Page 22 of Promise

Dart sighs, lowering his head and shaking it once. “Lunch. And I’ll explain everything.”

“I’m not hungry.” But my stomach betrays me when an obnoxious grumble rolls through my belly.

He gently grins at the rumble in my tummy, reminding me of how his smile was often a reward. He was a playful man, and he made me giggle, but it was rare that I’d make him smile first.

“You’re a terrible liar.” The grin lazily curls deeper, hooking upward higher on one side than the other. His amber eyes sparkle like warm liquid over ice.

“Yeah. The last thing I am is a liar.” My emphasis hits a mark, and his smile fades.

“Yeah,” he counters. “That’s why I’m here. To give you some truths.”

8

[Dart]

Ididn’t know where to start, so making her lunch was a good distraction.

Wheat bread. Thick turkey. Thin slice of cheese. No mayonnaise for her. I save it for my sandwich.

All the while, my thoughts race around the oval track in my head. Spiraling down the straightaway of jealousy, then looping around the curve, knowing I have no right. I’ve been gone for three years.

I did what I thought was best for both of us. Giving us space that bled into time. Time that had been too long.

And now, she had a baby with another man. One she didn’t know. Or couldn’t recall. Or just . . . fuck.

My stomach is as tight as a stubborn lug nut.

Then I consider my own blame in this situation.

The lack of a partner for Trinity.

The absentee father of Mirabelle.

It’s everything I never wanted to be and nothing I’d ever want her to experience, and yet here she is.

I’d failed her again, somehow.

Yet nothing was adding up. While Trinity hadn’t been a virgin when we eventually got together, she also hadn’t been with more than four other guys before me. The idea of her sleeping with numerous men, enough men to be unable to recall which one was the father of her child, didn’t make sense. Something was off.

A memory flashes back to me.

Saving yourself for lucky number five, I’d teased her, running my forefinger and thumb up the length of her ring finger. Hoping, one day, she’d wear a ring from me.

I didn’t miss how she wasn’t wearing that ring anymore. Her left hand empty of the gold band linking us together. The diamond I’d saved for months to buy for her.

My hands begin to tremble, and I clench the knife in my fist, setting it against the counter to steady myself. The bruise across my rib cage aches, and not just from the exertion of scraping shingles off a roof and lifting rolls of roofing paper to be laid before re-shingling. The black and blue lingering on my chest turns red with this new information.

She doesn’t know who the father is.

Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite and wonder if we should even bother talking.

Maybe I am too late. Back-of-the-pack-late. Maybe there isn’t anything left to be said.

Why the fuck didn’t my friends warn me about this?

Last night, I laid into Hutch, my anger hard to contain that not one of them thought to tell me, warn me, that Trin had a baby. That she’d moved on in some manner.

“You’re an idiot,” he’d told me when I was done venting.