Unforgettable (Cloverleigh Farms #5)(17)

“Nope.” Again, she stuck her elbow in my ribs. “Why do you ask?”

I moved away from her. “Will you quit elbowing me? I was just curious.”

She sighed dramatically. “Too bad. I always wanted you guys to be a thing.”

“You did?”

“Sure. At one point, I had this whole fantasy where you two got married and lived next door to me.” She giggled. “How come you never dated her?”

I shrugged. “I never wanted a girlfriend—I didn’t have time. Plus, I’m not sure she’d have dated me anyway—she was too busy making jokes about my big ego.”

“You guys never even . . . you know, hooked up?”

I thought about lying, but then thought, fuck it. I trusted Sadie. “Actually, we did. Once.”

She bolted upright. “You did?”

I nodded. “The night before I left for Arizona.”

“Wow.” She leaned back on her hands again. “Wow. I didn’t see that coming. Nothing ever came of it?”

Taking a deep breath, I admitted the truth. “Something did come of it. She got pregnant.”

Silence.

I looked over at my sister, who was staring at me, her chin practically in her lap. “What did you say?”

“April got pregnant that night.”

“Oh. My. God.” Sadie sat up tall and put a hand over her heart. “I’m in shock.”

“We were too. Believe me.”

“So what happened?”

“She gave it up for adoption. We agreed I wouldn’t be named as the father to make everything easier.”

Her eyes closed and she exhaled, her shoulders slouching. “What did she have?”

“I don’t know.”

Her eyelids flew open. Her stare was sharp. “You don’t know? Please tell me you’re lying.”

I shook my head. “No. We . . . never really talked after that.”

“What do you mean, you never really talked after that?” Sadie’s voice was getting louder.

I glanced at the kids across the street. “I mean, she went back to school and I went back to Arizona, and that was that. We never talked again.”

“You never even called her to make sure she was okay?” Sadie asked, incredulous. “Or in all the years since?”

Again, I shrugged. “No.”

My sister jumped to her feet. “Tyler Michael Shaw, what is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” I was surprised at her angry reaction. “That’s how April wanted it.”

“She said that? She specifically told you not to contact her ever again even though she carried your baby for nine months and then had to give it up?”

“Well . . . yeah.” Hadn’t she? I rubbed the back of my neck. The details were fuzzy in my head. All I could recall was the sheer terror of hearing her say she was pregnant and the utter relief at being absolved of any responsibility.

Sadie crossed her arms over her chest. “For some reason, I have a hard time believing that. How could you completely abandon her that way?”

I frowned. “I didn’t abandon her.”

She touched her chest. “I got pregnant unexpectedly. What if Josh had done that to me?”

“Sadie, you’re being ridiculous. I saw April this morning, and she isn’t mad at me. So why are you?”

“I don’t know! I just am!”

“Look, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

She stared me down. “I want you to say you’re the guy I think you are. That’s what I want.”

I clenched my teeth and said nothing—of course I wasn’t the guy she thought I was. Turns out I wasn’t even the guy I’d thought I was—and she stormed into the house.

For a few minutes, I sat there on the stoop, wishing I hadn’t said anything at all. What the hell was wrong with me, digging up this secret baby bombshell and lobbing it at my pregnant sister? Why hadn’t I just left it buried in the past where it belonged?

Across the street, the two girls were silently staring at me. Had they heard the argument? Grimacing, I stood up and went into the house to find my sister and apologize—for what, I had no idea. But it felt like that was supposed to be my next move.

Sadie was unloading the dishwasher, angrily tossing silverware into a drawer. I leaned back against the counter. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

“It’s not me you should be apologizing to.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Look, maybe I should have reached out to April at some point. But at eighteen, I was entirely self-centered and laser-focused on my career. I was an expert at shutting out anything that wasn’t going to get me where I needed to go, and I had to be cutthroat. My worth depended on it.”

She looked over her shoulder at me. “Your worth as a pitcher maybe. But not your worth as a human being.”

“In my mind, there was no difference, Sadie. You have to understand that.”

She stopped moving and stared into the drawer, saying nothing. “There’s more to life than being good at baseball, you know.”

“Maybe for you, there is. Look, cut me a little slack here, okay? I didn’t reject her. I offered to pay for everything. I asked her what she wanted to do. Adoption was her choice, and it was the right thing. Then we just . . . moved on. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about her.”