“Figures,” she mutters, screwing up her infuriatingly gorgeous face as she drags her eyes down me. My skin burns at the contact, and I shift my weight from foot to foot to try and avoid her gaze.
“Not only did you read his mail, but you also came to me as if you’ve just drunkenly stumbled out of a nightclub,” she laughs and the tinkling sound ignites a surge of tight sensations in my chest. I want to slap her just so she’ll stop laughing.
But, no.I will be the bigger person here.
“You can say anything you like,” I reply cooly, relaxing my hands and crossing my arms over my abdomen. “He’s not coming. He’s never coming. He’s not at your beck and call anymore, and now thatmyring is on his finger, the chances of you being able to get close to him are slimming down tozero.”
“I’m not so sure,” she purrs back at me, crossing one delicate-looking ankle over the other. “He was drowning his sorrows a few weeks ago.”
“And still, he came back to me.” I lift a brow and tilt my head. “Why won’t you leave him alone? Haven’t you done enough?”
“Me?” She laughs again, that annoying tinkling noise. “Oh, Cara, are you that blind?Hewon’t leavemealone. I simply called him here to ask him once and for all to let me go. Things were over between us years ago, but he can’t seem to forget me.” Her thin pink lips pull into a smirk.
“Bullshit,” I snap.
“If that’s what youchooseto believe,” she says sweetly, “but I amdelicious. Some people just can’t let me go.”
She’s trying to get in my head.It’s not happening, not this time.
“I’d believe you if I hadn’t heard the two of you at the club before the wedding. The disdain in his voice when he speaks to you? The disgust when he speaksaboutyou?” I scoff lightly and my heart races, threatening to tremble the words as they escape me. “Killian is obsessive, that’s true, butI’mthe object of his desire. You’re nothing more than a bad memory that’ll soon feel like nothing more than a distant nightmare.”
Blair’s eyes narrow and she licks her lips, cocking her hips slightly before she takes a step away.
“Whatever, believe what you like, Cara, it doesn’t matter. I’m not here to talk to you.” Blair turns away from me, taking a step towards the parking lot entrance. The restrained surge ofangerin my chest finally breaks free, and I dart forward, grabbing her arm and jerking her back towards me.
“Don’t you dare! You don’t get to swan away from me, Blair, not this time. I know all about you and your sad, pathetic little life. Your weak attempts to claw higher up in Killian’s family, and the sad failure that you’ve become,” I yell, and her mouth drops open. “Sotell me. Tell me what could beoh soimportantthat Killian would drop all of the pain and the hurt and thedisgustto give you five minutes?!”
“Killian has a son!” Blair spits out the words, wrenching her arm out of my grip and taking a step backward.
“What?”
The world freezes, and suddenly the chill night air I hadn’t noticed turns into biting, icy shards against my skin. My heart plummets to my stomach and nausea twists up my throat.
“He has a son,” Blair repeats shakily after a moment. “When… When he left me, I was pregnant. I loved him, and we would talk forhoursabout children, but after what happened with Dante, things crumbled so quickly. He wouldn’t speak to me, and Dante wouldn’t speak to me either. I was a pariah, cast out with no one, andsure, maybe I deserved it. But I was pregnant, and no one would take my calls or answer my letters. I couldn’t even tell him I was pregnant, to find out what he might have wanted, so I left. I went to Italy, and I had his child.”
Silence falls between us and Blair blurs in front of me as cold tears seep into my eyes. I hurriedly blink them away. I don’t want her to see any kind of reaction from me even as my mind short circuits.That’s why she’s been hanging around? She’s been trying to tell him about a child?
“How,” I begin, and the word chokes me as a thousand thoughts charge loudly in my mind and my knees knock together. “How do you know it’s his?”
“It wasn’t hard to work out the dates. Killian fucked more than Dante did.” Blair scoffs lightly and lifts a hand to brush at the corners of her mouth. “It’s his.”
The words slice into my heart, tearing it open until all I taste is copper, and all I see is red. Killian has ason? Mothered by Blair?
Oh God, I’m going to be sick.
Or pass out.
I don’t know which.
My hands fall to my hips, and I force a deep lungful of the cool night air. This can’t be true, can it?
Why would she wait so long to tell him? Why not just turn up with the child and let that speak for itself?
“Why dance around it like some huge fucking secret when you could have been straight from the start?” I bark at her as my heart beats so fast I can barely register it anymore. I dig my fingers into my hips, forcing my focus on the pain that flares in an attempt to calm the flurry of my mind.
“It’s a child, not a tool,” Blair snaps back. “I had to know how he would feel about it before telling him. I don’t want to bring an unwilling father into my child’s life if he would be better off without him. But I know how much Killian desires a child,” Blair smirks coldly, and my palm itches once more.
I dig my fingers harder into my hip to prevent myself from smacking that smirk right off her face.