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“I thought you told me there was nothing to end.”

I shot her a look and she sighed.

“What happened, Emma?”

“Remember that field trip last week?”

“The one to the museum?” she asked.

“Yep. That’s the one.”

“What happened on the field trip?”

“Ryan was on a lunch date with some red-lipped woman in a tight black dress. At the same restaurant we took the kids to eat lunch.”

“He was not.”

“Yes, he was,” I said. “She was giggling at his jokes and putting her hand on top of his. And he didn’t move it. Not for a second. In fact, when Zoey ran up to him in the restaurant-”

“Oh, man. I would’ve loved to have seen the look on his face.”

“He stumbled over everything. His words. His own two feet. He introduced me as ‘just the teacher’ when she called him out on it.”

“Wait, what? Hold on. Who is ‘she’ and what did ‘she’ call who out on?” Catherine asked.

“I had to run over and practically pry Zoey off Ryan, right? Then the woman gives me the once-over with her eyes and straight up asked Ryan if I was some sort of love interest. I responded with a simple ‘no’ after he paused, figuring he didn’t want to divulge what was going on between us. But he said I was ‘just the teacher’.”

“What an asshole,” she said.

“And that’s why I’m having a hard time just ‘telling him’, Catherine. I ended things with him in that restaurant. He wanted to explain, but all guys want to explain. My ex in college wanted to explain. And I let him. And I almost went back to him for it. Had it not been for my roommate talking some sense into me, I probably would’ve done back and had my heart played with again.”

“Have you considered adoption?” she asked.

“I have. I’ve considered all my options over the course of the past few days. Abortion isn’t… I can’t imagine it. I’m not downing women who have to get them, because there are always circumstances that are exceptions. But I just don’t see this as one of them. And adoption. I don’t…”

Catherine reached over and took my hand as tears rose in my eyes.

“I don’t know if I could carry this child for nine months and then hand it over to someone else,” I said.

“The tears in your eyes already told me that.”

“I don’t know what to do, Cat,” I said breathlessly. “I ended things with him. I haven’t been taking his calls. I haven’t been returning his texts. He was with another woman. Flirting with her. Dining with her. And she was gorgeous, Cat. Plump lips and long legs and a thin frame. Smoky eyes and soft hair and… and all of those things I’m simply not.”

“He’s a jackass,” she said. “No one’s doubting that. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t know what’s going on with you. It took two of you to make that child you’re growing, and as much as it sucks, he does have a right to know as the father. He is the father, right?”

“Fuck you.”

“Just checking,” she said as she held her hands up. “And I like the feisty language.”

“I haven’t had much time for restraint the past few days.”

“It was hard for Natasha, too. You know, to tell her boo-boo about the fact that she was pregnant.”

“Yeah, well. Natasha knew in the back of her mind that her husband loved her. Ryan and I, we were nothing but a fling.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asked.

“Are you really trying to convince me now, after warning me and freaking me out with his entire reputation, that we were something more than a fling?”


Tags: Nicole Elliot Romance