Punching in his name, I hurriedly unblocked his number and called him.
“You better not be on your way to my parents’ house,” I said when I heard him answer.
“Wow,” he muttered. “After all this time hiding the fact that you were pregnant, refusing to see me or talk to me, blocking my number, that’s what you wanted to say?”
“It isn’t your place to tell them. I’ll tell—”
“I would never do that, Sloane.”
20
Tackle
I ended the call, tossed the phone on the passenger seat, pulled off on a side street, parked, and rested my head on the steering wheel.
Thoughts raced through my head faster than I could process them. That’s what she thought of me? That when she refused to marry me, I’d rush over to her parents’ house and tell them to force her to?
Why didn’t she want to marry me? She was pregnant with my baby. Why the fuck hadn’t she told me? Why had she kept it from me? Was I really that bad of a guy? What had I ever done to make her think I was?
Clearly, Halo didn’t know the baby was mine. If he did, he wouldn’t have been able to hide the fact he knew. More, he probably would’ve beat the shit out of me long before this.
Who in the hell had she told him the father was? How had my friendship with him reached the point where he didn’t think he could confide in me about this?
“Poor peanut,” he’d said. “She’s got enough of her own shit to deal with.”
I counted back the number of weeks since he’d returned from Italy. Everything that had happened made so much more sense now.
That was the emergency. Sloane was pregnant. He’d arranged for a place for her to live, underwrote her rent, because she was pregnant. He’d even hesitated going to New York this weekend, almost passed up the chance to see Tara, because Sloane was pregnant.
I counted again. This time, the number of weeks between the first time she and I had had sex, when the condom broke, and when she had the mysterious illness.
I didn’t know a damn thing about how women felt when they were pregnant; maybe Sloane didn’t either. I knew she never got the message about the broken condom because it showed up on my phone as not being delivered.
I put the car back in gear. Instead of going to the duplex, I drove home—to my parents’ house.
“Everything okay?” my mother asked when I walked in the door that led from the garage into the kitchen.
“I need to talk to you, Mom.”
She set down the dish towel she had in her hand. “Okay.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“Watching a movie. What’s going on, Landry?”
“Can we go for a drive?”
“Of course. Let me grab my coat.”
“What will you tell him?”
“Your father?”
I nodded.
“I’ll come up with something.” My mom, bless her heart, winked at me before walking away. She was back in not much longer than it would’ve taken for her to get the coat she hadn’t yet put on. She held it out for me to help her with it. “I told him we were going for ice cream.”
“In the dead of winter?”
“Why not? We used to go for ice cream all the time. The weather didn’t matter.”
Once she buttoned her coat, I hugged her. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here before he decides to come with us.”
“I’m guessing this has something to do with Sloane,” she said after I’d backed my car out of the garage and the door had closed.
I put my foot on the brake. “What makes you say that?”
“The two of you have tiptoed around each other long enough. For goodness’ sake, why don’t you admit what everyone else already knows?”
“Who knows what already?”
“The two of you are crazy about each other.”
I backed the rest of the way out of the driveway and drove a mile down the road to the town park.
“Why are you stopping here?” my mother asked when I pulled up to the curb.
“What do you mean?”
“I thought we were going to get ice cream.”
“I thought that’s just what you told Dad. Do you really want to?”
“Of course I do.”
“Okay, but wait. Before we do that, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sloane’s pregnant.”
“I see.” My mother turned in her seat so she was facing me. “Your baby, I take it?”
I raised a brow, and she put her hand on mine. “How far along is she?”
“I don’t know.” I counted on my fingers. “Five months?”
“And you found out tonight?”
I nodded. “She didn’t tell me.”
“That’s why Halo’s been in Newton,” she mumbled.
“I don’t know how you figured that out, but yeah.”
She nodded and turned so she was facing forward again. “Let’s go. This calls for a sundae. Maybe even a banana split.”
“Mom, I need you to take this seriously.”
She looked back at me. “Make no mistake. I’m taking this very seriously, Landry.”
“Okay, but we can’t talk about it while we’re in there.”
“You don’t say.”
“When did they add a drive-thru?” I asked while we waited for our order.
“I think you were fourteen or fifteen.”
“Seriously?”
She laughed. “I can’t tell you how many times I wondered how you got a job with the CIA.”
“Very funny.”
“So how did you leave things with her?”
“Pretty much the same as always. I said the wrong thing, and she’s no longer speaking to me.”
“Oh dear. What did you say?”
“I told her I’d be with her when she told her parents and she’d be with me when I told you and Dad.”
“That’s it?”
“Not exactly.”
“What else?”
“I said we’d tell you both we were getting married.”
“Hang on. You’re getting married?” she gasped.
“Why is that a surprise? She’s pregnant.”
“Landry, do your best to try to remember your exact words.”
“Those were my exact words.”
“No. Tell me how you asked her
