were you guys going to have a baby without having sex?”
“Don’t ask.” I took a drink. “She wanted to make it all complicated and do an insemination at a fertility clinic, but I convinced her it would be much more convenient, less expensive, and more likely to work if we just went about it the old-fashioned way.”
Beckett laughed and shook his head. “Genius.”
“Right?”
“And you’re going to split up after the baby is born?”
“Yes.”
“That might be tough. Don’t you think?”
“I think we’ll be able to stay friends,” I said, stretching my torso. I had a stitch in my side or something, or maybe I’d pulled a muscle at the gym this morning. “We’re really getting along now.”
“I meant on the kid.”
“Oh.” I glanced at Beckett. His mother had abandoned his family when he was really little—he’d been raised by his father and older sisters. He’d never talked about his mom growing up, and outwardly he’d been so damn successful—straight A’s, Varsity athlete, Ivy League scholarship, MBA from Yale, high-stakes Wall Street career, which he’d willingly given up to come back and run his family’s cattle ranch—that it was easy to forget he’d endured such a hardship. “I’m going to raise the baby with her,” I assured him. “He or she will definitely have two involved parents.”
“That’s good.” He took another drink of his beer.
“How’s your dad?” I asked. Mr. Weaver had been showing signs of dementia for the last couple years, and each time Beckett talked about him, the stories got worse.
“Don’t ask,” he muttered.
“I’m sorry, man. Is it that bad?”
“It’s pretty bad.” Beckett drank again. “And over the winter I was around more to keep an eye on him, but pretty soon the days will get longer, and I’ll be out of the house from sunup until sundown. He’ll need constant supervision, whether he likes it or not—and he will not.”
“I thought you hired someone.”
“I’ve hired three people,” Beckett said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “He fires them all as soon as I leave the house. And even when I tell the caregivers he doesn’t have the authority to do that, he’s such an asshole, they want to quit. He just has no filter anymore. He told one she had a face for radio.”
I laughed. “Sorry, I know it’s not funny.”
“He also thinks he’s a Major League ball player now. He’s always talking about having to get to his games.”
“Well, that seems harmless enough.”
“Not to me, it doesn’t. I’m trying to keep him grounded in reality. And all he does is fight me, lie to me, or accuse me of stealing his things.”
“What things?”
“Oh, you name it. His baseball uniform, his money, his car.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Nah. I’ll figure it out. I just have a lot to deal with right now.” He was silent a moment. “You remember Maddie Blake?”
I grinned at him. “The one that got away?”
He frowned. “Fuck off, we were just friends.”
“She was always at your house.”
“Because she lived across the road and we had classes together. We did homework at my house, asshole.”
“Fine, but you still wanted to bang her.”
“Yeah, well, she had a jerk boyfriend.”
A memory surfaced from our last year in high school. “Didn’t you kick his ass at the prom afterparty?”
The color in Beckett’s face darkened. “Yeah.”
“Dude, that’s the maddest I’ve ever seen you get. I thought for sure you were gonna knock that guy’s teeth out.”
“I should have.” He shook his head. “He was such a dick to her. But he was so drunk, it wasn’t even fair. She begged me not to bust up his face.”
“I can’t even remember what started it.”
Beckett shrugged. “She asked me to drive her home because he was drinking so much. I was walking her out when he came after me.”
“Oh yeah. Now I remember.” I hadn’t seen the start of the fight but everyone at the party had raced from the backyard bonfire to the driveway in front where Beckett was standing over the guy he’d just punched in the face and shoved to the ground. I remembered Maddie crying and pleading with Beckett to stop, recalled the guy’s bloody nose, and the way Beckett’s hands were clenched into fists as he screamed at the guy to get the fuck up and say that one more time.
Cole, always a peacemaker, had put himself between Beckett and the bleeding guy, but it had taken Griffin and I both to pull Beckett away and make sure he didn’t