“You said all that to her?” Sin asks, blue eyes going double their size. “Ice-cold, Vinnie. Ice-cold.”
“I was honest,” I say, defending myself.
“Yeah, well,” Faye says, hands now on her hips. “You gave that asshole of a speech to a woman who’s already pregnant with your child and was going to tell you that day.”
“What?” I ask. I can’t have heard correctly.
There is no way.
No.
Pregnant?
But she’s on the pill. I know no contraception is 100 percent, but what the fuck?
“So you told a pregnant woman, who is unsure and probably scared, not to mention hormonal, that you don’t ever want children?” Sin asks, cringing. “Fucking hell, you’re so screwed.”
“Thanks for that, prez,” I reply, still in a daze.
Shay is pregnant.
I don’t really know how to process this, to be honest. I fucked things up with Shay, she’s probably really hurt right now, and hating me, but I don’t know how to accept that I’m going to have a child, when like I said, I never planned on having one.
Ever.
Under no circumstance.
I run my hand over my head, and turn to walk away from these two, because I need to be alone right now.
“Are you going after her?” Faye asks, hope lacing her tone.
Hope that I soon dash. “No.”
How fucked-up is that? My first instinct after hearing this news isn’t even to go after her, to tell her everything will be okay, because I don’t know if it will be. I’ve never trusted another woman when she said she was on the pill, I always wore condoms anyway, but with Shay, I trusted her completely. I guess that’s not exactly fair, because shit does happen and nothing is foolproof, but fuck, I only just heard the news and my head is fuckin’ spinning.
This can’t be happening.
I run my fingers over the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath.
Shay.
Pregnant.
A fuckin’ baby.
I picture a small baby with her dark hair. A baby of mixed nationalities, raised by two people whose own parents didn’t even want them.
I don’t know anything about being a good father.
Nothing. I never had one, I never had a good childhood, I never had anything, and that’s all I know to give back to a child.
Nothing.
I wouldn’t know how to be there emotionally. I wouldn’t know how to calm a crying baby, or how to bond with one. What the fuck do you even do with them all day long? A baby would just hog Shay, and I’d be there on the outside, wondering what the fuck happened to my life. Sure, Faye and Sin make it work, but they’re different. I’m a different man than Sin is. I’d have to move out of the clubhouse, because that’s not exactly a place you can raise a child for its entire life, and live the exact life I always said I never wanted. I’d be living a life I might grow to hate, or maybe I wouldn’t, I won’t know until it happens.
Maybe Shay was right in leaving. Maybe she knows, just as well as I do, that this child would be better off without me.
“He’s not going after her,” I hear Faye tell Sin. “You need to make him. You’re the president!”
“I can’t make him do anything,” Sin replies, sounding exasperated with her.
“Then give him a male pep talk, you’ve been in this situation. Imagine if you’d treated me like this when you found out I was pregnant. I would’ve thrown it in your face for the rest of your life.”
“Well hopefully Shay is a more kind and forgiving woman than you are,” Sin says in a dry tone. “Their situation is different than ours, and I can’t make Vinnie fix it, it’s his decision.”
“The longer he waits the harder it’s going to be to fix.”
“He only just heard she’s pregnant, let the man digest it. You can’t solve everyone’s problems.”
“The hell I can’t,” Faye mutters, and I can just imagine her giving Sin her narrow-eyed, stubborn look. “I love Vinnie, and I really like Shay. Vinnie’s kid will be my niece or nephew. This affects us all.”
“Well us standing in front of him discussing it isn’t really going to help now, is it?” Sin says. “You need to give him time. He’s a man. He will do what he wants, when he wants, not because there’s a stubborn-ass woman waiting at his door, a woman who’s not even his, talking about him where he can hear her.”
“Fine,” she says, then calls out, “Vinnie, if you don’t go and get Shay right now, you’re a dumb-ass. That’s all I’m going to say about it. Men become fathers the second they hold their baby, women become mothers the second they become pregnant. Don’t be a dick and realize too late what you’re going to miss out on.” She squeals, then yells, “Sin, put me down! I’m not finished yet.”