Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“Don’t finish that sentence.” Jesse sips his drink.
I smirk. “Alright. Point is, this is new territory. A few times, I almost thought she looked like she wished this was all real, you know?”
“No,” Jesse says, voice cold. “I don’t. Believe it or not, I’ve never tried to pretend to be engaged.”
“Yeah, well, it’s weird. Confusing,” I add.”
There’s a long pause. Jesse finally laughs. “Jesus, dude. What the hell are you two doing?”
“That’s a good question,” I admit. “I think she’s trying to save her B&B, and I’m trying to save my career.”
Another long pause. “You know, even if the Vandals don’t sign you, every other team in the league would blow their load if they landed you. It’s not like you’ll have to retire.”
“I want to retire a Vandal. This is my team.”
“Yeah,” he says with a heavy sign. “I get it. But you really think this will work? Has Vanessa touched base with the front office since the news of your little engagement broke?”
“No,” I say. “We wanted to give it some time to reach them naturally. Don’t want it to seem too forced.”
“What if they just think this makes you look even more unpredictable? Guy without a girlfriend gets engaged out of nowhere?”
I shake my head. “It’ll be fine. I can explain we were really dating for a while. It’s not entirely untrue, anyway.”
Jesse’s eyes narrow. “You just said this was uncharted territory.”
“Yeah. It’s not as if we were in an official, committed relationship. And we were always sneaking around. Being out in the open and trying to act like a real couple. I think we both knew it wouldn’t make sense to try for anything more. I’d never be around enough, and she was too busy with the B&B to follow me around the country during the season.”
“And you think that’s going to be different, now?”
“No,” I say slowly. “But we’re just pretending. Remember?”
“Right,” he says slowly. “Because you definitely don’t have any real feelings for her.”
“Look,” I say with a sigh. “I do like your sister. I always have. She’s honestly pretty fucking awesome, okay?”
“I’m aware,” Jesse says.
“So when I heard she got knocked up, I distanced myself on purpose. We’d been… well, you know, at the time. Her getting pregnant meant she wasn’t being exclusive, and I realized I was the one being an idiot for thinking she should’ve been. It hurt. But as far as I can tell, that guy is completely out of the picture.” I wait, watching Jesse with a meaningful expression.
He sighs. “I wish I knew more, man. I still have no fucking clue who or where this mystery man came from. None of us do. We honestly all assumed the baby was yours.”
I laugh. “And I’ve told you it might be theoretically possible, but she made it pretty clear it was this other guy’s. I’m assuming they took a paternity test or something, or she wouldn’t have been so sure.”
“What if she was afraid to tell you the truth?” Jesse asks.
I frown. “What?”
“I mean, think about the timing,” Jesse says. “Remember that press conference after that model tried to baby-trap you? You basically told the whole country that you’d rather drop dead than find out you fathered a baby with someone. You said you’ve always put hockey before everything, and fathering a child would be an unforgivable mistake. Ringing any bells?”
I rub the back of my neck. “Okay, yeah. It’s possible I went a little hard. But I was trying to prove a point. I was pissed. That woman was claiming her kid was mine, but all she ever did was blow me years back. It was physically impossible. And I always wrap it up. Plus, this all came right around the time I started suspecting Caroline was pregnant. I was waiting for her to tell me the truth and she kept distancing herself. I started to get convinced there was somebody else. And maybe I was speaking out of my ass because I was hurting. I didn’t want her to think I wished that had been my baby. If it sounded like it was the last thing on Earth I wanted, then she’d never suspect how gutted I’d be if she told me it was somebody else’s.”
“You were gutted? You said you didn’t care.”
I hang my head. “Yeah, well, I say a lot of things. Sometimes, sympathy can be suffocating. I didn’t want any.”
Jesse is quiet for a while. “Well… let’s put these depressing puzzle pieces together, shall we? You suspect Caroline is pregnant. Instead of being a normal human and asking her, you get paranoid that it’s somebody else’s because she hasn’t told you yet. Then, fate decides to bring some random girl out of the shadows from your past to claim her five-year-old is actually your baby because she wants to get hitched to you and ride your credit card. You, being the genius you are, used the press conference to kill two birds with one stone. Convince Sophie Gray and the world you never fathered her baby, and convince Caroline you would rather drop dead than father a child. In a shocking twist to nobody, Caroline comes up with a story about some mystery man being the father shortly after…”