Page 55 of Acceptance

At least Jamie has somewhere to go now. And someone to talk to. She feels so isolated after this past week, and she really needs someone to lean on.

Chapter Nineteen

Griffin’s Beach

Hailey

The night Hailey admitted she loves Gavin was the night he gave her a key to his apartment. Things have been nothing but amazing in the week and a half since the worst thing to ever happen in her life took place.

They haven’t had sex since they decided to get back together because she still needed to process everything. It’ll be quite a while until she can say she’s fully over what happened, but she’s in a better headspace than she was.

Until two nights ago, she’d woken up from nightmares, and Gavin just held her. He didn’t ask her any questions. He didn’t want her to relive what she keeps reliving in her head. Somehow, he understands, and he just reassures her she’s safe.

He loves her, and she loves him. For the first time ever, she trusts that she can be happy. That he’d never do anything to hurt her, and they can have their fairytale ending. The type she’s been so scared of hoping for.

As she walks down the hallway, her stomach drops when she sees the waitress walking out of Gavin’s apartment, and Hailey stares at the blonde.

“Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” she says, her hands in the air.

“What are you doing here?”

“I had to talk to Gavin about something.”

Hailey stands frozen at the top of the stairs and imagines tripping the waitress on her way down. Making her roll down the stairs, possibly breaking her neck, seems more than a little satisfying, but she knows she won’t. Instead, she just asks, “Talk to him about what?”

“You should talk to him.”

She watches the waitress walk down the stairs, her stomach bouncing. The hair on the back of her neck stands on end, and she runs to the apartment when the waitress is out of view.

Gavin sits on the couch and stares at a piece of paper in his hands. Her entrance goes unnoticed, which does nothing to calm her nerves.

“What was the waitress doing here?”

When Gavin glances up, he looks terrified. He says nothing, and it only makes everything so much worse.

“Gavin, what’s going on?”

He swallows and looks back at the paper he holds. “Emme—”

“The waitress.”

“Shestopped by to tell me something.”

Her eyes widen. “You don’t need to be treated for something, do you? Oh God, what did she give you? Tell me it’s treatable.”

“No, that’s not… She’s pregnant, Hailey.”

He didn’t just say what I heard, right? There’s no way he knocked up another woman. Thewaitress, right?“What now?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Okay, let’s just breathe for a second,” she says as her hands shake at her sides. “Maybe it’s not yours. You know, you saw it as casual, so maybe she did—”

“She had a paternity test done,” Gavin says and waves the paper in the air. “I’m the father.”

All she can think about is how similar this feels to how she felt when she fell off the monkey bars at the park months ago with the kids, and she knocked the wind out of herself. She can’t breathe, and Hailey falls back, catching herself on the kitchen counter.

“I don’t know how this happened,” he says and shakes his head. “I’malwayscareful. There was never a time I wasn’t covered.”

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