When Jesse’s voice cracked on the last word I felt tears burning my eyes. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I had just been staring at the damn cake too long, that was all. I was suffering from low blood sugar or something. That was the only explanation for this nightmare I was suddenly in.
Nausea like I had never had in the beginning of my pregnancy rolling in my stomach and I struggled to stand. Jesse stood quickly and helped me to my feet. I practically ran out of the reception hall toward the closest bathroom. As soon as I opened the stall everything that I had dared to eat that day came up.
A sob racked my body and I had to grab onto the toilet seat before I fell to my knees. I wasn’t sure what hurt more, my stomach or my heart. Oh fuck! I couldn’t lose Lucy. I couldn’t! She was proof that there was still good in the world.
“Layla?” I didn’t even try to raise my head as Lana’s concerned voice drifted to me from the other side of the door. Another wave of nausea washed over me and I couldn’t help but cry out before I emptied the rest of the contents of my stomach.
“Is she okay?” Emmie’s voice was just as concerned as my sister’s was. “Jesse wasn’t making much sense.”
When there was nothing left to come up I straightened on shaking legs and slowly opened the door. I couldn’t stop the flow of tears as they rained down my face. I was scared—no I was fucking terrified! By blood, Lucy was just my half-sister. In my soul, she was as much my daughter as the babies I carried inside of me.
Lana stepped forward, grasping my cold, nerveless hands. “What’s wrong? Did you eat something that disagreed with the babies?”
I shook my head, panting as the nausea was suddenly replaced with a tightening in my stomach that was so painful I nearly fell to my knees for an entirely different reason. “Fu-ck!”
“It’s because you’re so upset.” Emmie put her arm around me, urging me to the little sofa against the wall. “Come and sit down. Take a few deep breaths.”
My hands clutched at my stomach as I tried to breathe through the cramp or contraction or whatever the hell it was. Apparently my babies didn’t like it when their momma was upset. It took nearly a full minute before the pain subsided and I breathed a sigh of relief as the pain faded. Lana was sitting on one side of me while Emmie sat on the other.
My sister leaned forward with a damp paper towel to wipe at my damp brow. “Now, let’s talk about what made you so upset.”
Fresh tears pooled in my eyes and I bit my lip to keep from sobbing. “Lucy’s…real dad?” They both nodded and I could actually feel their tension. “He wants…custody.”
“But you adopted her.” Lana looked as pale as I felt, her eyes nearly as wild as I suspected mine were. She had been the one to take care of Lucy from the day she was born until our mother had died and the girls had come to live with me. Lucy was ours. “She’s legally yours and Jesse’s. Right?”
I shook my head. “Technically yes. But the lawyer and even the judge told us that if Lucy’s real father ever showed up and could prove paternity then he had a viable case to take her. I never gave it another thought because all of Lydia’s other baby-daddies were such deadbeats that they didn’t want to be a part of our lives…”
“Who is he?” Lana asked. “There were so many men coming and going around that time I wasn’t sure who her father really was.”
“Vince Grady is the name on the papers Jesse was served yesterday.”
Lana flinched as if I had physically hit her and she shot unsteadily to her feet. Emmie moved quickly to steady her in case she were to fall, but Lana moved to the sink and clenched the edge of the tiled top. “Oh my god,” she whispered, her dark head bowed while her long black hair fell in her face.
“What?” I demanded, my voice rising without me really meaning to do so. If I was terrified before then there hadn’t even been a word invented yet to describe how scared I was now.
After a hesitation Lana finally turned to face me. “He’s violent, Layla. Mom didn’t keep him around long because he was too extreme even for her. Vince hit her all the time, and we moved not long after she broke up with him… I can remember asking her why and she said so we would be safe. A few months later a cop knocked on our door and said that he was going on trial and they needed Mom to testify. By that time she was about six months pregnant.”
“So he really could be Lucy’s father?”
“I can’t tell you for sure, Layla. I wish I could tell you that he is some playboy rock star like yours and mine. Or even one of her sugar daddies instead of her coke dealer. Only a paternity test can do that.”
Emmie was noticeably quiet beside me and I glanced over at her. She was typing something into her phone, her face expressionless. The only sign that she was as upset as both Lana and myself was the way her jaw was clenched. I knew that she loved Lucy as much as any of us. Because we’d had the same type of mother, Emmie saw the little girl she had once been in Lucy.
After a moment of tense silence, Emmie finally dropped her phone onto her lap. “The lawyer you used for the adoption will be at my house at eight in the morning. We’ll get this taken care of, Layla. Don’t worry about it. There isn’t a way in hell that you’re going to lose Lucy.”
If anyone could fix this for Jesse and me, it was Emmie. But for the first time since I had known my best friend, I wasn’t feeling as optimistic about her ability to fix something.
There was a heavy tap on the bathroom door before Drake’s head peeked around the corner. “Ladies, everything okay in here?” When his eyes landed on Lana, noticing instantly how tense and pale she was, he stepped fully into the room. “Angel?”
“I’ll tell you all about it later, Drake,” she promised, holding out her arms for her husband’s hug. When he wrapped his arms around her tenderly she buried her face in his wide chest. “Just hold me for now, babe.”
“I need to get back to Jesse.” I frowned, wondering how I was going to get up off the sofa. Emmie stood and offered me a hand, but I shook my head at her. No way was I going to let tiny, pregnant Emmie pull on my fat ass. “Don’t even think about it. You’ll hurt yourself and the baby.”
That had both my sister and brother-in-law jerking around. “Baby?” Drake’s eyes widened and went straight to Emmie’s still-flat stomach. “Are you pregnant again, Em?”