So Pucking Over It by Elise Faber

Author:Elise Faber [Faber, Elise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637490792
Publisher: Elise Faber

Twenty-Six

Axel

“Read it,” I managed to rasp out, my heart in my throat, stifling any further words that wanted to escape, blocking out the explanation that I wanted to give her.

The warning.

Her fingers shook as she reached for the envelope, turning it over and opening the flap.

Mine had shaken in very much the same way when I’d received it, received the final bit of proof that had shown beyond any doubt that my mother wasn’t lying.

Not about this, anyway.

The sheaf of papers sliding out was a mere whisper of sound.

But it was also somehow more, almost gunshot loud in the quiet that had fallen between us. Now, my breaths increased in speed, in volume, joining the noise in a grating report that prickled down my spine.

I couldn’t manage to slow them, though, not when Bailey had dropped her gaze to the papers.

I watched her eyes move across the page, her brows drawing together, probably trying to make sense of the first paper in the stack.

It was a medical report.

It was a DNA report, generated from a sample Pascal had surreptitiously collected for me and my own saliva.

But because it had come straight from a lab, it was filled with a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo.

She reached the bottom, that frown still in place, but then she was flipping to the next page, and I knew, knew that if she hadn’t been certain of what she’d been reading on the first piece of paper that the second would make it crystal clear.

Because it was a picture.

Of a boy.

Who had my eyes.

Who was mine based on that DNA report.

Her gasp punched through the numb that was threatening to settle over me, striking my heart with the force of a bullet. This time the papers crinkled as she flipped back to the first page, gaze flying over the words. Her mouth dropped open.

Another flip. Back to the picture.

Then to the remaining pages in the packet.

Pascal’s team had done a thorough job. There was a birth certificate that listed me as the father, more pictures of him, of my son at school, with his mother at the park, her financial records, even a photograph of him at his birthday party.

Five.

He was five.

He was mine.

And he didn’t know me. I was as absent as my own father had been. My throat went tight all over again, the guilt tearing me up, slicing me to ribbons.

“I’d gone home,” I whispered, staring at the stitching of the comforter. “I’d gone home after I’d been bumped down into the minors. My mom wanted money, and I was miserable, wanted to punish myself for trusting her, for trusting myself. I-I—don’t really remember much of that weekend. I gave her the money but vowed it would be the last time I went home, the last time I funded her bullshit. Then I spend the rest of the weekend being exactly like her—drinking myself into oblivion and having sex.”

With Veronica.

I knew her name now, though hadn’t then.

Hadn’t cared to.

Not when I was just looking for oblivion, when I was barely conscious.

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