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“Yeah, like a date.” I picked up my pants and boxer briefs, and then grabbed her clothes for her as well. She took them from me, her eyes studying me carefully.
“Won’t everyone know then that we’re together? That’s against office policy, right?”
“You don’t work here anymore,” I reasoned, sliding my clothes back on and buckling myself back up. “And even if you decide to stay and come back to work, I’ll just have to adjust things for us. It’ll be fine. I don’t want to do this halfway, Olivia.”
She smiled, her eyes soft and reflective of the same emotions I was feeling in the moment. “So you want me to stay?”
I nodded, realizing I had dropped my wallet to the floor. I bent over to pick it up, and as I did I saw the notebook on the floor with Olivia’s name etched on the front of it. However, that is not what caused me to freeze seconds later. There, just to the side of the notebook was a black-and-white photo, like an ultrasound. It had the title Gray Baby.
The fuck?
My fingers reached for it, plucking it up from where it was lying. My heart thundered as I tried to process what I was seeing…
Is she pregnant?
I knew the answer to my question based on the label of the picture—and the date of the ultrasound, which was the day she had missed work for a personal day. I swallowed hard, knowing there were two possibilities…
One, Olivia was pregnant by someone else.
Or two, I was a father—and she was hiding it from me.
Either way, I was fucking livid.
29
OLIVIA
“Eli?” I furrowed my brow as he remained bent over. I tucked my blouse back into place, feeling light at the possibility of Eli and I being something real.
I just have to tell him about the—
“What the fuck is this, Olivia?” He jerked to a standing position and my eyes dropped to the picture in his hand, my mouth gaping.
“Please let me explain.” I held up my hands in surrender. “I just…I just…I can explain that.”
“Can you? Because I’d love to know what’s going on. Is this why you cut things off between us? Or is this the reason you were so quick to take the job in LA?” His tone was full of anger and…hurt.
“I…I’m twelve weeks pregnant.” I choked out the words like they might strangle me, and I waited for Eli to do the math in his head. He knew, he had to know that it was his.
“So like, around the time that we first slept together, huh?” His eyes dropped down to the little bean of a baby in the picture.
“Yeah…I haven’t…I haven’t slept with anyone else, Eli.” I squeezed my eyes shut as he slammed his fist on the desk. I wasn’t sure if he was mad because I was pregnant, or mad that I hadn’t told him. “I’m so sorry, Eli.”
“Sorry? Really?” he roared. “What were you going to do, Olivia? Run off to Los Angeles and raise our child without me? What the fuck?” Eli’s face and voice broke, cracking with emotion. “Why would you do that? Like, do you really think I’m that shitty of a man, that I wouldn’t support you and our baby?”
Our. He keeps saying our baby.
I choked back a sob. “I just didn’t think that you’d be happy about it—and I didn’t want it to force us to be together or disrupt your life.”
“Right, so you just wanted to run off and be a single mom and never fucking tell me that I had a child. I love you, Olivia. I would’ve given you everything you fucking wanted—marriage, a house, money—whatever you needed.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” I pleaded. “I had no idea that you would take it this way. I didn’t think I was anything more to you than just a fuck buddy at best.”
“Are you kidding me?” Eli said exasperatedly. “Why does that even matter? Even if all you were was just a fuck buddy, why wouldn’t you tell me? We’re talking about a baby! It’s just as much mine as it is yours. I’ve always wanted kids, I just…I just didn’t know how to love someone until I met you.”
His words were breaking my heart, and the evidence spilled down my cheeks. “Oh, Eli.” I reached for him, but he jerked his arm away from me.
“No, just…no.” He grabbed his suit jacket and shrugged into it.
