Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(12)

He hustled for the front door and made it just as she was backing her car out. “Tess!”

She stopped and pulled back into the spot next to his car, but she didn’t get out. Instead, she sat in the driver’s seat, her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel as she stared at him with a mix of horror and determination, as if she was the only thing standing between the goal and Wayne Gretzky in his prime. She looked like a woman about to lose but refusing to give up anyway—that was if she could get out of the car.

He waited on his front porch, not wanting to spook her, but she’d obviously come looking for him. Why, he had no clue. When she didn’t make a move for her door, he walked over to her car and got in on the passenger side.

For as ridiculous as he felt sitting in a car with eyelashes on its headlights, he could take it. “Hey there,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Did you know a baby turkey is called a poult?” she asked, her voice a little shaky as she kept her hands on the wheel while the car motor ran as if she was going to have to make a fast break for it.

Okay, she was nervous. He got that. If it was anyone else, he might worry that he was in the car with a possible stalker, but this was Tess. He barely knew her and could confirm she wasn’t the hunt-you-down-and-stare-at-you type.

She continued. “And a young deer is called—”

“A fawn,” he finished for her, worry starting to form a knot in his gut. “Tess, what’s up?”

She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, and said, “I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations,” he said, going on autopilot as the manners his mom had drilled into him did their thing.

When she didn’t say anything back, just stared at him, her eyes—one blue, one green—huge and round behind her glasses, realization came at him like an illegal check from behind and left his ears ringing. But it couldn’t be him. Not him.

“We used a condom,” he said, his heart slamming against his ribs.

Tess nodded. “Three of them.”

“How could all three fail?” It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense.

“Only one has to. Anyway, were they expired?” she asked, a quiet question that landed like a bomb in his brain.

That fucker Christensen.

Cole was going to kill him. Slowly. Then he’d bury the body where no one would ever find it. After that, he’d bury himself alive next to Christensen for not bothering to check the expiration dates on a trio of condoms given to him as a joke. He was an idiot. Not that this was the time to say those words out loud.

“The latex degrades after they expire and is more likely to tear,” Tess said, her hands still at ten and two on the steering wheel, a jerky, desperate tightness in her words.

“Do you want to come inside?” There was just too much to unpack to do it in the car.

She shook her head and for once didn’t hit him with a random factoid. Yeah, when Tess went trivia silent, things had to be serious.

“I’ll support you no matter what you want to do,” he said, meaning it. “Just let me know.”

“I’m keeping the baby.”

Okay, that was not the answer he’d been expecting. He let out a slow breath that came from some deep spot way down in his lungs reserved for this-is-an-oh-shit-moment-but-I-can’t-show-it. Had he been wrong about Tess? Was this a money grab and that’s why she was keeping the baby? Was that why she could barely look at him and why her knuckles were turning white from her tight grip on the steering wheel?

It would be so much easier if it was, but that wasn’t it. He couldn’t explain how he understood that to be the truth—he just did. He sensed it deep down in his bones like he did the moment when a puck left his stick and he knew it was going to find the net no matter what the goalie did to block it.

“I just wanted to give you a heads-up,” she continued. “That’s all. You can go back inside now.”

“What? That’s it?” he asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth driven more by pure emotion and adrenaline than logic. “What if I want to be involved?”

“Do you?” she asked as if she already knew the answer and that it was one bound to disappoint her. “Really?”

“I don’t know,” he said, louder than he meant to in the tight confines of this car with a neon daisy air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror and immediately regretted it. The words, however, kept coming anyway. “This hasn’t happened to me before. Do we get married? Do I cut you a check? Do I need to set up a paternity test? Do we get lawyers involved? What happens next?”

She finally let go of the wheel and pivoted in her seat to face him.

She lifted one finger. “No, I’m not marrying you.” A second finger. “No, I don’t need your money.” Her third finger, which just happened to be her middle finger, all by itself. “Fuck you and your paternity test.” Her fourth finger went up with the others. “If you want to, but my vote is no, we can come up with an agreement on our own. Plus, I can’t afford an attorney.” Her thumb joined the rest. “And the baby gestates inside my womb for the next eight months before being born. Then we have a child, which I will raise. You can visit as much as you want.”

Visit? Visit!

Even though he’d grown up being uprooted every nine to ten months to move on to his dad’s next job site, at least he’d been with his parents. They’d been a family. He wasn’t about to just visit his own kid.