“We were motivated,” my dad replied as he let me go, leaving one arm wrapped around my shoulders. “Fill us in?”
“While I make breakfast,” Mark said, jerking his head toward the kitchen. “You guys hungry?”
“Starving,” my mom replied.
We followed Mark into the kitchen and my mom started laughing. “Well, this looks familiar,” she said, staring at the table covered in car parts.
“Bullshit,” my dad argued, leading me to a chair. As soon as I’d sat down, he ran his hand over my hair again before stepping away. “Woman, you have never let me leave any of my shit in the kitchen.”
“You have to train them,” my mom told me teasingly. “But they eventually learn.”
My dad scoffed and turned toward Mark. “You got any coffee?”
I sat back and let their conversation flow around me. For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, I felt like everything might be okay. Not that I’d make it okay, or I’d figure it out, but that it actually was going to be okay.
“I’m chafing like you would not believe,” Cam said as he came into the room.
“Keep your swamp ass away from me,” I replied, trying to dodge his hand as he reached for me. “You better have washed your hands!”
“Of course I did,” he said, flicking water in my face.
“Ew,” I groaned. “Why didn’t you use a towel?”
“I heard something about breakfast and I was in a hurry,” he replied, chuckling.
“Help me clear the table,” my mom ordered Cam. “We can set this stuff on the counter.”
“I can grab that,” Mark said apologetically.
“No biggie.” My mom waved him off.
I watched as she and Cam cleared the table while Mark grabbed supplies out of the fridge and spoke quietly to my dad. Shit just kept getting weirder and weirder.
“You haven’t had any water since you got here,” Mark said as he set a glass of ice water down in front of me. “Didn’t you say you were supposed to be drinking a lot of it?”
“I’ve been a little preoccupied,” I replied. I tilted my head back to meet his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Why are you supposed to be drinking water?” my mom asked, watching us in confusion.
When I didn’t answer right away, Mark did it for me.
“Because of the breastfeeding.”
“The breastfeeding?” my mom replied. Her eyes shot to the baby.
“It’s not what you’re thinking—” I said, shaking my head.
“You told us that you had your friend’s baby with you,” my dad said, his voice low and angry.
“Yeah, about that,” Mark waded in, pointing at my dad. “You could have filled me in.”
“She is my friend’s baby,” I said at the same time. God, this wasn’t how I wanted to tell them. My parents were staring at me like they wanted to throttle me, and I couldn’t really blame them. I hadn’t given them the full story when I’d called them, and now they were having this huge bomb dropped in their lap with no warning.
I looked at Mark, whose face had lost all expression while he waited for me to explain what the hell was happening. I hadn’t exactly been straight with him, either.
I looked down at the baby’s sleeping face and took a deep breath before lifting my head again.
“I was a surrogate.”
Chapter 6
Mark
“You were a surrogate,” Cecilia’s mom Farrah said, dropping into a chair at the table.
“Yes,” Cecilia confirmed. “I carried her, but she was never supposed to be mine.”
“The fuck?” Cam muttered.
“She’s not genetically linked to me,” Cecilia said, her voice strained. “I was just the gestational carrier. I just, you know, grew her because Liv couldn’t.”
“And Liv’s the friend who was gunned down at her house last night?” her dad asked. Casper looked like he was ready to hit something, but he also oddly looked like he wanted to hug his daughter.
“Yeah,” Cecilia said. Her fingers started pulling at her bottom lip.
“So—” Farrah started to speak, then seemed to lose her train of thought. She shook her head and ran a hand down her face. “So, she belongs to your friends. Do they have any family? Where is she gonna go?”
If I hadn’t known Cecilia so well once upon a time, and maybe if I hadn’t been watching her so closely, I wouldn’t have seen the way her arms tightened around the baby. She lifted her chin.
“She stays with me,” Cecilia announced.
“Don’t think it works that way,” Cam said, disbelief threading his words. “You can’t just take her if she’s got family.”