Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Now I was paying the price for that.
I took a gulp of beer. A baby. Stevie was pregnant and she was keeping the kid. She was going to raise it—alone if she had to.
She was only twenty-one. She shouldn’t have to bear that burden alone. Raising a kid was hard at any age but to do it while so young, and without another parent there to help out…
That child could have been mine. That stung. If only I’d had us be in a real relationship, she never would’ve gone to that asshole in the first place. She never would’ve had to even think about going anywhere else. It was my fault that she was now alone and essentially abandoned, even if Cameron didn’t realize that was what he’d done.
I could fire him. Ha. It would fucking serve him right for all of his messed up priorities. He was always getting good tips but really, was it worth it when he was causing problems like this? He’d caused our head chef to quit.
Although—
Hmm.
I nursed my beer, frowning into the distance.
Cameron having a brief affair with a woman and then unknowingly getting her pregnant, yeah, that fit the bill. I could definitely also see the woman wanting to just go and have her pregnancy out somewhere else, and not wanting Cameron to be involved. I doubted that he’d really be a helpful father, emotionally or financially. He just wasn’t ready for that kind of responsibility.
But Stevie? It didn’t sound like her to do that with Cameron, or someone like him. Especially when she was seeing someone else. Right, yeah, we weren’t in an official relationship but we were still sleeping together and it just… didn’t seem like something Stevie would do, to be with two people at once. At least, not without telling me. She had been a virgin until I’d fucked her, for crying out loud, and maybe some people would jump right into an affair with two people after never having had sex before, but Stevie? No, that just didn’t fit.
Not to mention, Stevie and I weren’t the most responsible. We didn’t use a condom. I should’ve known better, of course. I was more experienced than she was. I should have insisted on us using something, both for health and to make sure that something like this didn’t happen.
But whatever I should’ve done… the point remained that I had in fact fucked her without a condom. I could’ve gotten her pregnant.
Could it be that the baby was mine?
It felt like a pipe dream. Like something I was just telling myself as a way to cling to Stevie, a fragile hope that I didn’t really have or deserve after I hadn’t appreciated her while she was right in front of me.
But still. Even if Stevie had been sleeping with Cameron, and I didn’t think she would be with two people at once, how could she really know that it was his? How could she be certain that the child wasn’t actually mine? She couldn’t tell Brooke that it might be mine, of course, and saying she was unsure which of the two men she’d slept with… Brooke would want to know who the other man was, and she wouldn’t rest until she got an answer.
I had to know. Maybe I was mistaken, maybe this was stupid of me. Maybe Stevie was gone beyond my reach and whatever chance I’d had with her was gone. But I had to know. I couldn’t just leave things the way they were, or I would spend the rest of my life wondering about both about the baby and about what could have been, if only I’d done something.
I had to go to Sacramento to find out the truth.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Stevie
Fridays were always an insanely busy night at the restaurant. Everyone was celebrating the weekend, people were going out on dates… I was running around like a maniac all night while Macintyre barked orders like he was applying to be a drill sergeant. I just wanted to go home.
The end of the shift was such a relief I nearly cried. I felt like I ached all over and I couldn’t wait to get to get home and collapse into bed. Ugh.
As I exited the back and headed towards my car, I realized that there was someone standing there, leaning against it.
My heart skipped a beat.
It was Michael.
He looked as handsome as ever, his hair a little windswept by the evening breeze, wearing a button-up blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top couple of buttons undone, and a pair of dark blue jeans. I swallowed, heat flaring up in me. He looked like the hero of an ‘80s movie who had come to sweep me off my feet in the final act of the film.