Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
She walked over as if she were going to sit, then paused. I watched her take a deep breath.
“Okay, I need to go back in time. Bear with me,” she said.
I nodded, waiting for her to say more.
She opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t know where to begin exactly. I’m sorry. I thought I did, but now, I’m not sure.”
“Just talk, baby. You’ve got my full attention,” I assured her.
“That concert of yours I didn’t go to,” she began.
I nodded my head in encouragement.
“Well, I didn’t get inside, but I did walk around outside. I was so lost in thought, trying to accept my best friend was inside with my boyfriend and that they’d been messing around behind my back for a while.” She waved a hand, as if that was unimportant. “Anyway, I got lost. It was dark, and then a man spoke up. I got nervous, realizing I’d walked away from the cars and security to the back of the coliseum.
“The man was alone and smoking a joint. He talked to me a moment, and then he walked into the moonlight. I was speechless. There before me was … you.”
Me? I frowned and waited for more. Why was she just now telling me about this? It seemed strange. I wanted to ask, but I needed to hear more.
“We talked. You thought I was a groupie. I didn’t correct you. I was young,” she said.
“How young?” I asked.
“Seventeen.”
My stomach knotted up, and I swore. “Please tell me I didn’t fuck you.”
She took a deep breath, and her gaze leveled on mine. I had my answer. I had fucked a seventeen-year-old kid.
“I told you I was twenty-one,” she said. “You’d asked, and I lied. I had known you wouldn’t keep talking to me if you knew my age.”
“And I believed you?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I ran a hand through my hair and dropped my feet to the floor, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. I needed to hear all of this, but there was a part of me that wanted her to stop talking now. I wanted to end story time and go fuck the grown Brielle.
“We went to your bus. You had me take off my dress for you. Then, you took me to a bed, and we had sex. You passed out right after you climaxed and rolled off me. I stood to leave.”
She stopped then and closed her eyes. Her body was strung so tight that I was afraid to hear what more she had to say. This wasn’t going to be a funny story. It wasn’t something that we were going to laugh about, then go fuck. She was about to change everything. I could feel it. The tension in the room was too thick.
My hands clenched into fists as I waited, terrified of what she was going to say.
“The condom was broken. There was cum between my thighs.” She swallowed hard, and then she looked at me, her eyes now wet with unshed tears. “Nine months later—” she said and then covered her mouth on a sob.
I sat there, numb. What she was telling me sank in. Questions started to add up in my head. But nothing came out. I just sat there. My gaze dropped from her to the wall behind her.
Finally, after several moments—I wasn’t sure how long we’d stayed there, silent—I asked, “Are you sure he’s mine?” I didn’t look at her when I asked it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. The lies. Everything I’d believed about her no longer held up. I was questioning it all.
“Yes,” she whispered.
I managed to nod, then ran a hand over my face. I was stunned. I had never been this stunned in my life.
“I’ll need a paternity test done,” I said then.
She let out a shaky breath. “I’m not asking you for anything. I don’t want child support, Dean—”
I stood then, anger slowly building inside of me. I swung my gaze back to her. “This isn’t about you, Brielle. It’s about the fact that you claim I have a son I didn’t know existed. A boy who needed to know his dad. I want a motherfucking paternity test. If he’s mine, he needs to know. I need to know. You took nine years from us.”
Tears were running down her face now. I couldn’t comfort her. Not now. Not after this.
“I’ll set up the test. Have him here tomorrow at noon. We will do it then,” I said to her.
I wanted to ask her if she’d tried to get in touch with me. I wanted to know why she had waited until now to tell me. Had she meant to suck me in with her body and my need for her first? Had that all been a part of her plan?