Page 14 of My Turn

“Hey, space cadet,” he said. I looked up to find him smirking. “Where’s your head at?”

“Nowhere,” I lied.

“Mhm. Tell me or I’m taking away your coffee.”

I cradled the cup to my chest. “I just want to know more.”

“What good will it do?”

“It won’t begood, but not knowing is driving me insane.”

He studied me for a long moment. With a sigh, he took me by the arms and pulled me to my feet. When he crushed me to his chest, I almost refused, but it was so comforting that I tucked myself in and took a deep breath.

“I have to go to a job site for a little while, but tonight we’re going out. We’ll get your mind off of this.”

“That won’t fix anything.”

“It doesn’t have to. Are you in a rush to make yourself more upset by finding information?”

“No, but-”

“Then let it go for a bit. You can find out more about her later.”

I nodded reluctantly. Getting drunk sounded like a very bad idea, but I could still go out. We weren’t college studentsanymore. We knew how to have fun without destroying our livers.

“Wait,” I said, lifting my head. He stared down at me, his expressive blue eyes intense. “Her?”

His lips parted, then he rolled them. “Yeah, whoever this woman is.”

“Is that what you meant?”

“Of course.”

Taking a step back, I studied his face. If I didn’t know him so well, I wouldn’t have seen the way he bit down on his tongue, making his cheek move the slightest amount.

“You’re lying.”

“Alana.” He reached for me, but I shook my head and took another step away from him.

“Jayce, don’t tell me you knew. Don’t fucking tell me that.”

It looked like he was going to lie, then he dropped his head back to look at the ceiling. “What do you want me to say?”

“How about you tell me why you would lie to me too? That’s… Fuck, Jayce!”

“Hey, don’t start yelling,” he said softly. “We can talk about this.”

“Talk about it,” I scoffed. “That’s interesting. Maybe we should have done that months ago. Years? I don’t even know because I have no idea how long this kid has existed.”

“I can tell you if you want to know.”

“Of course I want to fucking know.”

“She’s nine. Her mom is someone from our high school. As far as I know, he barely saw the kid and they were fine with that as long as he paid child support every month.”

My head was spinning worse than it had been all day.

“What the fuck? Why would he hide this from me?”