Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Then, her face went pale, and she slapped a hand over her mouth.
My body clenched as I made a move toward Hannah, but before I could so much as let my mother go, she was running toward the front door of the building.
I let my mother go and cursed as I ran after her, coming to a stop outside just as Hannah bent over the flowerbed that my mother had insisted we put in ‘for aesthetics’ and lost her lunch.
“Hannah…” I paused. “You okay?”
She squatted down and placed her hands over the back of her neck. “I’m pregnant. You got me pregnant.”
A gasp left my lips, as well as my mother’s, who I hadn’t realized had followed me out.
“Come again?” I blinked.
She looked at me, leaving her hands on her neck where they were, and nodded miserably. “Yep. You heard right.”
“Oh, my God,” my mother cried, sounding happy, but trying to act like she wasn’t.
I was too flabbergasted to reply to either Hannah’s words, or my mother’s.
Instead, I walked to the huge fucking rock that my mother had insisted we put there in the flowerbed and took a seat, directly next to Hannah’s stomach contents.
“When did you find out?”
She pushed up and then back, coming to her ass on the sidewalk. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at my mother, as well as Tate Casey who didn’t even try to make it look like he wasn’t paying attention, and then back to me.
I waved her worry away. “That’s my mother and Tate Casey. They both know me well. It’s not a big deal that they know…”
She dropped her head and sighed.
“To answer your question, I’ve been trying to work up the courage to tell you for a week now.”
Then, to add the icing to the cake, Allegra chose that time to pull into the parking lot—fifteen minutes early to drop Alex off for her weekend with me—and got out.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered darkly.
Hannah looked up, followed my gaze to the parking lot, and stiffened.
I wasn’t sure if she knew the woman getting out of the car, but this was a fairly small town. Allegra was on fucking commercials for her father—who was a used car salesman. She was well known, and still sometimes used my last name because she thought it was funny to torture me.
“Grandma!” Alex cried out. “Hey!”
Alex, my lovely daughter, came running over and threw herself into my mother’s arms.
My mother gobbled the attention up, sending me a gloating look. One that I returned. Only, my look was one of annoyance.
Alex wasn’t my biggest fan since her mother and I had split, and Allegra had a lot to do with that. She loved my mother, though.
My mother obviously didn’t realize how much Alex disliked being with me, otherwise I was sure she wouldn’t have looked so smug. She didn’t like seeing her babies hurting.
Alex was a very intuitive child. One that knew that just last year, her mother and I had been together and what she thought was happy. Now it was all my fault that we were no longer together, and I had no doubt in my mind that Alex heard that from Allegra on a daily basis.
“Hey, Alex. How you doin’, baby?” my mother cried.
Hannah started to look green around the gills again, and I prayed that she would be able to hold it together while Allegra was here.
My luck was that she wouldn’t and Allegra would find out, then things would get even worse.
The good thing was that Hannah was able to keep it together. The bad thing was that apparently, Hannah hadn’t been discreet buying her pregnancy test, and Allegra was already aware of the rumors surrounding the new girl. (Like I said, this was a small town, and people loved to gossip.)
What Allegra hadn’t been aware of was who had gotten the new girl pregnant.
Now, seeing the two of us so close, she put two and two together.
And what I saw in Allegra’s eyes was enough to make my stomach sour.
“Well, well, well,” Allegra drawled.
The words weren’t sing-song. They were sharp and hard. Like a fucking knife.
God. Dammit.
Chapter 13
I like to make lists. I also like to leave them on the kitchen table and guess what I need when I’m at the store.
-Hannah’s secret thoughts
Hannah
Present day
I should’ve known that it was too good to be true.
The bad things started happening the first day after Travis told Allegra how it was going to be, and it started with his daughter.
I was with Travis when we went to pick her up from the parking lot of The Dollar Store where they always met for the exchange.
I should’ve known when Alex got out—on her own volition this time instead of having to be taken out kicking and screaming by Travis—that it was going to be bad.