Page 63 of Anything Goes

“That wasn't my intention, but it's definitely possible that she thought we were going to be more than what we were.”

“Did you tell her that you loved her?”

“No.”

Alauni nodded her head slowly, and then shrugged. “Okay, so what made you tell me all of this now?”

“I ran into her recently and—”

“Now you realized that you want to be with her?” Alauni said before shaking her head and standing. “I should have known this shit was too good to be true.”

Yanking her back down, I said, “Would you stop doing that shit? No, I don’t want to be with her. The problem is, she doesn’t want me to be with you, and she’s threatened to cause problems if I don’t leave you alone.”

“Say what? How does she even know about me?”

“Honestly, I don’t know, but I do think someone really was watching you when you were at Pizza Playland the other day…and I think that someone was her.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Maxine is known to do some off the wall stuff. But I thought that since we hadn't talked in a while, she had moved on with her life. I guess I was wrong.”

Confused, Alauni said, “I don’t understand. You weren’t in a relationship with this woman, you made it clear that you didn’t want to be with her, so why is she doing this?”

I lowered my gaze, desperately wanting to hold on to the words that were leaving my mouth. But that wasn’t an option. I had to say them. “At one point…she was pregnant with my child.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

With her mouth wide open, Alauni stood up.

I couldn’t quite judge her thoughts, but I was pretty sure that they weren’t pleased with the information that I’d just shared.

She walked across the room, her hands planted on her hips. I wanted to say something, but I figured that I should wait it out...give her a chance to make sense of things.

When she was finally ready to respond, she walked back over to me and looked me right in the face. “Wow, so you do have a child out there?”

“No, I don’t have a child. She didn’t have the baby, and that’s the problem. She blames me for that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She had an abortion, but she feels like I’m the one that told her to have it.”

“Well, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. I told her that I didn’t want to have a child with her.”

“Don’t you think that’s the same thing?”

“No, I don’t. I was being honest. I didn’t think that we should have a child together, but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t take care of it.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure she didn’t see it that way. You pretty much told her that she was on her own. You know, typical man bullshit.”

Frowning, I said, “What? You know damn well that’s not how I roll.”

“No, I really don't know. Granted, maybe she shouldn't have gone all crazy and threatened your relationship with me, but I can see why she's hurt by you.”

“You’re kidding, right?”