Page 93 of The Moments You Were Mine

I heaved, but nothing came up.

“Shit!” Maisey said. “I expected some nausea, Fallon, but I’drather not see actual vomiting.”

I sat back, leaning against the cool wall. Everything hurt. My body and my soul.

“It isn’t the concussion causing the nausea,” I told her, and my hand involuntarily went to my stomach.

“What do you—” She cut herself off and sank to the floor beside me with a flabbergasted look. “Holy shit. That asshole. That asshole!” She pounded the floor.

Maisey was the only person besides those in the interrogation room who knew what JJ had done, partly because I’d been too humiliated and angry to tell anyone, and partly because I’d thought it hadn’t mattered since I’d had a period.

But now, here I was with a life I couldn’t yet feel growing inside me. A life I was incredibly protective of already.

I wanted to shelter it from the knowing looks it would get from people around town, just like the ones I’d gotten growing up. I didn’t want them to know their life had started with an act of betrayal, like mine had. I also didn’t want them to have a dad who’d use them as a bargaining chip if he found out about them. And yet, how would I ever keep the baby from knowing the truth? When they asked about their dad, what would I tell them? A lie?

“You know what’s worse?” I whispered to my best friend.

“What could be worse than being impregnated by an asshole poking holes in your condoms, being shot at, and being accused of the attempted murder of your own mother?”

“Thanks for summing up the shittiness of my life so thoroughly,” I said dryly. Then, I looked at her, and the tears leaked out. “Parker… Parker finally let his guard down and kissed me. He admitted he wanted me.”

“Oh my God,hekissedyou?”

I nodded. “Twice.”

“And?” she asked breathlessly, knowing—as only a best friend for life could—just how much I’d always wanted him to initiate a kiss, to not back away from the electricity burning between us.

“Universe-spinning, life-altering good.” Just thinking of our kisses made my entire body light up, pushing away the nauseauntil the truth crashed back down.

“I’m jealous. I’ve never had that kind of a kiss,” she said mournfully.

“Don’t be jealous. I have to walk away from it.” It hurt more than I could ever have imagined anything could.

“What?” She looked at me, flabbergasted. “Why?”

“I’m pregnant with another man’s baby, Maise,” I told her sadly. “What am I going to do? Date Parker while I grow to the size of a basketball? Expect him to massage my feet while I grow another man’s kid inside me?”

Realization hit, and her face turned red with anger. “That fucker. I want to kill him with my bare hands.”

“Me too. At least if JJ were dead, he’d never find out about the baby. I can’t let him know he succeeded, Maisey. He can never, ever know,” I said fiercely.

Maisey and I just sat shoulder to shoulder, contemplating life as we had many times growing up. Finally, when the cold of the tile started to eat its way through us, she helped me up and back into the bed.

We turned on the television, and knowing me as she did, she pulled up a streaming service and found my old comfort show. The one I’d returned to over and over through the years. Buffy’s face on the screen eased the tension in my body. If she could save the entire Earth from devastation as a teenager, I could certainly figure a way out of my current troubles as an adult.

“You could marry him,” Maisey said.

I jerked my gaze from the TV. “No fucking way am I marrying the asshole who got me pregnant and is going to prison for drug dealing and identity theft.”

Maisey’s mouth dropped open. “As if I’d ever suggest you marry that loser. No. I’m talking about Parker.”

I snorted. “Just because he’s decided he wants to have sex with me doesn’t mean he’s changed his mind about love and marriage and kids. Parker has always been clear he didn’t want any of it.”

She frowned and then shrugged. “But he already has a kid now. What’s he going to do with Theo when he’s deployed? Is he resigning his commission? If you married Parker, like ASAP,and JJ ever came sniffing around, you could tell him it was Parker’s baby. You know he’d believe it. He always thought you were sleeping with Parker anyway. And you could keep Theo while Parker was off on assignment.”

“You’re suggesting I offer Parker some kind of fake marriage, like in a romance book?”

She raised a single eyebrow. “I’m not sure how much ‘fake’ there would be in the ‘fake marriage.’ The steam between the two of you is real.”