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“Three.” I nodded.
“How about you?” he asked, still keeping me close.
“One. Senior year. He stole my V-card and broke up with me the next day.”
“That’s not right.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry that happened.”
A few minutes of silence sat between us.
“Funny how things from so long ago can screw us up, huh?”
I chuckled and cast him a look. “Who says I’m screwed up?”
He nuzzled my nose quickly and laughed, pulling back. It took everything thing I had not to crawl on top of him and press my lips to his.
“You had three girlfriends,” I repeated, nodding. “What would happen if the other two showed up? Same reaction as with Clara?”
He laughed, dropping his arm down. “No. The history was a little different with Clara.”
“First love?”
He smirked and shook his head. “I get where you’re going.”
“Perfect. Then I don’t need to spell it out for you.” I smiled wryly at him.
“Clara and I dated for a year and a half. Part of our junior and senior years.” He stood and turned to face me. I blocked the sunlight out of my face with my hand and nodded as I focused on his gaze. It didn’t leave mine. “She became pregnant.”
I froze and immediately thought about Clara’s son in my store the other day. He didn’t look like Lucas at all, but that happened all the time with kids. They’d take after one parent more than the other.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stayed silent.
“For six months, we kept the secret. I knew my parents would flip out and not in a good way, and her parents would probably hunt me down.” He brushed his fingers along his jaw and let out a low breath. “But the kicker was that I started getting excited instead of being absolutely petrified. It certainly wasn’t what I’d planned. The timing was all wrong, but the thought of raising a son actually thrilled me to death.”
“I had no idea…” My voice trailed off.
“No. Wait for it.” He held up his hand and shook his head.
“What? There’s a kicker?”
“So, I started putting together a plan to take care of Clara and the baby. I’d saved up enough for rent because I was fairly certain my parents would not be letting us stay at our house, even though it was a huge place.”
“Okay.”
“I bought a crib with her, bedding, tiny little onesies… I actually realized how much I wanted this baby, and the whole thing confused me because prior to finding out she was pregnant, I’d planned on ending things with her. She was headed to one college, and I was headed to another. We didn’t have anything in common.”
I nodded, completely bewildered about where this was going.
He laughed under his breath and took a seat next to me again. “I don’t even think she liked me, to be honest. Everything I did annoyed her. I chewed too loudly. She hated my laugh. She thought my clothes were awful.” Lucas shrugged and linked his hands together as he leaned over his knees.
“I’d planned a dinner with my parents to let them know I was going to become a father.”
“Did James know?”
He shook his head. “He still doesn’t. Nobody does.”
“Wait. They don’t know you have a son?”
Lucas pressed his lips together and looked at me. “I don’t have a son. She had lied to me. She slept with my best friend, and he was the father of her child.”
