The Purest Hook (Second Circle Tattoos #3)(40)

“It’s been my best friend for years,” she said teasingly. “Let me get cleaned up.”

He watched her walk into his bathroom and stood, rearranging himself into a bearable potion to drive. His phone rang. Dr. Meltz.

“Hello,” he said, picking up his car keys.

“Mr. Zander. I have your results. I know you were anxious to get them.” Anxious? Understatement of the year.

Dred sat on the edge of the bed. He could hear Pixie singing, always one of those ridiculous Broadway songs. With one smile, I’m the girl next door. Or the love that you’ve hungered for.

“And?”

“The combined paternity index was slightly under thirty seven thousand to one. In other words, the probability of you being Petal Veitch’s father is ninety nine point ninety nine percent.”

I have a child. I have a child. I have a child. Fuck.

Dred hung up the phone without saying good-bye. He stormed out of the room, and pounded up the stairs to Jordan’s room, needing to be away from Pixie and the perfect afternoon they’d had. With physical space between them, perhaps he could control the raging disappointment in himself. Without knocking, he threw the door open so hard, the handle penetrated the drywall.

Jordan jumped to his feet. “You okay?”

Dred gagged. Couldn’t answer as bile and puke and whatever else was in his stomach fought to escape. He turned and punched the wall. “No.” He punched it again. “No.” And again, and again until there was no skin left on his knuckles. Rage permeated his very being. He had no place being a father. What child would be happy to call the unwanted son of a f*cking junkie their father? When the top part of the wall was nothing but studs and insulation, he began on the bottom. Kicking it and using his knees until he was covered in dust, and all out of energy. He slumped down against the decimated wall, pulled his knees up to his chest, and rested his bleeding hands over them.

“Why, Jordan. Fucking why?”

He heard Jordan’s footsteps as he stepped through the carnage of drywall on the floor. The door closed, then Jordan sat down next to him.

“Did you make it up here before you lost it? Is Pixie okay?” Jordan’s voice was calm.

“Yeah. She was in the bathroom.”

“So you’re a dad, huh?”

Dred nodded. “I can’t . . . I don’t know how . . .”

“We’ll figure it out. But right now, you need to get your shit together. Make up some sort of excuse as to why you suddenly look like you took a flour bath, and get Pixie on her way home. Fake everything being okay for another couple of hours.”

Dred looked around Jordan’s pitiful attic room. A simple bed with one pillow and a comforter. One small wardrobe stood to his left, holding a minimal amount of clothing. No curtains at the windows, no rugs to soften the hard flooring. It had been a fight to get him to accept the central heat and air in the gloomy space when they’d renovated the place. A thin layer of dust floated in a sliver of sunlight.

“I’m sorry I destroyed your room.”

“Yeah, well. I think that wall needed some architectural detailing anyway.”

Dred stood and dusted off his jeans. Shit. His hands hurt like a bitch. Unsure he was going to be able to drive, he called a limo. Jordan threw a hat at him and he tucked his dust-covered hair in it. With one last look at the devastation, he jogged down to the laundry room and changed into some clean clothes.

When he arrived back in his room, Pixie was sitting on the sofa, watching the world go by outside.

“We need to go, Snowflake.”

“Hey, where’d you disappear to?” She walked right up against him, her face tilted perfectly toward him. He should kiss her. Try to get back to where they were before the call. But he couldn’t. He felt confused, and seedy, and stupid.

“We need to go,” he said, coolly, hating the look of abject confusion that overtook her features. He picked up her case.

“Oh my God. What happened to your hands?” She reached for the one holding the case, but he quickly moved it away. “Was it something to do with the banging I heard up stairs?”

Lying didn’t come naturally to him. He’d been lied to most of his life so tried to avoid it. But explaining this . . . what the hell was he meant to say? “Yeah, Jordan’s doing some remodelling. Needed some help getting part of the wall down.”

Pixie picked up the hand that wasn’t holding the case and kissed his knuckles gently.

A car horn sounded outside, and he hurried them down the stairs. The driver put her case in the back and they sat in silence the entire ride. His head was filled with noise. Memories of his mom’s idea of caring for a child swarmed him. One summer when he’d been around seven, she’d taken him to a small park around the corner to play. When it went dark, he began to worry. When it got really late, and strangers started to appear, he’d hidden behind the large bushes. He’d finally run home to find the front door unlocked and his mom passed out on the sofa. The clock had told him it was one a.m.

The limo pulled up alongside the curb at her terminal, and the driver got out to open her door.

“Are you getting out?” Pixie asked. He hated the uncertainty in her voice, detested the fact that he’d put it there.

“It’s probably best I don’t.” Was he really going to let her go like this?