“Have you considered that maybe you don’t really know him?” Birdie replied. “What if he doesn’t even want kids?”
Her words hit closer to home than she could ever know, and I had to rein in my patience before I answered. “Look, it doesn’t matter, B. You don’t need to concern yourself with this. Lucian and I will talk about it when I’m ready.”
Birdie pursed her lips. “Fine. I guess I’m just chopped liver now, huh?”
I pulled the car into the driveway and turned off the ignition. “Is that what this is about? You think I’m going to forget about you?”
“No,” she shot back. “It’s about the fact that you always treat me like I’m a child who’s never going to grow up. Like I have no clue what I’m talking about.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but she held up her hand. “I get that I’ve given you plenty of reason to come to that conclusion. But while you’ve been playing house with Lucian, I’ve been doing just fine, haven’t I?”
“I don’t know,” I answered sourly. “Have you?”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Birdie huffed. “You always believe that I’m up to something I shouldn’t be.”
“That’s because you are!” I shouted.
We both looked away, and several minutes of tense silence followed. Birdie, as always, was the first to crack.
“I know I’m an asshole for not coming to visit you sooner,” she said. “But honestly, I was scared. I thought that if I saw him hurting you, I would fly off the handle and do something crazy. And I didn’t want to disappoint you like that again.”
She looked down at her hands, and I swallowed back a decade’s worth of repressed emotions. “You didn’t disappoint me, B. You saved us when I couldn’t.”
She didn’t acknowledge the sentiment. “I’m not jealous of him either. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Maybe you don’t always see it, but I am looking out for you too.”
I gave her a watery smile. “Of course, I see it. You always have. We look out for each other.”
The anger in her eyes dissolved and gave way to worry. “Then trust me when I say that you can’t fall for this guy. No matter what.”
She was so serious it gave me pause since Birdie was rarely ever serious. But I knew I couldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear.
It was too late.
I just hadn’t admitted it to myself before then.
“WHEN ARE YOU GOING TOtell him?” Birdie asked for the third time this week.
I finished loading the dishwasher and pressed the power button, busying myself with cleaning the counter. Birdie had been concocting all sorts of so-called meals, which mostly consisted of ice cream and peanut butter sandwiches, and she’d left a mess everywhere.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s got a lot going on right now. The trial is starting in three days. He can’t have this heaped on top of him with the pressures he’s already dealing with.”
“Well, it’s kind of important that you figure it out, isn’t it?” She propped her hip against the table. “You’re already two months in. Before you know it—”
“God, Birdie.” I dragged my hands over my face and groaned. “I can’t do this right now, okay? I’m doing my best to try to figure it out. But you nagging me isn’t helping.”
She looked at the floor and rolled the rubber end of her Adidas shoe against the tile. “I found something I think you should see.”
Her voice was too scratchy. She sounded emotional, and Birdie never got emotional unless she was in a fit of rage.
“What did you find, B?”
She gestured down the hall. “It’s in the safe. In your closet.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “You were snooping?”
“I saw it, and I thought he might be hiding something in there, and I was right.”
“How the hell did you get in?” I demanded.