Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Why?”
She looked at my eyes hard and then blurted out everything.
“So here’s what happened…” She went on to explain what she’d heard Eerie say this afternoon. Followed up by her suspicions, and ending with, “…and he has your cleft chin.”
I sat there, on my front porch, and stared at her as something foreign started to slide through my body.
“Why is it,” I asked slowly, “that every fuckin’ time that I think that I’m away from Eerie, she just seems to keep coming back?”
A kid.
I might have a fucking kid.
That was just… insane.
I always wanted kids.
The only problem was, I’d never wanted kids with Eerie.
I’d always wanted them with the woman standing in front of me.
I’d daydreamed about a whole fucking houseful of kids.
Boys that acted like her. Girls that looked like her. A ton of them that loved their mother unconditionally like I did.
Yet, there I was having them with Eerie.
“I…” I shook my head. “I just… I can’t.”
That was when Reggie slapped her hands on either side of my cheeks and forced me to look at her.
“I know you didn’t ask for this. I know that you didn’t want this for yourself. I know that you would’ve gone about this differently if you could. But you can’t. This is out of your hands now. You have a child. At least, I’m fairly sure that you do.” I scrunched up my nose. “Though, they’ll need your DNA to prove it. But Nathan…”
My eyes focused on hers. My mind cleared of all the motherfuckers that were going through it. And I focused solely on the girl in front of me.
Her eyes were a beautiful shade of aquamarine. They’d changed since she was a kid, become more beautiful.
More stunning.
She was so fucking pretty.
“Okay.” I shook my head, hoping it would clear it. “What do I do?”
I brought her in after that. Together we made plans for what was to happen next.
First off, I needed to talk to a lawyer.
Which was about the time that my father came in and listened to us explain what was going on.
After processing that bit of news, he pulled out a number from his phone and gave it to us.
“Call this number,” Dad said. “That’s a criminal defense attorney. She’s the best I know. She doesn’t usually do this side of the tracks, but she’s good. The best that I’ve ever run up against in my career.”
After making an appointment with her for an hour from now—which would just barely give me time to change and get there—I looked at my dad and Reggie.
“Reggie,” I said. “I need you to go back to work. Tell me everything.”
She winced. “I’m on-call today. Which means I’ll likely be called in. But I am going to take this up to the lab. I’ll stop by. Ask around. I think that Sierra is working. I can ask her to keep an ear out as long as you’re okay with her knowing everything.”
I immediately gave a nod then looked toward my dad. “You’ll go with me?”
Dad wasn’t my biological father. He was my adoptive father and he was as real as it gets.
Years ago, when I was just a toddler, my real father, who happened to be a cop, was killed. As was my mother and unborn sibling.
I’d been shot in the head and left for dead, too.
But I’d survived. And Wolf had adopted me.
From then on, I’d been his.
And I knew without a doubt that he’d come with me today.
There was no way that I’d get rid of him.
“Fuck yeah,” Dad said. “I’m going. You couldn’t stop me even if you tried.”
I found my first half smile since Reggie had walked up to my door.
“There’s something else you should know,” she said softly, drawing my attention once again toward her.
I swallowed hard. “What?”
She fidgeted with her fingers, her eyes worried.
“She named the baby Stanley Jones Foster.”
Chapter 10
Nathan
“You’d have better luck getting sole custody of this child if you were married,” the lawyer pointed out.
The lawyer, Swayze Jensen, was a little bit of a thing.
She came to about my collarbone, but you wouldn’t be able to tell with her sitting behind her desk looking professional and serious as fuck.
Her blonde hair was pinned back into a severe bun at the base of her neck, and her bright eyes were hard and shrewd.
When I’d been recommended to a criminal defense attorney known as ‘The Bulldog’ I’d already had my doubts. But now? I was having even more.
She was the best I could find, and cost a whack.
She also was very, very open with my odds at winning this case.
She’d already said that the mother had quite a few ticks in the win column. Being the child’s mother being a really big one.
“Turns out, I already am,” I told her bluntly, not bothering to look over at my father who was likely wearing a look of surprise. “Been married for years.”