Page 68 of Backup Plan

The way my voice broke when I said the very words to Penny tells me that’s not what I want.

Obviously I need proof first. I also have…what did she say? Less than two months to wrap my head around this. But two months puts me at training camp.

I can’t do this alone. I can’t move to a new city with a baby and be a single dad when I have a career that puts me in a different city every other week for half the year.

Still, her words that this baby has my blood, it’s half me, it’s mine…it’s affecting me.

“You’d help me?” I ask. I beg.

“I’ll do what I can. I’m here for advice, tips, tricks. Whatever you need.”

“What if what I need is you?” I ask.

The door opens, and she dashes out of my arms. It’s one of the other bridesmaids. It’s not Everleigh, thank God. We might’ve just been caught.

I head back downstairs, and the wedding, of course, is a phenomenal event. It's Everleigh's wedding. Would anyone have expected anything else? But I can't be present in the moment with Izzy's phone call hanging over my head.

I can't escape to the dance floor with Penny to talk this over with her in front of my entire family, specifically her best friend, the bride. So as lovely as the event is, it also feels interminable as I wait for the evening to come to a close.

I'm distracted, and everyone keeps asking me what's wrong.

Eventually, I confess the truth to Dex when he approaches me with the fiftieth, “Dude, what’s going on with you?” of the night.

Maybe the reason I finally decide to come clean is because Dex is the one sibling of mine who can most relate to what I’m going through. He had a baby dropped at his doorstep. It was a different scenario, though. The baby was six months old when Dex got him. The mother was out of the picture. Izzy will be, too. She doesn’t want this baby.

But if it’s mine? I think maybe I do.

“I got a call right before the wedding that a girl I slept with a few months ago is pregnant.”

“Oh, shit. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I mutter. “What if it’s not even mine?”

“What if it is?”

A great question indeed.

Penny and I arrived separately because of her duties as maid of honor, and we leave separately, too. I get home before she does, but I saw her on her way out the door as I got into my car, so I wait in the parking garage for her so we can walk in together.

I was kind of assuming I'd drink to the point I’d have to go get my car sometime tomorrow, but the truth is I had one sip of champagne when we toasted earlier in the evening and cut myself off at that point. I just wanted to be able to get the fuck out when I wanted to get the fuck out and not have to worry about waiting for a ride to come pick me up.

I think maybe Penny might have felt the same way because I never saw her drinking either, and we shared only one dance as friends, despite the urge to pull her close.

Her eyes stared into mine.

She was worried about me.

I’m worried about me, too.

It’s a lot of upheaval in a short amount of time, and now…this.

She pulls into the spot beside mine a few minutes later, and I get out of the truck to walk with her. She leans into me as I toss my arm around her shoulder.

“You doing okay?” she asks.

“Better now,” I admit now that she is next to me again.

“All right, take me back to the beginning,” she says as we walk through the parking garage toward the lobby of my building.