Page 83 of Trusting You
I can’t contain the fury anymore. I unleash, “I left Lily alone with you!”
Lily startles at my shout and starts to cry. My lips pull back in a grimace, tears sliding onto my teeth, and I lift her out of her seat. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry, honey. Carter’s mad.” I bury my face in her neck while I rock and soothe her.
“At least let me explain,” he says, softer.
“Such a cliché,” I spit. “Let me explain, says the man who sleeps around, the guy who keeps secrets, the idiot who’s too much of a coward tobe honest in the first place.”
This time, his arms splay out in surrender. “I’m not on any meds, Carter.”
“Then what are those still doing here in the house?” I’m still bouncing Lily, glaring at him over Lily’s shoulder. Her cries aren’t helping, becoming louder, and I fumble for a piece of bagel for her to munch on. She quiets, her elbows bent against my breasts, crumbs dropping onto Locke’s tee. Her warm head is so close to my chin I can smell she’s freshly bathed, and the familiar scent is the only thing that’s keeping me from cracking in half.
“Because I’ve wanted to take them.”
Locke’s honesty freezes me mid-bounce. This time, I hold my stare against his. He swallows and continues. “You’re right. I haven’t been straight with you. But if you give me the opportunity, if you sit down with me, I’ll tell you everything.”
“Now that you’ve been caught?” I fight off a sneer, but my hold tightens on my child.
She’s not mine.
He works his jaw. “I guess the time has come to be totally transparent.”
“I’m pretty sure that time was when you were being approved by the court.”
“I haven’t hidden anything from them.”
I clench my teeth.
“They’re aware of my history. And received statements, affidavits, from my friends, family, that I’m clean. The slight risk is requiring more home visits, but the government has approved my ability to be a dad.”
His tone acquires a dryness at the end, and if it were any other discussion, I’d’ve sympathized with the law having to turn his life inside out to receive custody of his biological child, when other parents pop a baby out, and it’s theirs on sight.
But this isn’t how we used to be, as brief as that was. This is a brutal revelation, one he didn’t keep from CPS, but one he did harbor…from me.
“W—” I can’t even get out the question properly through the hurt. Why did you keep it from me? “I bet they don’t know about this Hail Mary you have laying around.”
He closes his eyes on a sigh. “No. They don’t. I keep it in an empty bottle of antifreeze at the back of the kitchen sink.”
I flip back to when I cleaned the apartment and the strange red bottle I found behind all the plumbing, and I almost release a hollow laugh. To think, how stupid I was for merely shrugging and putting the empty bottle back.
I stiffen. “But the pills weren’t there. They were under your bed.”
“They must’ve fallen from my nightstand. Sit,” he says before I summon enough breath for another accusation. “Please. I’ll be completely open with you. I promise.”
The only factor that keeps me from storming out of here with Lily in my arms is the idea that I need as much information as I can gather before going to the proper authorities. So, I sit, but I am so far from sympathizing with him that it’s hard for me to reconcile the man on top of me last night with the felled football star I’m staring at now.
And he’s fallen. There’s a gauntness to his face I’ve never noticed before, a sloping of his shoulders that this usually arrogant, cocky bastard never allows to slip.
I set Lily at my feet, handing her a whisk and a plastic bowl for entertainment. “The instant she gets bored, I’m out of here. With her.”
“Fine,” Locke says, but he’s looking at Lily with a gleaming sadness like he already knows he’s lost her.
I lean back, arms folded. “Go ahead. Speak.”
“It’s messed up that I still have those pills, I know. But it’s a comfort. To know, at any point, they were there. As a test.” He shakes his head, his hand, resting on the table, fisting. “And I know it’s messed up because I haven’t told anyone. Until now.”
“The fact that you have them, Locke…it means you’ll use them. If not today, then some other—”
“No. I haven’t touched them. And I’d never—fuck, it’s so hard to get across, but that’s all they were—a comfort. An easy out. A reminder of the fucked-up situation I landed myself in and how I should never go back.”