4
Gigi
“I’ll be okay from here,” I told Jillian when she’d walked me up to my balcony. “Thanks, Jillybean. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Then I hugged her. Tight.
Her arms yanked me toward her and she squeezed me. “And you’ll never have to know because I’m always here for you. I’ll wait on the chair out here. If you need me, call.”
I nodded, then pushed out of her hold.
Before I could touch the doorknob, Beau had the door open wide. He gazed down at me with a blazing look in his eyes. I didn’t say anything as I stepped inside.
I dropped my bag on the floor then headed to the fridge. I needed water.
“Geneviève, I tried calling you,” Beau stammered out. His voice sounded almost—angry?
“Sorry, Beau. It was difficult to check my phone with three dozen reporters shoving their microphones in my face,” I said sarcastically. I grabbed a water and shut the fridge.
His shoulders slumped slightly, then he said, “You’ve seen the reports then?”
I took a long guzzle from the bottle, allowing the cold to permeate and flow through my body. “The ones about you having secret, four year old twins?” A pain shot through me like lightning as I said that.
“They aren’t secret. I just found out—”
I cut him off, “When? When did you find out?”
“Sienna started messaging me about two weeks ago,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “I thought she wanted to get back together with me, so I ignored her.”
“Sienna is your ex?” I asked, my voice sounding much calmer to my ears than I felt.
He nodded. “Yeah, and the boys’ mom.”
“When did you finally talk to her?”
“She was at the rink last week. I told her to beat it, but she insisted we talk. I really thought she was trying to dig her way back into my life. Then she showed me pictures of the boys—and insisted they were mine.”
Huh, so, if he were telling the truth, he’d just found out about the boys recently. But he’d known about the possibility before today. “Did you do DNA testing?” I asked, holding out hope they hadn’t gotten that far. Maybe there was still a chance this was all just a dream.
“That’s what came back today to confirm they’re mine.”
I stared into his eyes for a while, then he began walking toward me. I stepped away. “When did you take the DNA test?” I asked, taking another sip of my water.
He let out a sigh. “Four days ago? The lab took longer than they’d originally expected.”
Four days.
Four fucking days.
“You knew four days ago that you might be a father—but you didn’t think I was important enough in your life to share that kind of information with?” I set my bottle down for fear I’d chuck it at his head.
“Look, Geneviève—”
“Do not call me that.”
He closed his mouth, his lips forming a straight line across his face. “If the tests came back negative, then there’d be no reason to upset you.”
“And you made that decision for me. You decided what to share with me. You decided what to keep secret from me!” I gasped loudly, somehow able to hold myself back from crying.
“I did. Sienna isn’t the most trustworthy of people.”