Page 34 of Tangled Up With You

“Way she explained it, she made it sound like she had an equal part in whatever went down. You’re an asshole, but I’m sure it’s not anything you can’t fix.” He shot me a wink to let me know he was teasing. “Sometimes the best thing to do during a fight is get a little space in order to gain perspective. She wasn’t sure where you would have gone, only that you said you needed to go for a drive. I made an educated guess and decided to check out here. It’s all good. I shot a text to the girls to let them know I found you.”

“So you aren’t still pissed at me?” I asked before I took a swig of beer. The icy cold liquid felt refreshing as it slid down my parched throat.

He barked out a laugh. “Oh, no. I’m still pissed.” One corner of his mouth hooked up in a smirk. “But seein’ you like this...” He waved a hand in front of me. “I feel like I’d be kickin’ a man when he’s already down.”

I snorted out a laugh. “Thanks a lot, shithead.”

He grabbed the back of the chair in front of Rae’s desk and spun it around so it was facing me before plopping down in it and kicking his legs out straight in front of him, crossing one booted ankle over the other. “So, you want to tell me what’s got you so worked up that you’re in my barn in the middle of the night scrubbin’ out horse stalls so well you can practically eat off the floors? Not that I’m complainin’. You saved my ass at least half a day’s work.”

I braced my forearms on my knees with a weary sigh, my shoulders feeling heavy as the weight of everything sank down on top of me. “Ivy’s pregnant.”

Zach proceeded to choke on the drink he’d taken, spitting beer across Rae’s office and hacking up a lung. “What?” he croaked, his eyes watering.

I lifted my head and met his gaze. “She’s pregnant. It wasn’t a stomach virus. It was a baby.”

He collapsed back in his chair, his expression properly gobsmacked. “Fuckin’ hell. I knew you’d been crashin’ outside her house the past couple days, but I thought you were just worried ’cause she’s been sick. I didn’t realize—Jesus.”

“Yep.” I popped the P loudly and took another healthy pull from my bottle.

“And I assume it’s yours?”

I nodded. That was a question I hadn’t needed to ask. I knew the truth of that in my bones just like I knew the type of person Ivy was, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the baby she was carrying was mine.

“And that’s why you’re here? Because you’re freaking out.”

I stared down at the amber glass in my hands as I picked at the label with my thumbnail. “Yeah, but not how you’re thinkin’.” I sat back, shaking my head and rubbing absent-mindedly at my messed-up knee. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m fuckin’ terrified. I mean, what the hell do I know about raisin’ a baby? One moment my life is going in this direction, and the next I’m suddenly going to be responsible for keeping this tiny human being alive.” I shook my head at the irony of it all. “But when I’m not scared out of my mind, I’m actually a little excited. And if this had to happen with anyone, I’m glad it’s with her.”

I couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else, ofwantingit with anyone else. When she told me earlier that she wanted tokeep the baby, I hadn’t expected the level of relief I felt. Because the fact was, I wanted it too. And I wanted it with Ivy.

“So . . . what’s the problem?”

“The problem is I’m not so sure she feels the same way about me.” Just remembering back to everything she said was like having a knife shoved into my gut and the blade twisted violently. “Today was the first time she’s been ready to talk about this since we found out, and the first goddamn thing she said to me was that she could raise this baby on her own. She said she didn’t expect anything from me and was fine doing all this without me.”

“Christ,” he breathed, hissing out a breath between his teeth. “That’s really rough, man. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” I roughed my palm over the stubble on my jaw that had grown thicker the past couple days. When you were basically living out of your truck, there wasn’t really a proper place to shave. Since I’d been camped out in her driveway, not wanting to venture too far in case she needed something, I’d been living off fast food, to-go coffee, and functioning on shitty sleep—when I managed to doze off, that was. Most of the time I just lay awake, trying to think of ways to make this right for Ivy.

“I don’t know what the fuck to do, man. I don’t know how to make her trust me. Or that I even deserve it.” Every time I thought of how badly I’d made a mess of everything, it felt like another weight was added to my chest. “I really fucked things up.”

“Look, an accidental pregnancy isn’t the end of the world.”

“No. Not that. I...” I had a feeling Zach wouldn’t care about kicking a man when he was down after I told him the full story of what happened between Ivy and me, but I needed to put it out there. It felt like saying it out loud to someone else might be the first step to fix it.

“The night of your wedding wasn’t the first time Ivy and I slept together,” I started. Then I told him about the months I’d spent getting to know her, getting tolikeher. The months where I inevitably fell for the woman despite denying it to myself. Then I confessed what I did after I took her to bed. By the time I finished the muscle in Zach’s jaw was so damn tight I was sure he’d cracked at least one tooth.

“Fuck,” he barked out after a few seconds of silence. “Brother, you have no idea how badly I want to punch you in the goddamn face right now.”

I arched a brow in his direction. “You think it would make you feel better?” I wasn’t a fan of getting hit—that had never been a kink of mine—but I had a strange feeling having him punch me might make me feel better as well. Kind of like a penance, or act of contrition. “If you think it’ll help, go for—goddamn it!”

My head snapped back with the force of his jab. Stars burst before my eyes and blood instantly gushed from my nose. “Fuck, that hurt.”

Zach straightened up, shaking out his hand as I pinched the bridge of my nose and tilted my head back. “Feel better?”

“I do, actually.” He rounded the desk and searched around for a second before returning with a box of tissues, tossing it in my lap before resuming his seat. “And don’t be such a baby. I pulled that punch so I wouldn’t break your nose. You’ll be just fine.”

I couldn’t stop the chuckle that worked its way up my throat. Shaking my head, I stuffed the tissue into my nostril to staunch the bleeding. With one raised brow, I asked, “We good now?”

He nodded. “We’re good. So what are you gonna do about all this shit with Ivy?”

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