Page 41 of The Best Shot

“Yeah,” she said, registering my face. “Surprise.”

My mouth opened. Closed. “CeeCee⁠—”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t anyone⁠—”

“Shaun and your mother both know. I take it they didn’t tell you.”

“You weren’t pregnant when I left. When?”

“I was only at eight weeks when you left.”

I blinked. I’d been away for three months, making her about five months along. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” she said. “In more ways than one. You?”

“Okay.”

She nodded. “Tell me why I’m here.”

“I’m not here to convince you to go back,” I said. “Mama asked me to talk to you.”

“Yeah. Figured.”

“What happened?” I asked.

She laughed, a humorless sound. “Your brother is a bastard is what happened. What always happens.”

It sucked to say, but that shouldn’t be a revelation, least of all to her. She’d been with him since high school and had weathered fifteen years of his moods, his ego and his version of reality everyone else learned to tiptoe around. “That’s not news, CeeCee. Why now?”

“He’s been seeing someone—” Her mouth twisted. “Fucking someone else. She decided I should know.”

“While you’ve been—” My gaze dropped to her belly. “CeeCee.”

“I told your mother,” she continued. “I don’t know why I thought she’d— I don’t know what I was looking for. Permission, maybe? He listens to her.”

Oh, CeeCee.

I already knew where that would have gone.

She saw it on my face. “Yeah. You don’t lie to yourself about him, not like the rest of us. She didn’t believe me. Said Shaun wouldn’t do that. That I must’ve misunderstood.”

Bullshit.

She sighed. “Then it turned into men get restless, and sometimes a woman has to decide what matters more, the marriage or being right. Then it’s ‘he’s under a lot of pressure.’ And with me being pregnant, he felt ‘neglected.’” She scoffed. “I’m done, Yasmine.”

“Good.”

Her gaze pinned me in place. “You don’t think I should try to work it out?”

“No.”

She stared at me like she was waiting for the rest. The careful qualifier. The woman-to-woman speech. The part where I told her marriage was hard and men were stupid and maybe Shaun just needed time.

I gave her none of it.

Her shoulders lowered by a fraction.