Don't Hate the Player...Hate the Game(66)

“Fine.”

I followed Presley further into the woods. When she deemed we were far enough from prying eyes, she stopped. She glanced up at me through her eyelashes, and I swallowed hard. “Presley, I came out here to talk and nothing else. Do you understand?”

She snorted. “Believe me, I don’t want to do anything with you but talk to you!”

“Fine, then start talking.”

Presley bit her lip momentarily before blurting. “I’m pregnant.”

The world titled around me before spinning wildly in a crazy mosaic of colors like Willy Wonka on crack. I knew I wasn’t panicking because there was a possibility I was the father. It was the realization of who the father most likely was.

“Say what?”

Presley rolled her eyes. “You heard me the first time before you spazzed!”

“Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to hear it again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating or something.”

“Fine. I’m pregnant, dickweed. Can you comprehend that now?”

“Loud and clear.”

Presley’s expression softened. “So…”

“Is it….?”

She nodded.

I’ll admit that there was a small part of me that was pretty skeptical. I mean, we’re talking about the school mattress here. “Um, are you absolutely sure?”

At my question, I expected her to be outraged and haul off and knock the shit out of me. But she seemed to anticipate it. “Yes, I’m absolutely sure. We were exclusively together the entire month of March, which is when I got pregnant.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, excuse me for sounding like a giant douchebag here, but considering your reputation, do you really expect me to believe without a doubt that Jake is your baby’s father?”

Presley narrowed her eyes at me, and I took a step back in case she hauled off and knocked the hell out of me. “I will be happy to do a DNA test for you and any other ass**les who want to doubt me, but there’s no way in hell that it is anyone else’s but Jake’s.”

“Holy shit,” I murmured as I staggered back on my feet. Jake was going to be a father. The thought made me feel lightheaded. “So what do you want to do? I mean, do you wanna have it or have an abortion?”

“No, I want to keep it,” she replied.

That was pretty shocking considering Presley wasn’t exactly the maternal type. It was kinda like Paris Hilton, minus the Chihuahua, standing before me telling me she was dropping off the social scene to raise a kid.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m positive.”

“Wow…” I murmured.

“Noah, I might have had a funny way of showing it, but I did love Jake. He’s the only guy I’ve truly loved with my heart—not just my body.” She slowly rested her right hand on her stomach and smiled. “Don’t you see how amazing this is? I’ve got a little piece of immortality growing within me—a part of Jake will live on through this baby.”

My jaw dropped open, and I stared at her in disbelief. Seriously, had the world gone freaking crazy? The ultimate good girl, Maddie, had just begged me to come to a keg party and was now slightly inebriated. The ultimate man-whore and horse’s ass, Jake, had actually had a soft side. Now the reigning school slut had turned into a motherhood worshipper like Angelina Jolie.

And me? I didn’t even want to begin on the wacked out rollercoaster of realizations I’d been through. Hell, I’d even become a hopeless romantic in love with “love” and the good girl. Jesus, it was too much.

“Have you told Jake’s parents yet?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, I wanted to wait until I was out of the first trimester. You know, in case something happened. I didn’t think they could bear losing Jake and his baby too.”

“That was thoughtful of you,” I mused.

“Besides I thought Jake might have told them first.” As soon as the words left her lips, she widened her eyes like she’d revealed a great secret.

“Wait, are you telling me that Jake knew about the baby?”

Presley slowly nodded her head.

The world became tripped out Willy Wonka again. I steadied myself by leaning against a tree trunk. “Are you shitting me?”

“No.”

“When? When did you tell him?”

Presley refused to meet my intense glare. “The day before the accident,” she said in a whisper.

“You’re kidding me, right? You’ve known for five weeks that you’re carrying Jake’s kid, and you didn’t tell anybody? What the f**k, Presley!”

She continued staring at the intricate floral design on her toenails.

“Didn’t you think that was something I needed to know?” I demanded.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

She jerked her head up to glare at me. “I was afraid if I told people Jake knew I was pregnant, they’d think that—you know he killed himself or something instead of it being an accident.”

Oh geez, I felt like an ass. “But Presley, people wouldn’t have thought that,” I protested.

“Get serious, Noah. Of course they would have. A guy like Jake finds out he’s gonna be a father, and then he mysteriously blows up on a tractor? Wouldn’t you have thought that?”