Harper just stood there, not sure of what to do or say, waiting for him to speak first.

“W-what was that?” he finally asked.

“I’m pregnant,” she repeated. “With your child.”

“But we used condoms. Lots of them.”

“Apparently they didn’t work.”

“And you aren’t on birth control?” His tone was accusatory, like she’d planned it.

“Seriously? You’re blaming me for this?”

“I’m not blaming you. It’s just…normally there are backup plans in place.”

“Well, there weren’t.”

“And you’re sure it’s mine?”

She flinched at the question. “Wow, we really don’t know each other, do we?”

“It’s a fair question.”

“You’re wrong about that. Nothing about this entire thing is fair.” Try as she might she couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Really, you’re going to get upset with me for asking what I think is probably a fairly common question, after the bomb that you just dropped?”

“The bomb that I just dropped?”

“Yes. What did you expect, Harper? For me to be overjoyed at the fact that I might’ve gotten you knocked up?” His voice rose, carrying across the wind, and quite possibly to the people on the other side of the balcony.

She took a step back from him, her stomach so tied up in knots at this point that she was pretty sure the ginger ale wasn’t going to stay down for much longer. “There is no might’ve, Liam, and I’m not going to stand here while you imply that I’m a whore.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I told you before, you’re the only person I’ve been with since my ex, whether you choose to believe that or not. This baby is yours. If you want to be a part of his or her life, that’s up to you.” She took another step back, taking up again with chafing her palms against her arms. Fresh tears welled in her eyes, but they were more from anger than anything else. “You figure that out and let me know. Abby can get ahold of me.”

She turned, heading back for the ballroom, but had barely taken three steps when he called out after her.

“So you’re just going to run again?”

She looked back at him over her shoulder, focusing on the hard stubborn line of his mouth that was so foreign to her. “I don’t see you trying to stop me.” She turned from him and walked away.

Chapter Nine No Going Back. No Starting Over.

Liam stared down into his glass of bourbon, his third since sitting at the bar in the lobby of the Brogan-Meyers Hotel. The glass just couldn’t seem to stay filled and the ice cubes looked lonely.

He obviously hadn’t gone very far after leaving the balcony. Alcohol or not, driving sure as shit hadn’t been an option. His head was spinning, still reeling from everything that had happened that night.

He’d found Harper…or had she found him? Oh, who the hell cared? He’d already been confused beyond reason before she’d gone and told him she was pregnant.

With his child.

And every time he closed his eyes he saw her crying. He hated seeing women cry. Hated it. But this was something different. Something that tore at every inch of him. And he’d done nothing to comfort her. Nothing because he couldn’t get over his own anger. Nothing because he was apparently the biggest dick on the face of the planet.

“So this is where you disappeared to. See, I told you we should’ve checked the bar first,” a female voice said behind his back.

“Yes, yes. You were right. Again. Happy?” a deep male voice answered.

Liam didn’t stop staring into his empty glass. He didn’t need to look over to see that his brother and sister were standing next to him.

“I’m always right,” Adele said. “And just as soon as the two of you start accepting it, things might go a lot smoother.” She leaned into Liam’s shoulder, grabbing the glass in front of him. “How many of these have you had?”

“Since sitting down?” He looked up and glanced over at them. “Three.”

“Shit,” Logan whispered. “Are you chugging them? It’s only been forty minutes since you followed Harper out onto the balcony.”

Really? It had only been forty minutes? It felt like it had been an eternity since he’d watched her walk away.

Somehow that was almost as painful as when he’d woken up without her.

Almost. At least this time he knew where to find her.

“Can we get three more of these?” Adele asked when the bartender came to their end of the bar. “We’ll be over there.” She pointed to the empty circular booth in the corner before she wrapped her hand around Liam’s arm and forcibly pulled him from the bar stool he was sitting on.

As he didn’t want his sister dragging him across the room like a little boy, he didn’t resist. They all settled into the booth, Adele in the middle with Logan on the left and Liam on the right. They were positioned in such a way that he could see both of them.

“Start talking,” Adele demanded pretty much the second their butts were in the seats. “And feel free to just jump right on in with what happened tonight, because Logan already filled me in on the Nashville stuff.”

Well, that was good, because diving back into that would make his head an even bigger mess. Who was he kidding? It was a disaster as it was. So really what was a little more chaos at this point?

He looked down, his palms flat on the table. The old saying, I know it like the back of my hand, repeated in his brain. But as he studied his own hands, hands that were scared and calloused over the years, hands that were his livelihood, hands that he thought he knew, he realized he knew absolutely nothing.

He started talking, his words coming out like he was telling a story that wasn’t his. But it was his story. This was the new reality.

A waiter came over about halfway through, sliding the drinks onto the table. Liam grabbed his but didn’t take a sip. He wrapped his fingers around the cool glass, focusing on that as he got to the climax of his conversation with Harper.

“So she’s pregnant,” he said before he finally allowed himself to take a sip.

Neither Logan nor Adele said anything for a good couple of seconds. Liam put the glass down on the table as his eyes came up, focusing on his brother and sister.

“And it’s yours?” Logan asked, his brow furrowed and his mouth flattening out to a grim line.

“Yeah.” He nodded. Because despite his words to Harper earlier, he did believe her. And he wasn’t sure if that just made him an even bigger fool.

“Wow.” Adele breathed the word on a sigh, grabbing her own glass and downing a good amount of it. “This just keeps getting more and more complicated.”

“You can say that again.”

“And you believe that she was going to tell you? Even if she hadn’t run into you tonight?” The look on his brother’s face was getting more and more severe by the second, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.

Logan had cherished being a father, no doubt more than anything else in his life. He’d loved his daughter from the very start and had always wanted her. Madison had never been a burden. Never been anything he’d ever regretted. And even though Madison’s days had been short, she’d been treasured for every second of them.

Liam looked down to the tumbler in his hand, tilting it to the side, the ice clinking against the glass. “I think she would’ve told me…” But what did he really know?

“Okay…so we’ve established the fact that this woman, who you’re in love with—”

“Thought. Thought I was in love with.” Liam corrected his brother.

“Right,” Adele scoffed at that, and both men turned to look at her. “Come on, you saw what happened when she walked up. You were about to come unglued. No one in that circle can deny your reaction.” She looked at Liam, her eyes brokering no argument. As per usual she’d missed nothing. “Or her reaction to you for that matter. And you better believe that Mom was entirely aware something was up, because the second the two of you stepped away, she oh-so-very-not-so-casually started asking questions about Harper to everyone in that circle who knew her.”