Shatter (True Believers #4)(14)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“We have some Christmas news,” she said cheerfully. “Kylie’s having a baby!”

I had to give her props. She was spinning it. Making it sound like this was something we had all been hoping for. Like tickets to Florida for the entire month of January.

Shock on my entire family’s faces gave way to horror, which gave way to acceptance. Then false conviction that I would be able to handle it and everything would be fine.

Basically what I had just emotionally experienced myself.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I stared up at the ceiling, wide-awake, trying to imagine myself with a baby in my stupid studio apartment. Trying to imagine getting huge. Pushing a human being out of my vagina.

I had always wanted kids. Four, like my mother had. But later. Like after the age of twenty-six, when I had logged a good five years teaching and I was starting to get the baby bug. My foxy husband would have a good job and we would be living in a suburb of Cincinnati, somewhere like Mason, where the houses were brick colonials in tidy subdivisions, and the schools were good. We would join a nondenominational Christian church, the PTA, a golf course. We would vacation in the Maya Riviera with our precious and beautiful blond children and I would jog to keep up my body. I would do a marathon by thirty, to prove I could do it all, raise the kids, craft and cook and decorate, and make my health a priority.

The husband figure in this scenario was hazy but I had certainly never envisioned a glasses-wearing nerd with a tattoo sleeve and a magic tongue. Nor had I ever pictured that while I was living out this life of perfection with my generic and faceless husband, that the father of my first child would be pulling in the driveway every other weekend to pick her up, her Dora the Explorer suitcase packed and ready to go for Daddy time. Or worse, her daddy wanting nothing to do with her.

I rubbed my hand over my flat belly in the dark and felt a surge of protectiveness. That was Jonathon’s choice, to be involved or not, and I couldn’t blame him if what he did do was walk away. Parenthood was likely not in Jonathon’s plans. Certainly not with his one-night-stand chem student who pulled a D in the course.

Reaching for my phone I scrolled through all my Christmas texts and social media messages. For some stupid reason I wondered if I would hear from him. Why, when I hadn’t heard a peep from him in four weeks and when he was Jewish and maybe didn’t even celebrate Christmas, I had no idea.

Because I was an idiot was the only logical explanation.

I tossed my phone aside with a sigh and counted how many days until I went back to school. Six. Six days to figure out what to say to Jonathon besides WTF, you knocked me up, genius.

That probably wouldn’t start things off on the right foot.

Then because I couldn’t resist, I grabbed my phone again and sent him an e-mail before I totally chickened out.

Hey, can I meet with you when I get back to campus? I really need help with something.

That was the truth, and then some.

* * *

When I got the e-mail from Kylie saying she wanted to see me, I admit it, I was pleased. Granted, I knew that she was most likely seeking a tutor for the entire second semester, assuming she had continued on to advanced chemistry to fulfill her science requirement. I personally didn’t think that she would be able to pass, considering how she didn’t have a full grasp of the material from the first course, nor did I want to be her tutor, because there was no way in hell I could see her once a week and not want to repeat what we had done.

I hadn’t seen her in a month and I still wanted to repeat what we had done. It hit me at the weirdest moments. Like I’d be hauling boxes for the moving company I worked for every Saturday and suddenly I would have an image of her beneath me, eyes limpid, fingers digging into my arms, her amazing body arched and open to me. Then I would have a hard-on while trying to lift a couch with a coworker and, seriously, it made me feel fourteen. Or I would be in the lab and I’d see a blond head pass by and I’d wonder if it was her and then I would be distracted as hell. I had actually f**ked up several experiments that way and my father had given me The Look, the one that I hated. The one that showed he was just waiting for me for fail, and that he was wondering how I could be his kid.

Being distracted by Kylie and her sweet smile and warm body was not an option.

Nor was dating her, though I didn’t think for a minute she wanted to date me. She probably dated athletes and frat guys, not someone who got excited by reactions kinetics. To her, I was probably boring, and I could understand that. It wasn’t like we could possibly have a single thing in common.

Other than great sex.

Which was the thing I just couldn’t quite seem to get past.

And I did want to see her.

I locked my car and headed across the parking lot to the coffee shop. Kylie had actually asked me to come to her apartment, but I had been really uncomfortable with that and had made an excuse about only having an hour and I would really love to grab something to eat. If we went to her place, there was no way I wasn’t going to be tempted to have a repeat. Which I couldn’t do, I reminded myself yet again.

I had gone out twice with a physics PhD student, and while she didn’t exactly set my pants on fire, she seemed nice enough, and highly intelligent. We had things to talk about. She was attractive in a distracted sort of way, though I could have done without the denim overalls/Converse combination. It made me feel like she was the world’s smartest toddler and it wasn’t a turn-on.

Kylie was already in the coffee shop, sitting at the table we had been at the first time we met. She was sipping hot tea, the steam rising in front of her, the string for the bag dangling over the side of the cup. I wouldn’t have pictured her as a tea drinker, but what the hell did I know? I didn’t actually know her at all. She was wearing a pink fuzzy scarf over a gray tank top and a gray hoodie. Her hair was up on top of her head in a twisted bun, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Just lip gloss. It didn’t look like seduction was in her plans.

And why was I disappointed about that?

Fucking idiot.

I went over to the table and I smiled in greeting. I felt like I should touch her. Like I should hug her or kiss her forehead or something. I mean, we’d had sex. Amazing sex. I had touched every single inch of her, and the last time I had seen her she was bare-ass naked sprawled out on her bed yawning in satisfaction. But now she was sitting and there was the teacup and it all just felt weird, so I settled for squeezing her shoulder as I rounded the table for the other side and dumped my bag.