“Well, this new place isn’t half bad!”
Cara looks around as she takes in my new apartment—or at least, the apartment I’m going to be calling home for now. She’s right. I doubt I could afford a place like this if it weren’t for the flooding at my old home, and while I would prefer to be under my own roof, this modern, glossy apartment is a welcome change.
“I know, right?” I laugh, as I lift my fingers to my lips. “Keep your voice down, by the way. Polly’s just down. She hasn’t been sleeping well in this new place, and I want her to get all the rest she can.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Cara replies, mirroring the finger to her own lips. “Can I have a coffee? I could really use a hit of caffeine…”
“I’ll bet you could,” I agree, as I make my way over to the kitchen. “You’ve been pulling double shifts working and helping me take care of Polly.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she replies. “She’s a sweetheart. How’s she finding the new place? Apart from the struggling to sleep part…?”
“She’s getting there,” I assure her, peeping through the door to her crib, where she is passed out. I have a little baby monitor set up on the living room table, but that doesn’t mean I’m not paranoid and double-checking every chance I get.
“I think she likes the sunshine,” I continue, pouring us both a cup of coffee. “It’s much brighter here than the old place.”
“Maybe that’s what’s screwing up circadian…pathways, or whatever it is,” Cara suggests.
“Maybe,” I agree, as we both settle onto the couch. “Anyway. How have you been? I feel like we’ve hardly spent time together, just the two of us…”
“Well, we’ve had a very welcome addition to girls-only nights,” she laughs, gesturing toward the bedroom. “I’m good. I actually—uh, I actually came here because I wanted to talk to you about something…”
The tone in her voice sets my teeth on edge. I’m sure I know where this is going—it was only a matter of time, after all. I know she saw Luca with me when we turned up at the old apartment, and I don’t have any good reason to keep the doctor who helped birth Polly around unless there’s something else going on.
“Oh, yeah?” I reply, trying to keep my voice light, not giving too much away. I want her to come out with it. I’m not going to bring it up—even if there is a part of me that wants to.
“That guy who I saw you with the other day, the one who drove you to this apartment,” she says, leaning forward with interest. “You know him?”
“Mhm.”
I truly don’t know where to start with all of this, but the piercing sharpness of her gaze tells me that she’s not going to let me get away with an answer that vague. She’s a journalist, after all—if there’s one thing she knows how to do, it’s get a story out of someone, even when they might not want to come clean themselves. And right now, I want to dodge her interview questions. I’m not the subject of one of her stories, though she might change her mind when she finds out everything I’ve been up to. I can see the front page now—Woman ruins own life for one-night stand with doctor, more news at ten…
“And how do you know him, exactly? You met him at the hospital…?”
I shake my head. I could try to lie, but I know she’d see right through me. She always does. It’s one of the reasons I came to really like her when we first started working together, when she was covering a press conference at my internship. But now, I feel as though I’m being laid out on the dissection table for her to pick apart at will. Why didn’t I pick a best friend who would be a little more likely to leave well enough alone…?
“Uh…we met before,” I reply, shifting around on the couch nervously. I know she’s going to judge the hell out of me—shit, I’m not sure I am not judging the hell out of me, and I have known about this way longer than she has.
“You did?” she replies, with a frown. “When…?”
“Um. When we….when we…” I trail off, trying to find some way to put this into words that aren’t going to hit her too hard. Finally, after a long sigh, I figure it’s best to just come out with it. I muster up the courage, and then spit it out, the words I want nothing more than to hide.
“When we slept together.”
The coffee cup nearly slips from her hand when I say that, her eyes widening so much it looks as though they’re going to bust out of her head. It would almost be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that I doubt she will ever see me the same way again after this.
“You slept with him? When did that happen?”
“Um…nearly a year ago now, I think?”
I watch as her eyes dart back and forth, doing the math.
“Oh, shit,” she gasps. “Is he…?”
I nod. In some ways, it’s a relief to get it off my chest. I don’t have to keep it from her any more. Finally, she knows who Polly’s father is—even if, judging by the look on her face, she’s waiting with a keen desperation for me to tell her this is all a joke.
“You’re kidding,” she intones, her voice low and heavy. “You’re kidding. Right? Aren’t you?”
I shake my head.
“It happened at that mask party we were at, you remember?” I prompt her. “He was there. It was full of people in the upper echelons, not that weird that a doctor was there—”
“Yeah, but weird that you fucked him!” she hisses, glancing toward the door as though Polly might burst through to warn her about her language at any moment.
“It wasn’t like I went there planning to do anything like that,” I shoot back, feeling a little defensive. “You know I would never do something so—”
“I knew there was something up with you that night,” she mutters, shaking her head, as she casts her mind back. “I got there late, and when I arrived, I thought there was something strange going on. I just didn’t know how to ask you—shit, if I’d thought it was something like this—”
“Is it that big a deal?” I wonder aloud. “I mean, so he’s a doctor. So what? That’s the kind of job you’d want your baby daddy to have, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, if that was all he did,” she mutters. The hackles on the back of my neck rise up, and I stare at her.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She leans forward, and reaches out to grip my hand.
“I’m sorry I’m being so blunt,” she murmurs to me, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to be nasty, I’m just…I’ve been looking into him, that’s all. After he was there when you came back for Polly, on the day of the flood.”
“You’ve been researching him?” I ask, cocking an eyebrow.
