“Don’t worry about our hurt feelings, Gracey. If you want Sam or someone else, I will survive it. So will Sam if you reject him. And if you want us both, well, we’ve always shared, so that will work.”
I didn’t understand why they hadn’t asked the prime question. “Don’t you want to know who the father is?”
Sam shook his head.
“It makes no difference, Grace. Your child, you’d tell us if you want us to know. And any one of us would step up and be a good father.”
“But you’re eighteen with college ahead of you,” I protested.
“And so are you, Gray. We’d figure things out. Parents have always figured out how to manage.”
I shrugged. “I’ve always known it. You two are inseparable. You even talk together, finishing each other’s thoughts all the time. You should know you are the father. I don’t know which one of you, but I never had done it before, not with anyone else until that night.”
Surprise registered on both of their faces. At last, I’d said something that surprised them into some sort of reaction.
They said nothing, but we all looked at my bedroom door as we heard a sound in the hallway. A knock on my bedroom door sounded, and I jumped up to open it so that whoever it was didn’t see me sitting on my bed with Ryan and put all the clues together.
“Mom?”
“Sorry, dear. Noah is here to see you. I told him it is late and he should call you, but he insisted it is important he sees you in person. I would have sent him away, but I know his whole family, and they are good people, so I thought I’d check with you first.”
I totally sensed my mom checking out to see if Noah might be on my wish list.
Good family, indeed.
Noah was her favorite pupil as the math genius, and it didn’t hurt that his family seemed fairly affluent, and good all good church-going Christians from what I could tell.
“Mom, can you ask him to come up?” I opened the door a little wider so she could see that the twins chaperoned me. “He knows his way around this house because he’s friends with these two.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NOAH JONES
Ms. Miller surprises me completely when she sends me up to her daughter’s bedroom; it’s bedtime for most people.
But I wasn’t surprised to find Ry and Sam looking comfortable in there.
“Hey, man. No sneaking out. Next time you stay and have coffee or whatever it is that keeps you going.”
“You know about that?” I grinned at Sam, and I knew he’d be cool with it. Jealous as fuck, but cool.
“So late-night visits. Can I get you anything?” Ry asked, and he looked way too comfortable sitting on Grace’s bed to want to move for any reason.
“Well, I came to talk to Grace, to be honest, guys.” Neither of them made any attempt to move.
“And to be honest, Noah, it might be a bad time, because we’re here talking to Gracey. But if she’s happy, then I think all four of us can continue the conversation.”
That was strange.
“Hey man, find a space and take the weight off. Gray is telling us everything we wanted to know. Tell him the news.”
I could guess, but I played along and dropped down to sit on the floor.
“I’m pregnant, Noah. I’m eighteen and pregnant. To make things worse, when I tell my mom, I’m going to have to admit I don’t know who the father is, because I don’t know. But I’ve narrowed it down to one of these two on account of the fact that they were the only men I’d ever done it with until you. And I think telling her and Principal Baker that I had a threesome with the twins and I don’t know which of them is the father is not going to go down well. Any comments?”
I don’t know what she expected, but she had her arms crossed like she expected hostility.
“Gray?” Sam looked puzzled his gaze flitted between us all.
The pregnancy can’t have been a surprise. He suspected it. We’d discussed it. So I could only guess the new information bombshell was that the twins had been her first that night when the three of them were making a baby. I did not need to hear any more details about that so I pushed on with the reason for my late-night visit.
“Hello, Grace. You look lovely tonight. And you can tell anyone who asks that I’m the father.”
“What?” said three people in unison.
Six eyes focused in on me.
And the twins didn’t seem pleased about what I’d just said.
“Okay, I expected to do this in private.” I got onto one knee beside the bed and pulled out a ring from my pocket.
Ryan’s mouth fell open, and I had no idea what Sam might have been doing behind my back.