Mine to Promise (Southern Wedding #6)(34)

“Ummm,” I start, closing my eyes to get my heartbeat to normal as my ears now start to buzz. “I don’t need to be there.” I put my hand on my head, thinking that maybe I’m going to faint or maybe I have scarlet fever.

“What?” he shrieks. “Of course you have to be there.”

“Ugh.” I put my hand on my stomach. “I don’t know. I don’t do well with parents.” My head is just about ready to explode. This is too much; this is all just too much. “I mean, look at my own.” I laugh bitterly, trying to joke about it, but the pain still hurts, even after all this time. The emptiness is still there. The fact they haven’t even tried to get to know Avery just breaks my heart because she’s the best, but I also know it’s their loss. They don’t deserve her awesomeness in their lives.

“You need to come and maybe protect me from my mother,” he declares, and I am not rolling my lips to stop from laughing at him. His tone is both equally scared and panicked. “She is not pleased with me.”

I don’t even know why, but the words come out without me knowing. “Okay.” I give in. “I’ll go.

Now, I need to get to bed or else there will be bags under my eyes tomorrow, and that isn’t the look I want to have when meeting your parents for the first time.”

He chuckles. “Addison, you could be wearing a potato bag and war paint on your face that is dripping down, and you’ll still be the most beautiful woman in the room.”

My heart stops. Completely. “Good night, Stefano,” I say before I hang up on him and put my phone on do not disturb. I’m not doing this with him. He has a girlfriend, and I’m not the one who is going to walk in there and just steal him away. I’m not that person. “We have a child together, so I’m going to have to be nice to him, but that’s it when it comes to Stefano and me,” I huff, putting my phone on my bedside table. But isn’t he sexy? my head screams out. Remember when he did that thing with his tongue? I put my hands on my ears. “I’m not listening to you anymore.” I turn over and close my eyes but that makes it even worse because now all I can see is me ripping his shirt off him while he places me on that hotel desk no one actually works on. His hands roam up my legs that are spread with him standing in the middle of them, our mouths devouring each other. My eyes spring open. “That didn’t help anything.” I turn onto my back before turning over on my side. “He’s in bed with his girlfriend right now,” I tell myself. “Yeah, so shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”

I don’t know how long it takes me to fall asleep, but the next day, I have to literally peel myself out of bed. I spend more time than I should picking an outfit, knowing that after work I’m going to see him. We get into the car with seconds to spare and only when I pull out of the parking lot does Avery start to ask me questions, “Momma, is Stefano really my dad?”

I glance in the rearview mirror, seeing her look out the window. “What do you mean?”

“He said he’s my dad,” she says, her feet going up and down, “so now I have a dad.”

“Well, you always had a dad,” I tell her, gripping the steering wheel.

“But now I can tell people that my dad ate dinner with me.” I pull into the parking lot and put the car in park. “So if Ms. Terry asks me what I did last night, I could say I had dinner with my dad.”

“Yes.” I look over at her. “You can say you saw your dad.” She nods her head at me as she unbuckles her seat belt before jumping down from her booster seat. I open my car door and then open hers. She jumps out of the car and holds my hand as we walk into the school. The minute we walk in, she takes off to her classroom door.

“My dad came to see me,” she announces as soon as she sees her teacher, who looks at her and then at me. The shock is all over her face, especially since I told them her father is uninvolved in her life. “He brought pizza, and he got me princess dresses.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Ms. Terry says.

“Okay, come give Momma a kiss,” I say, squatting down, and she comes over to me.

“Will Stefano come and see me again?” she asks me, and I just nod my head.

“We are going to the park after school, and he’s going to be there,” I tell her, and she jumps up before running back into the class. I avoid looking at anyone before I walk back to my car. Even when I get to work, I walk in, head straight to the kitchen, and start the coffee. Unlike yesterday, there is less fanfare this morning.

Shelby comes in not long after me. “Morning,” she mumbles to me as her phone rings in her hand.

Clarabella is the next one in with a car seat. She huffs as she comes in and the door closes behind her. “Have kids, they say.” She blows the hair out of her face. “It’ll be fun, they said.”

I roll my lips when I look at her and see she’s literally leaking through her silk shirt. My eyes must go big, and she looks down. “I’m like a cow,” she says, putting the car seat down with the baby still sleeping. “I swear, he cries, and it just pours out of me. The other day I just thought about him, and it was dripping everywhere.”

“Ew,” Presley states, coming in the door at the moment, “you’re leaking.” She points at her, and Clarabella just gasps.