The Fields Defense by Rebekah Johnson

Author:Rebekah Johnson [Johnson, Rebekah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798988094111
Publisher: West Strand Indie Books
Published: 2023-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

They sat on his bed, staring through the bathroom door.

“I think we’d know whose it was, right?” Eli squeezed her hand and tried to quiet the clamor in his brain.

“There was one time before he went to Japan, and that’s the week it probably happened. I guess if you go with these calculators, it’s at the wrong end of the week, though. Ninety-nine percent odds.”

He flopped back on his bed. “Why are there any odds? Why are you still sleeping with him at all?”

“I’m not now. I told you three weeks ago I was ready to file, and I haven’t done anything with him since. You knew it might happen before, and it hardly ever happened. The jealous child act is his show, not yours, so please don’t.”

“I don’t like that it happened, but I get it. But can I panic a little bit thinking about our child calling him Dad?” His voice rose as he spoke and cracked on the last word.

“Hold on. What?”

“If you’re pregnant when you file for divorce, you can’t even get your divorce till you have the baby. After that, they deal with paternity.”

Liberty gulped and felt like she’d swallowed an ice cube, clogging her throat and, drop by frigid drop, freezing her stomach. She collapsed on the bed next to him. “Maybe they can file something for me today. Forget all these bank statements and crap the lawyer needs. I could say I didn’t know I was pregnant. Some people don’t test and they don’t know for a long time. Don’t even look at the stick. Throw it away and I’ll call her now. I won’t be lying.” She bit her lip and yanked at her hair, flailing for ideas. “We’ll leave and not tell anyone, show up in a year with a baby and say it’s a… a fifteen-pound newborn?”

“I’m not sure how it works if you’re still legally married and not even separated.”

“Then we are separated today. I’ll pack a bag. Throw away that stick, and we can check again in a few months if I’m still throwing up.” Liberty smashed her hand to her forehead and clutched her stomach as she fought back another wave of nausea. They had narrowed the four squares of blue on the bedroom wall to two stripes, broad swathes of paint that repeated over and over behind her closed eyelids.

“Remember what happened with my buddy Patrick and his ex-wife? He would have had to pay child support for someone else’s kid if the court hadn’t ordered the DNA test.”

She choked out one word. “No.”

“Yeah. Some pieces of our DNA will be a little different, but they’re not picked up on most tests.” His eyes glazed over as he reached for her and cursed everything about himself that was Luke, everything about his brother that was him and tangled the strands of their existence so tightly the best science in the world might not unwind them.

Coughing, she rolled to face him and forced her eyes open. “Eli, he can’t have any custody.

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