“I’m pregnant,” she said without further hesitation, even though the words still stuck in her throat as she said them. It wasn’t getting any easier to tell people. She wondered if it ever would or if her kid would be thirty and she’d still feel this foreign,what-the-fuckfeeling in her gut.
“What? I thought you were super careful,” Siobahn said.
“I am normally but I had run out of pills. I figured I’d be fine since I’ve been on the pill forever and I don’thook up that much. Especially when I’m filming. I figured I’d be okay,” she repeated.
“Did he use a condom?”
“Yes...well, one time,” she admitted.
“Why am I just now hearing about this?” Siobahn asked. “Sounds like you had one hell of a night.”
“We did,” she admitted. “Then, of course, he was gone in the morning and I moved on. I like being able to do that. Not get too tied down, but then this...” She looked down at her body. How had this happened? Why now?
“Why did he bolt?”
“Turns out he was impersonating his brother who was in love with a girl, and he had to get back to Cole’s Hill to make things right between them,” Scarlet said.
Siobahn looked over at her.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Scarlet said, taking a long swallow of her water and wishing it were something stronger. If there was ever a moment she wanted to get drunk and forget everything about her life, it was right now.
“You know you’re making me feel better about my sucky life,” her friend said, wrapping her arm around Scarlet’s shoulder and hugging her.
“That was my main objective,” Scarlet joked.
Siobahn smiled. “Do we have the suckiest taste in men ever or has the quality of men in the dating pool just gone significantly downhill?”
“Might just be karma,” Scarlet said.
“It might be,” Siobahn admitted. “Be nice if the universe had given us a free pass for all the crap things we’d done when we were too dumb to know better.”
“It would be. Guess it doesn’t work that way, though,” Scarlet said.
“Girl, what are you going to do about the baby?” Siobahnasked, looking over at her with those wide eyes that had helped make her so famous.
“I don’t know. You know O’Malleys make horrible parents. There isn’t one in my direct line who didn’t screw up their kids,” Scarlet said.
“Yeah, but you’re?—”
“Please don’t saydifferent,” Scarlet said. “I’m not. I just hide the ugly, selfish bits of myself better than Tara did, and my father does.”
“Whatever you decide, I’ve got your back,” Siobahn said. “So, what about Mauri—wait, not Mauricio, Alejandro? Did you tell him about the kid? Or are we keeping this just between us for now?”
“I told him but I’m not sure what’s on his mind. He wants me to have a DNA test,” Scarlet said.
“Bastard. He didn’t believe you?”
“Karma. I have slept with a lot of guys,” Scarlet admitted. Granted she’d been in her very early twenties and trying to exorcise some ghosts back then.
“Yeah, but still, why would you try to trap him?”
“I said as much. And once he realized I didn’t know who he actually was when I came to town he admitted as much. I’m still going to do it. I need it for my lawyers, but beyond that... I was hoping he’d be a decent guy who would raise the kid.”
“Good idea,” Siobahn said. “Aside from impersonating his twin, is he a good guy?”
That was the million-dollar question. She shrugged, and luckily Billie walked in before she had to answer any more of Siobahn’s questions.