Conception (The Wellingtons #4) - Tessa Teevan Page 0,107
works.
She blows out a breath. “I did, you know.”
“Did what?” I ask, eager to know everything I’ve missed.
She lets out a cheerless laugh. “I sent you a letter. Or, well, at least I thought I sent it to you. Now…I just don’t know.”
I want to lean forward, give her my undivided attention, but I rock Branson in my arms, willing her to continue without my prodding.
“I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to easily look up someone’s information without having to hire some private investigator to track someone down?’ But I didn’t need to. As soon as I told Grams about the baby, who the father was, she knew the Wellingtons of Nashville.” She shakes her head, a smile playing at her lips. “Duh, right? I mean, I guess I could’ve started with looking for a Wellington-named company. I never imagined it’d be that easy. Nashville isn’t that big.”
It’s a struggle to maintain my composure. To think that she might have reached out, when all this time I thought she was content with us having gone our separate ways. When, instead, she was carrying my child, alone.
A sudden desperation to reassure her washes over me. I can’t imagine how she must feel if she thinks I ignored her. If she thinks I didn’t care. I will find every damn person from her postal carrier to mine and make them pay if she thought for one second I didn’t want her or our son. Starting with Sunny Mayfield.
“What are you talking about? I know you wanted a clean break. That you thought it’d be easier for us both to go our separate ways if we had no means of communication. But I couldn’t forget the night that you promised to send me a photo of the two of us one night when we’d been drinking. I’d hoped that you’d remember it eventually and give in, even if you had to send it without a return address.”
Her green eyes widen slightly, and I wonder if she actually forgot that. Hell, I almost did, and our hangovers were brutal the next day. I’ve tried not to hold it against her. Too much.
“So I gave Sunny my address just in case you ever asked for it. I checked my goddamn mail every single day from the second I got home, but I got nothing. Not a postcard. Not a letter. Not an unsigned photo, even though I stupidly thought you’d send one like you promised.”
She swallows hard. “I meant to… It’s just, in the beginning, it was too hard. I wasn’t ready.”
Does that mean what I think it means? Because all this time, I thought I left that summer, just like she wanted me to, and while all I’ve done for the past eight months is look back, I figured she’d moved far the fuck on.
“Did you ever even ask Sunny? Did you mention me at all? Think about me at all before you knew you were pregnant?”
“Of course!” she cries then quickly lowers her voice “Of course I did, Knox. I thought about you every day damn, even before I knew.”
Overwhelming relief washes over me.
“That doesn’t matter right now. It doesn’t matter anymore. I did break down. I did ask Sunny for your information. But she’s an asshole and told me I had to wait a month before she’d give it to me. A month to determine if I was really hurting or if I”—she pauses, pink filling her cheeks—“or if I just missed all the really great sex.”
I kinda love and hate Sunny Mayfield right now. “And after that month, what? It was all the…what’d you call it? ‘Really great sex’?”
“After that month, I cursed sex while curled up beside the toilet, waiting for the subsequent wave of morning sickness to hit me.”
Right. Just another reminder of everything I missed. “I wish I could have been there,” I reply, my voice soft. “I would’ve been if I’d known.”
“It didn’t last long. The morning sickness, I mean. Once I felt okay, Sunny couldn’t find your address,” she informs me, sadness filling her eyes. “I chalked it up to serendipity. The universe didn’t want you to know. That’s what I told myself.”
“The universe is a bitch. And I know she’s your best friend, but so is Sunny.”
“Yeah, I might’ve cursed her out a time or two. But that was that. I didn’t have a way to contact you. So it didn’t matter.”