Page 17 of Wild Card

I stand frozen, heart racing as quickly as my mind as I soak in the woman before me.

She looks just as shocked as I am.

What are the chances?

Tripp smiles like a politician and gestures toward her with a look of fondness on his face. “Bash, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Gwen. Gwen Dawson.”

The wordgirlfriendfalls through me, landing hard and heavy in my gut.

Yeah.

What are the fucking chances?

CHAPTER SEVEN

GWEN

Blindsided.

That’s what I am.

Tripp nudges me with his elbow. “Babe, this is my biological dad. Sebastian.”

Sebastian.

The full name feels too formal for the night we shared. A night I think about more often than I should. A night during which we barely touched, and yet it rivals the intimacy of any night I’ve ever spent with a man.

I stare back at Bash, his hawkish, dark eyes slicing through me from beneath heavy, furrowed brows.

My stomach is in knots. My pulse is in my throat. My heart falls somewhere down near my feet. Words fail me.

In a desperate attempt to make this introduction look a hell of a lot less awkward than it really is, I wipe one sweaty palm on my silky kaftan dress before outstretching it toward Bash.

His gaze flits down to it, and his expression tells me he’d rather do anything but shake my hand.

And he does.

He shoves his fists into his dark-wash jeans and hits me with the world’s tightest smile. “Nice to meet you, Gwen.”

Awkwardness be damned, I guess.

It feels like someone just slapped me. He shows no signs of recognizing me, and the warm rasp I remember in his voice is notably absent. His body language is as closed off as a fucking prison cell. He doesn’t even tell me to call him Bash. It appears he’s relegated me toSebastianterms.

Which honestly pisses me off. Ire surges through me as the shock of the moment wanes.

“Sure is,” I spit out, letting a little venom seep into my voice.

Because how dare he?

There’s a kind way to let a girl down, and it isn’t by letting her constantly check her phone like a desperate teenager hoping that the cute boy she’s obsessed with might text her.

Formonths.

I stayed positive and “glass half-full” and all those things I pride myself on being while I waited for him to reach out.

And he didn’t.

Even a simpleI had a wonderful time with you, but it’s best we go our separate wayswould have sufficed. I’m a big girl—I could have dealt with that kind of rejection.