnesota, but I hadn’t considered that she was still angry with me. I’d figured I’d apologize, we’d talk things out, sort out how we wanted to handle this co-parenting thing, and then I’d potentially invite her—and her aunt—to L.A. to meet my family. Because like it or not, that’s what we were now. Instead, she was icy-cold. This wasn’t the sweet, shy Sunny I remembered.
From her perspective, I’d abandoned her. I totally understood that, but the venomous way she’d said the words “fuck buddies,” told me she was still royally pissed. And I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I’d apologized and was doing my best to be respectful of her boundaries, but the anger coming from her was difficult to navigate.
“Presley, look, this is definitely awkward. But it doesn’t have to be.”
She narrowed her gaze. “It doesn’t have to be? Well, of course not. Not for you. You weren’t alone and pregnant, suffering through nine months of morning sickness while trying to work so Aunt Meg wouldn’t have to give up her medication. It wasn’t your body that got huge and uncomfortable. You didn’t push a nearly ten-pound baby out of your ass and then spend months healing. You weren’t the one trying to figure out how everyone was going to eat when my milk didn’t come in so I couldn’t breastfeed and had to start buying formula we couldn’t afford. So, no, I’m sure this isn’t awkward for you at all.”
I winced.
It would undoubtedly take a lot more than a verbal apology and a nice deposit into her bank account to fix things between us. I’d hoped we could start over, be friends, maybe find that same connection we’d had at the resort that night. That didn’t appear to be the case, so it was time to pivot.
“I’m sorry about all that,” I said patiently, bouncing Jeremy since he seemed to be getting more and more eager for his bottle. “But no matter how much I want to, I can’t go back in time and change those things. All I can do is try to be better going forward.”
“Great.” Her voice was laced with sarcasm as she handed me the bottle. “Do you want to feed him?”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
She brushed past me as she headed into the living room, and it was like a jolt of electricity shot through me. Geez, the madder she got the hornier I got.
We settled in the living room, and she put a burp cloth over the baby.
“He spits up a lot,” was all she said.
I nodded, watching as my son closed his mouth around the nipple, sucking greedily. He was a big boy who felt solid in my arms, and when he blinked up at me, watching me as I watched him, the resemblance between us was uncanny. He was just an infant, but not only did he share my different colored eyes, his eyes were the same shape. And from what I could tell, his mouth resembled mine too. The jury was still out on his nose, but his full head of dark hair reminded me a lot of the pictures I’d seen of myself at this age.
My mother would be beside herself when she found out she had a grandson. Hell, the family would undoubtedly be in an uproar. I could expect to have non-stop company if I could convince Presley to bring the baby out to L.A. for a visit. Although, it didn’t seem like she would be on board for that anytime soon.
Aunt Meg had disappeared, so I figured this was as close to alone as we were going to get.
“Do you want to tell me about… everything?” I asked after a moment.
“Everything?” She quirked a brow.
“It might help to get it off your chest.”
Oh, boy, that was definitely not the right thing to say because her eyes had narrowed, and she looked like she wanted to hit me.
