Alison
“YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE OKAY? ARE you worried or scared or—”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Hux replies, rolling his eyes awhile later. “I’m not a baby. And the guy just took my picture. You’re kind of making a big deal out of this.”
I mess with his hair as he ducks away, his nose buried in the book he’s reading. “They arrested the guy. He’s in a lot of trouble.”
He doesn’t act like he even cares.
“If you want me to stay home tonight, I will.”
He peers at me over his book with a smile on his lips. “Will you please go so I can read in peace?”
“It’s a good thing you’re cute,” I laugh, lifting up from his bed. “Grandma will take you to her house in a little bit, okay?”
He nods but doesn’t look up. Laughing and saying a prayer of thanks that he doesn’t seem to mind the drama of the day, I head into the kitchen. My mom looks at me from the kitchen table.
“You okay?” she asks.
I shrug. “I think so. Hux seems okay about it. I just . . . this is what I was afraid of, you know?”
“I do. That’s because you’re a good mom and you want to protect your boy. But you can’t protect him from everything, Alison.”
“I know that,” I scoff. “But am I asking for trouble? Am I putting him in a position I’ll regret?”
She crosses her arms over her pale green sweater and tilts her head. “Do you feel like you regret this?”
I start to tell her I don’t know, that I haven’t had time to think it through, that my head is still spinning like a top and I don’t know what in the world is going on, but my phone rings.
It’s Barrett.
“Hey,” I say, holding it to my ear.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Okay,” I say, shooting my mom a look and leaving the room. “What’s up?”
“First, how’s Huxley?”
I smile. “He’s fine. Acts like a little champion.”
“Good,” he says, blowing out a breath. “I have this fucking Gala tonight and I have a million things to do before then. But there’s a story that will probably be breaking sometime tonight or tomorrow, and I wanted you to hear it from me.”
I force a swallow past the lump the size of an avocado in my throat.
This day just gets better.
My hand grasps the back of a chair and I brace myself. “What kind of story?”
Something bangs in the background, possibly a glass on a table. My brain focuses on it instead of his words because it’s easier to digest. “There’s another girl saying she’s pregnant by me.”
“What?” I yelp, my chest caving in, the room spinning.
“It’s not mine, Alison.”
“Are you sure? Who is she? I. . . .”
“Her name is Lacy McKay, a girl I used to see off and on. I haven’t been with her in months, so this baby isn’t mine.” His voice is so cool, so clinical, that I don’t know how to process it.