Page 20 of End Game

“Yeah?” I stay facing the glass, barely able to make out her reflection due to the brightness inside.

I wait, hand still primed to yank open the slider.

My annoyance level is far too high, the irritation at myself slipping into anger.

My mind is chastising me for even being here, for chasing down this girl who doesn’t want to see me, because if she did, she would’ve reached out.

She could’ve planted a little seed with Poppy. My dumb ass can’t take a fucking clue.

The roll of the door just starts to rumble when she finally speaks again. “Wait.”

“Layla, we don’t have to do this,” I sigh, snapping the door shut. “I didn’t mean to bother you or put you in some weird position. I just wanted to say hi.”

Turning, I take her in. Her posture is defiant, her chin lifted towards the inky black sky.

“Trust me when I say I don’t want to do this.” Her confidence wobbles. “I need to sit down.” She moves quickly across the balcony and slides into a chair next to a small glass table. “You probably should sit down too.”

My stomach bottoms out, dropping to my feet, as I drag myself to the chair opposite her. My skin is coated with a cold sweat, every nightmare I’ve ever contemplated rolling through me like it’s three in the morning and I’m lonely.

“What the hell is going on?” I drop into the seat, wiping the sweat off my palms.

“I’m pregnant, Branch.”

Falling back into the chair, I blow out a sigh of relief that it wasn’t some STD talk. I hate those. The last time that happened a girl tried to extort me for ten thousand dollars until I volunteered to show her my regular screening and that I’ve never had any sort of venereal disease. Ever.

“What did he say?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Callum.”

She slow-blinks. “Callum?”

“You haven’t told him yet?” I ask, watching her work through a battery of emotions. My own are a little whirled as I realize my lusting over this woman has probably just had to come to a screeching halt. She has bigger fish to fry than my cock . . . and that’s pretty fucking big.

“It’ll be all right,” I say, as encouraging as I can while setting aside the fact that this is not how I’d hoped this conversation was going to go. “He’ll come around. But do you want some advice?”

She slow-blinks again, this time with her mouth hanging open. I take that as a yes.

“Take charge right away. Don’t let him start calling the shots or thinking he gets to say shit about your life.”

“Branch . . .”

We sit across the table, the moon shining just enough to illuminate her pretty features and I resent the fact that Callum is the one that spent that kind of intimate time with her. Fucker didn’t even appreciate it.

A wash of fear trickles across her face. My heart clenches, the do-gooder that’s buried so far below the surface I don’t see it much chooses this moment to come forward.

“You need help telling Finn? He’s gonna be pissed, Layla.”

“I know,” she squeaks.

“No, I don’t think you do,” I laugh, just imagining my best friend’s response to this little piece of news. “He might drive to Columbus tonight and kick the shit out of him.”

“Branch . . .”

“I’ll make sure he gets bailed out.”

“Branch.” This time it’s a command, a warning to stop talking and listen. “I need to talk to you.”

“We’re talking, Sunshine.”

Her throat moves with a hard swallow. She leans back in her chair, combing a hand through the side of her hair. “Um, so . . .” She releases a breath. “The baby. Um . . . Branch, the baby isn’t Callum’s.”

“Then whose is it?” I watch her face and realize . . . I’m better off not knowing. With a need to get off of the balcony and into the comfort of a mass of drunk bodies, I start to stand. “You know what, I don’t want to know.”

“The baby is yours.” She blurts the words like it’s a burden under the weight of which she’s being crushed. That if she just chucks it into the world, gets the offending words out of her mouth, she can breathe.

I stop dead in my tracks.

Replaying the statement, it makes no more sense than it did the first time.

She looks at me like she’s watching a man learn his fate after being tried for the most heinous of crimes. It’s a mixture of fear at the reaction, but also an acute curiosity.

“What did you just say?” I ask.

“The baby is yours, Branch.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I scoff, my chair going sailing back and smashing against the glass. “The baby is mine? Your baby is mine? No way.”

“I’m pregnant and the only person I’ve slept with is you.”

I laugh because that’s all I can do short of exploding everything within reach.

This has to be some kind of sick joke or game or attempt to piss me off for not calling her. That’s happened before, but not to this extent. Still, it’s possible.

“Layla, really,” I say, taking a deep breath and trying to calm down. “If you’re pregnant—congratulations, but the baby cannot be mine.”

“I know it’s hard to believe?—”

“Hard to believe? You know what’s hard to believe? That it’s you pulling this shit. I’ve had a lot of things pinned on me, but, believe it or not, never a kid. I never dreamed it would be you.”

The sky looks so dark, so foreboding as I look into it, wondering how the fuck I got here. How did I give this woman enough of a comfort level around me to claim she’s pregnant?

As her chair goes skidding against the rails, clamoring as it falls to the tile, I know—this is how it happened.

She has that thing about her that’s just relatable enough to think she’s not like the rest of them.

That she sees more than dollar bills and contract numbers.

I believed that, and that is what is killing me most right now—I trusted her even when I knew better.

Her golden eyes dance with rage. “You think I’m making this up?”

“I don’t doubt you’re pregnant, but I have serious doubts it’s mine.

I used a rubber,” I point out, thanking God for that little tidbit.

“You’re on the pill. Explain to me how the universe pulled off me knocking you up under those circumstances.

Hell, if it’s even a possibility, do you know how many kids I could have running around out there? ”

“I have no idea how many potential offspring you have, Branch, and the fact that I know so little about you worries me too.”

“Didn’t worry you when you were coming all over my cock.”

“And it didn’t worry you when you stuck said cock in my vagina and told me how tight I felt wrapped around you before you went and got a condom,” she says flatly.

“ Ohhh . That’s where you’re saying this happened. In that span of ten seconds I was in you raw?”

She glares at me. “I’m not saying I know when it happened. I’m just saying I know it did.”

“This is fucking bullshit.”

“You know what’s fucking bullshit?” Her arms drop to her sides as her tone starts to shift.

“That I decided to tell you this because it was the right thing to do, and I almost had myself convinced that we could figure a way to work it out. You know, as I’ve been sitting around trying not to vomit, crying myself to sleep over not knowing what’s going to happen, and how I’m going to handle it all and how you’re going to handle it all and what’s the best way to tell you and to .

. .” She sucks in a breath, her cheeks as flamed as her dress. “Forget I said it. I wish I hadn’t.”

“Forget you said it?” I laugh angrily. “You just said I knocked you up.”

“And that’s what it was, wasn’t it? You knocked me up. We fucked and now this. That sounds so pretty, doesn’t it?” Her features sour. “You think I’m any happier about this than you are? You think I wanted to have a baby by you ?”

Those words sear into my psyche, the emphasis powering into me. I may as well have taken a hit from the best lineman in the league because my stomach has been walloped hard.

By me? What’s that supposed to mean?

“You know what? You can do whatever you want with this information,” she says, walking a wide loop around me.

“You have my word I’m not saying anything to anyone and I never will.

If you don’t want to claim this kid, I’ll put on the birth certificate that I’m a whore and don’t know whose kid it is. ”

“Layla . . .”

She shoots me the dirtiest look I’ve ever had someone give me. “If you want to see the baby after it’s born, I’d never keep it from you. I have a bit of class,” she glares, grabbing the door handle. “After a paternity test, of course .”

With the chilliest final glance she can muster, she yanks open the lever and walks out, leaving me standing in the warm summer night feeling as though I just stepped onto an iceberg.

Fuck.

My.

Life.