Page 43 of Mile High Ex's Dad
“You’re pregnant?”
I can’t speak. My heart is slamming so hard it hurts.
He looks down again, more carefully this time, at the shape I’ve spent months hiding under loose clothes and good posture and strategic layers. In the dark room, in a robe half-open, with his hand on me, there is no hiding it now.
His eyes lift to mine. The expression on his face is unreadable for half a second. Shock. Confusion. A dark kind of focus.
Then, very quietly, “Is it mine?”
Panic answers for me before I can think.
“No.”
Viktor goes still. His hand remains against my stomach for one suspended moment, and in that moment I understand exactly how badly I’ve mis-stepped. He heard the fear in it. He heard how quickly it came.
His eyes stay on my face. “No?” he repeats.
I shake my head, trying to gather myself, trying to sound steadier than I feel. “It isn’t yours.”
For a moment he says nothing. The room feels quieter than it did a second ago, as if the kiss, the heat, all of it has fallen away and left only this.
“Then whose is it?”
My throat tightens. I should have prepared for this. I’ve spent months preparing for this, for questions, for discovery, for the possibility that one day I might have to say something convincing. But standing here with him looking at me like that, all I can think about is getting out from under the truth before it breaks over both of us.
“My ex’s,” I say.
Something shifts in his expression, not anger exactly, but attention narrowing. “Your ex,” he says, very quietly.
I nod.
He takes his hand off me then, and the loss of that contact is immediate. It leaves a cold space behind, one that makes me hate myself for noticing. He steps back just enough to look at me properly, as if he’s rearranging the whole night in his head and finding it different now.
Then he asks, “What was Ethan doing outside your room?”
I say nothing.
His eyes stay on my face. “And how do you know him?”
Crap.
This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. Not tonight. Not like this, with my heart still pounding from the kiss and my body still reacting to him and the marks on my wrist beginning to darken under the light.
I should have expected it. Of course I should have. He isn’t stupid. He saw enough downstairs to know there was history there, and enough just now to know Ethan didn’t come to my door by accident.
Still, I had hoped for a little more time.
I pull the robe tighter around myself and look away for a second, trying to get my breathing under control. The room feels too warm now. Too small. Viktor is close enough that I can still feel the echo of him against me, his mouth on mine, his hand at the back of my neck, and now all of that has curdled into something tense and exposed.
“He was drunk,” I say at last.
Viktor waits.
“He came here after the dinner. He was angry. He started talking, then he grabbed me.”
His face hardens, though he says nothing. I know that isn’t enough for him. I know he’s still waiting for the part that explains why Ethan was here in the first place.
I let out a breath and force myself to meet his eyes.
