Page 41 of Trusting You
That has Carter hesitating. I add, “Why didn’t Paige tell me that the baby was mine?”
Carter’s busy stirring her mixture, but I can see the wheels spinning in her head behind all that hair. At last, she says, “You’re assuming I knew who the father was.”
“Paige didn’t tell you?”
Carter shakes her head. “And I didn’t ask. The way she spoke about it…it was clear the dad wasn’t in her life. That he wasn’t…” She stops.
“Say it.”
Carter’s still facing the stove. “Locke, it’s not like—”
“No, say it. That I wasn’t going to step up, that I wasn’t worth the notification because I’m not father material, that you and Paige had no fucking clue what I’d do because you didn’t even ask me.”
She sighs and finally turns to me. “I told you, I had no idea who you were.”
“It doesn’t sound like you did a lot of research to find out.”
“What did you want me to do? Interrogate my best friend? Tie her to the bedpost until she gave up the name?”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“Don’t be a fool. It was Paige’s business. And it was mychoice to be there for her, regardless of how she wanted to raise Lily. She was twenty-one, Locke. She had no fucking clue what she was doing. All she knew was that she wanted that baby. She wanted Lily.”
I feel all the muscles on my chest solidifying. “I deserved the same chance. That baby sleeping in the next room right now? She went almost a full year without her father. Would’ve gone longer if it hadn’t been for—”
“What, Paige dying?” Carter smacks the wooden spoon against the pan ostensibly to dislodge food sticking to it. “You can say it. She’s dead, Locke. Cremated in a jar in my room…” Carter can’t speak. She’s choking on too much emotion. But she gathers herself, forges on. “I can’t tell you what Paige was thinking, or why. I don’t know if Lily would have gone her whole life without knowing you. All I do know is, she’s with you now because her mother can’t be. And now you have the responsibility of being both parents, and I’m sorry about that. I really am.”
“Stop saying sorry to me,” I snap. “And she still has you.”
The sparks die in Carter’s eyes. “Not for long.”
She spins back to the stove before I can say anything further, but I don’t want this conversation to end. It’s the most passionate she’s been since telling me I had a secret baby, and I admit I missed this part of her, Carter’s original introduction—all fire, flame, and heat. The numb Carter, the woman who musters energy only for Lily’s benefit, is a cold sadness I don’t want to leave to harden and calcify.
“You can stay here as long as you want,” I find myself saying.
Carter stiffens but doesn’t pause in her stirring. “Don’t say that. Something you don’t mean. We both know this isn’t going to work in the long term.”
“Fuck what should work.”
Carter jumps at my curse and looks back at me.
“Lily loves you. You love her. So we’ll keep going like this until we can’t anymore, okay?”
After a few seconds, Carter lifts her lips, but it’s the fakest half smile I’ve ever witnessed. More in the realm of, let this dumb jock think everything’s gonna work out as a fairy tale. “Okay, Locke.”
Damn it, I hate how this girl sees me. As a guy who has fun role-playing as dad for now, but eventually will be desperate to go back to random women and long, sleepy mornings. To no Lily. No Carter.
I wish my words could prove her wrong. But Carter’s already judged me, and it doesn’t help that I handle Lily more as a porcelain doll than a real-life baby. It will only be through action, through fact, that Carter will ever believe I’m more than the papers she’s read, the history she’s heard, Paige’s one-night stand.
I’m more than a college bet.