She smiles at me. “I’m your best friend,” she reminds me. “It’s my job to worry about the guys you have around. Especially now you have Polly to think about…”
“You found something out about him?” I prompt her. I can’t help but let my mind wander back to the conversation I had with Luca in his office—the way he talked to me, as though he didn’t want me anywhere close to him, only to pull me into his arms moments later. Perhaps there is more going on here than I know…
Her eyes dart back and forth as she considers her answers. Which isn’t exactly making me feel a whole heap better. I squeeze her hand, trying to push her into giving me an answer.
“Cara, if there’s something I need to know…”
“He’s involved in some dark stuff, babe,” she tells me gently, finally. “Like…criminal stuff. You know?”
My stomach drops, my body tensing. I guessed it was something dark, but this…
“How criminal?” I whisper to her. “What did you find out? How did you know…?”
“I did a little snooping around when I saw him with you,” she confesses. “Looked up some stuff about the hospital…you know he only started working there a couple of months ago?”
My body tenses. A couple of months…?
“But I slept with him at the event—”
“I know you did,” she replies grimly. “God knows what he was doing up here.”
“I thought he was just a doctor,” I mutter, shaking my head. “This doesn’t make sense—”
“He is a doctor. Well, on top of everything else,” she tells me. “His family…they’re part of a criminal empire. Mafia stuff. His father has a hell of a reputation back in Harrotsville, and I would guess he’s down here going undercover to get away from some heat he doesn’t want to face back there.”
“Heat like what?”
She shrugs. “Take your pick. He’s been involved in some heavy stuff. Drug dealing, weapons trafficking…”
I clench my jaw for a moment, taking it in. This is…a lot. No wonder he was telling me I need to get as far away from him as possible—if he’s really part of this criminal family, then he likely has some serious skeletons in his closet, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to face them.
I glance toward the bedroom again, where Polly is asleep. And there’s her to think of in all of this. I might not want to admit it, but she’s pulled into anything that I am now. I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that everything I do from here on out will have some kind of blowback on her—no matter how much I might want to pretend otherwise.
“You should keep your distance from him,” Cara tells me. “I know he’s Polly’s father, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have him as part of your life. Or hers.”
“Shit,” I mutter.
She stares at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine.
“When he was with you the other day,” she remarks, speaking slowly, as though the thought has only just occurred to her, “did something…happen between the two of you?”
I dart my eyes away from her. I seriously don’t want to have this conversation right now, but I get the feeling that she’s not going to let this drop quite so easily.
“Yeah,” I confess. She draws in a sharp breath, and I quickly leap into defending myself.
“It wasn’t that I went there intending for something to happen,” I tell her. “I…I just wanted to talk to him. About everything that happened. About Polly. About the fact that he was her father. I needed to see him, you don’t understand, I…”
“But did you need to sleep with him?” she counters bluntly. She has never been one to hold back on what is going through her head, and I’m sure she has every right to chew me out in all the ways she sees fit right now.
“No,” I confess. “But I…we just ended up hooking up again. One more time. There was nothing more to it than that. And I’m not going to let anything else happen, I swear.”
“You really shouldn’t,” she replies, her brow knitting together with obvious concern. “A guy like that, with the shit he’s involved in…you don’t know where that could lead you. Or Polly.”
As soon as she mentions my daughter, a rush of emotion courses through me—so intense that, for a second, I can hardly think straight. He slept with me again, knowing that he’s involved in all of this dark shit? He allowed me to come to him and hook up with him, and then for us to be seen in public together, when he probably has enemies out there who would do everything in their power to hurt him if they knew they had found a way to make it happen…?
“Jesus,” I mutter, as the enormity of it begins to sink in. I’ve barely had my daughter for a couple months, and I’ve already got her in the middle of something this…this dangerous. It kills me. The thought twists deep into my guts, and I have to bite back a groan of panic as I make sense of it.
“Yeah,” Cara agrees. She knows what’s going through my head. She can tell how panicked I am right now, how impossible it is for me to get away from this.
“I’m never going to see him again,” I announce, a sudden rush of certainty coursing through my head. “Never. I can’t risk it. If he’s really involved in all of that, then we’re done. I’m never going to be in the same room as him again…”
She reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze—I guess she must be able to tell how shocked I am right now, how scary all of this is for me.
“I think that’s the right choice,” she tells me. “But he knows where you live now, right? You think he might come down here again…?”
“He could,” I admit. “But that doesn’t mean I have to let him in. I doubt he wants to deal with the cops if he can avoid it, so if I just threaten him with that, he’ll get the picture. He’ll leave us alone.”
“I hope so,” she mutters. “He could have the cops in his pocket, for all we know…”
I didn’t even think of that. A shudder runs down my spine, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. Fuck. What if this is worse than I can make sense of right now? What if this is more than I can deal with? What if something happens to Polly because of how stupid I’ve been…?
“Hey,” Cara says, drawing me out of the reverie I’ve been lost in. “You can’t blame yourself. You didn’t know. When you got involved with him, you had no idea, and I know you would never have done this if you did.”
“Right,” I agree, but I can tell it’s not going to be that easy. I might feel as though I have walked into the middle of the worst kind of mess, but I just need to keep my head on straight and pray that this doesn’t turn into more than I can handle.
Or more than I can protect my precious baby girl against.
