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“Shut up,” I snap, losing all my patience with him.
There’s a couple of seconds of silence. Then, “What’d you say to me?”
I clutch the phone tightly to my ear and with a pounding heart, I repeat, “I said shut the fuck up.”
“You think you’re so brave, huh? Telling your father to shut up over the phone,” he growls. “Why don’t you —”
“Because I’m done with your threats,” I cut him off and keep going. “Do you hear me? I’m fucking done. You want to screw up Reed’s life, you go ahead and do that. And then let’s see how fast you get dead when you don’t see even a single cent of the money that the Vandekamps have promised you. Now I’ve already told you that I’m doing this, that I’ll do this, so give me some credit, all right? You want me to do a job, let me do it. My way. Not yours.
“Ezra isn’t a dog that I can train to do as he’s told. He loves his company. He loves his job. And he has a mind of his own. If we keep putting pressure on him, he’s going to get suspicious. You want that money, you’ll get it. But you’ll have to be patient. You’ll have to let me run the show a little bit. Because as much as you like to remind me how powerless I am against you, you need me too. You need me to do your dirty work so you’re still breathing next year and the year after that and the year after that. So back the fuck off.”
And surprisingly, he does.
I wasn’t expecting that of him but I’m glad he did.
I’m fucking relieved.
Not only because my calling his bluff — very risky move by the way — worked but also because I can’t worry about my father when I’ve got other things to worry about. And I’m not just talking about telling my future husband about this little decision I’ve made.
It’s the decision in itself.
The fact that I’m going to have a baby.
Well, I’m going to try to have a baby.
And I’m going to start tomorrow.
It’s not me; it’s science.
My ovulation window starts tomorrow and from what I’ve read it lasts about two to four days.
So yeah, if everything goes right, I may end up pregnant on the other side of my ovulation window. And as scary as that is — getting pregnant — it’s still not as scary as whose baby I’m getting pregnant with.
And as usual, every time this thought enters my mind, I do the same thing that I’ve been doing for the past week. Ever since the night of the Chinese restaurant. I shove it down.
I thrust it away.
I distract myself.
And tonight the distraction comes in the form of baking with my BFF.
“Why would you agree to bake all of these by yourself?” I ask as I work on the frosting.
By all these I mean two hundred and fifty cupcakes.
Pink-cheeked and her blonde hair all fluttery and framing her face, she sighs sharply. “Because I’m an idiot and I wanted to contribute more.”
“You already do a lot for them,” I remind her.
“Not enough though,” she says, pouring the cupcake batter in the tin. “I only work there part-time. Sometimes I cancel without much notice and they don’t mind. They know I have a new baby at home. They try to work around my schedule. And this is my way of both contributing more and paying them back.”
Callie works at a ballet studio in town and they’re having a bake sale this coming weekend. A ballerina herself, she teaches ballet to little girls and loves it. Although this is only temporary. Until she starts school at Juilliard next year. She had to defer her admission a year because she got pregnant with Halo.
Who, as usual, is strapped to my chest as I work.
I look down at her; she’s cooing and playing peacefully with her fishy rattle toy. “Your mommy is crazy, Little Berry. You know that, don’t you? But it’s okay. You still lucked out. Because your aunt is extremely smart and intelligent.”
She jiggles her toy. “Gah. Gah. Gaaaah.”
I look at Callie, smiling. “See? She agrees with me.”
She’s rolling her eyes however. Then, “Since when do you call her Little Berry?”
“What?”
“Only Ledger calls her that,” she tells me.
I can feel her gaze on me but I keep my focus on the frosting and try to sound as causal as I can. “Oh, does he? Maybe I heard it from him.”
I can still feel her stare on me.
Making me feel like she isn’t buying it.
So to put her off the scent and also because I really am dying to talk about this, I ask, “Can I ask you something?”
She takes a few seconds to answer but then she turns back to her task and replies, “Sure.”
