Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
My head shakes in denial, which I’m apparently very good at. “You don’t know me, Jules. He does. He knows what my life was like growing up and how…how defective I am. I’ll probably screw this kid up the way I was screwed up.”
“Bullshit,” she hisses at me, and then leans across the table. “You got pregnant by mistake. The easiest course for you to have taken was to have an abortion. Instead you tracked down Lucas and told him the truth, and you committed to having this kid and raising it on your own if that’s what it took. Am I right?”
Reluctantly, I nod.
“That’s because you love that baby inside of you,” she presses in a softer voice. “In fact, I’m betting you fell in love with it when you saw the pregnancy test was positive.”
That’s so very true.
“Tell me something, Stephanie,” Jules asks gently. “Putting Lucas aside, what are the things you think about when you think about raising your child?”
There’s only one answer to that question, as I’ve thought about this a lot. “I’m going to do the exact opposite of everything my parents did.”
Jules’s lips curve upward and she nods at me in satisfaction. “You’re going to be a great mom.”
I smile back at her, extremely grateful for her boosting me up. At least I have one person who thinks I can do this, and that makes all the difference in the world to me.
Chapter 23
Lucas
“Don’t you think you ought to slow it down a bit?” Simone says to me as I take a sip of my fifth Jack and Coke. Or is it my sixth?
“Is it rude to tell my little sister to fuck off?” I growl at her as I lean an elbow on the bar and survey the place. My eyes lock on a blonde across the small dive bar we stopped at because it was too early to hit the dance clubs. She gives me a look that says I could get very lucky if I just walk across to talk to her.
“It’s completely rude,” Simone sniffs. “And stop taking your anger out on me.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mutter, and take a bigger gulp, wanting to hurry up and go from buzzed to drunk off my ass. It’s been the only state of mind where I’ve had any peace the last few weeks.
“I know you’ve been slamming liquor tonight trying to forget about Jules calling you out on the carpet,” she pushes back at me. “I can’t believe you said that to Stephanie.”
So now everyone’s on Stephanie’s side now. Just fucking great.
I drain my glass, slam it onto the bar, and give a chin lift to the bartender to pour me another. I’m close to going numb, and while I’ll never admit it to my annoying sister, I am indeed trying to get a fast drunk going to forget about the way Jules went at me tonight.
Simone, Van, and I had stopped by Max and Jules’s house for dinner with plans for going out later that night club hopping. We have four more days off until conference finals start this coming Sunday and I wanted to blow off some steam, which translated into I wanted to get laid. It was way past time.
The minute I walked into their house, though, Jules came at me. Apparently she’d had lunch with Stephanie that day and got the entire scoop on what went down between us. This, of course, included Stephanie running her trap with the details of the words we’d exchanged.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” Jules said to me when I walked into the kitchen. My first reaction was to look around to make sure the kids hadn’t heard, but they were nowhere to be found.
“Excuse me?” I asked, having no clue what she was talking about. I glanced at Max and saw that he knew whatever Jules was talking about, and he even moved in closer to her side to show solidarity with her anger.
“You told Stephanie that she’d fuck up her child the way her parents fucked her up,” Jules hissed at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything more shitty in my life, and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Simone gasped behind me and I have no clue what Van’s reaction was, because my eyes were pinned on Jules. I wanted to be incensed she’d even butt into my business, but I was too preoccupied with a searing guilt flash boiling my insides. It was perhaps the meanest thing I’ve ever said to anyone in my life, and it’s made me sick to my stomach for days and days thinking about it. It’s why I’ve been trying to stay drunk in my downtime.
But I wasn’t about to be attacked, because that made my guilt worse, so I went on the offensive and became a total douche when I said, “Hey…I call it as I see it.”