I Only Have Eyes for You (The Sullivans #4)(23)

Everything she’d been trying to hold in, to deal with by herself, burst apart inside of her. She felt like she was breaking apart from the inside out, as though she were about to shatter into as many pieces as the glass in the bottom of the sink.

Her sobs wracked her body so hard that if Lori hadn’t been holding her up, she couldn’t have stayed upright. Somehow, Lori turned off the water and got them both over to the couch, where Sophie held onto her twin for dear life. Their endless fights over the past year receded to nothing.

All that mattered was knowing she wasn’t completely alone.

When Sophie had finally stopped crying, her body feeling completely wrung out, Lori said, “Hold on a sec,” and came back a few seconds later with a roll of toilet paper. “Sorry, this is the best I’ve got.”

It was more than good enough for Sophie to blow her nose on and wipe her face dry.

“Wow.” Lori looked at her. “You’re really a mess.”

Her twin pointing out the horribly obvious shouldn’t have made Sophie laugh, but she couldn’t hold back a choked giggle. “You think?”

Lori reached for her hand. “It’s just that you’ve never been like this. You’re freaking me out.”

“You’re not the only one.” Although the truth was that freaking out was a pathetic, ridiculous understatement of what she was feeling.

“What did Jake do to you?”

Of course Lori would immediately figure out what—who—was at the heart of her sorrow. Only Sophie couldn’t exactly say, Oh, you know, not much besides making the sweetest, most sinful love imaginable to me and then leaving me in the middle of the night, knocked up...and completely lost without him.

She opened her mouth to give her sister an answer, but nothing came out.

“You were with him, weren’t you? That night, after the wedding.”

Sophie nodded. She could at least do that.

“How was it? No, wait.” Lori held up her hand. “Forget I asked. It would be too much like hearing about one of our brothers’ sex lives.”

Only, Jake wasn’t their brother. Just because he’d practically grown up in their house didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t actually one of them.

“I’m just going to assume it was awesome,” Lori said.

Sophie knew what was expected of her here, so she managed another nod.

“Super awesome?”

Sophie sighed, finally responding verbally with, “Yes.” But those thrilling details of their few stolen hours together, while still important, had faded into the background as soon as she’d found out—

“I’m pregnant.”

There. She’d said it. And, oh, if Lori could see her own face right now.

“Hold on.” Lori looked as shocked as Sophie had ever seen her in twenty-five years. “I thought you just said you were p—” She shook her head. “I can’t even say the word, Soph.”

“I haven’t gotten my period since before the wedding.”

“Have you been seeing him in secret all this time?”

Sophie snorted. “Are you kidding me? We did it once—” One spectacular time. “—and then he snuck away in the middle of the night.” Leaving her alone in that big bed in that big house in the Napa Valley hills with nothing to hold but a pillow.

“I’m going to kill him.” Lori leapt off the couch and grabbed her cell phone off the kitchen counter. “I’m going to rip his heart out through his throat. Better yet, I’m going to make sure he can never get anyone else pregnant ever again.”

Sophie grabbed her sister a millisecond before Lori was able to find Jake’s number on her phone’s contact list. “Stop! You can’t call him! He doesn’t know yet.”

Lori’s finger stilled over her phone. “You haven’t told him?”

“No. We haven’t even spoken since that night. I only took the tests this morning.” Sophie forcefully pried the phone out of her sister’s hand. “I love you for having my back. But I’ve got to deal with this myself.”

She didn’t feel great by any means, but after the long cry—and confessing the news to her sister—she felt better. Stronger.

Like she might actually be able to face Jake without crumbling.

“I can’t believe this,” Lori said. “Here you’ve been all over me for a year to break this thing off with you-know-who because he’s ‘bad for me’ and one night is all it takes for you to get in big trouble.”

It could have sounded like gloating in another context, but Sophie knew it wasn’t. It was simply Lori stating the crazy irony of their situation.

“I never thought something like this would happen to me,” Sophie said.

And still a voice in the back of her head was saying, Even if you knew how this was going to end up, you would have done it anyway. You would have given up everything, anything at all, for the chance to be with him.

“It could work, you know,” Lori said, halfheartedly. “Maybe he’ll step up to the plate. Maybe the two of you can actually make this work.” She looked down at Sophie’s stomach. “Well, the three of you, I guess.”

Sophie knew better than that. “I don’t want him to be with me only out of duty.” She took a deep breath, letting oxygen fill her lungs and help rebuild her strength. “I want love.”