Page 130 of Outlaw Heartstrings
“Your mom and I…” I clear my throat. “Your mom and I need to have a grown up chat. Okay, Buddy?”
I’m ready to say more. I’m desperate to comfort him. I’m ready to make him a hundred promises that I probably won’t be able to keep, but Alba’s hand on my shoulder stops me. The last thing I need to do is make this more complicated for Jagger.
Patty wordlessly hands Jagger his rain boots and coat. Within a few minutes, the two of them are out the door.
As soon as we’re alone, Raya’s eyes hone in on Alba. “You are fucking incredible, you know that?” She sits on the arm of the couch, shaking her head.
I step in between the two women before Alba can even open her mouth. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Raya glares at my head. “I need a word alone with my sister,” the evil woman spews out.
“Not a fucking chance in hell.” I stand my ground. “Anything you need to say to her, you’ll say with me standing right here.”
I notice the wobble in Alba’s movements as she steps upby my side. I don’t hesitate to wrap a steadying arm around her waist.
Raya’s glare drifts to where my fingers are curled around her sister’s hip. She seethes. “I always knew you were jealous of me, Alba, but I never thought you’d stoop to this level. Scooping up my sloppy seconds? Yuck.” She shakes her head in disgust and I grind my heel into the carpeted floor, trying to get a rein on my anger.
At those words, Alba is seething, too. “After everything you’ve done, you have a lot of nerve questioninganybody’scharacter.” She clenches her fingers into fists. “Two separate DNA tests say that Easton is not Jagger’s father.”
Raya shrugs a shoulder. “Because he’s not.”
Her words land like a gut-punch.
The whole ride home, I’d been hoping—silently hoping—that maybe this second paternity test was wrong, too. My connection to Jagger is so strong. How could he be anything other than my son? I can’t bring myself to believe that he’s not mine.
“You’re wrong…” I mutter. “Jagger is my kid. He looks just like me.”
“He looks like you?” Raya scoffs in exasperation, like this whole conversation is beneath her. “A lot of people have brown hair and blue eyes, Easton. Hell—even my Grandpa Carl has brown hair and blue eyes.”
“Green eyes. Grandpa Carl has green eyes,” Alba mumbles. It’s almost like she’s dissociating. “But that’s neither here nor there.”
Leaning forward, Raya cracks open a can of diet cola and takes an unbothered sip. “I never even slept with Easton,” she says nonchalantly, as the earth slips from beneath my feet.
“What?!” I croak out, my head spinning.
“I mean, we got naked, yes,” Raya explains. “But you were as limp as a damp sock straight out of the washing machine. You couldn’t even get it up. Pathetic.” She eyeballs my crotch, seemingly appalled. “You should get that checked out, by the way.”
Alba’s voice is shaking when she speaks. “You…you never slept with Easton…?”
“No,” Raya says resentfully. “I never slept with your precious fucking Easton.”
Something about the way she says that, I don’t like. “So why the fuck did you go around letting Alba believe that you did? And why did you tell her that I was Jagger’s father?!” I demand.
“Because it was easy.” Raya grabs the chips, cradling the bag in her lap. “You had left town. So I figured there’d be no way for Alba to fact-check my story. I made her promise not to tell anyone you’d gotten me pregnant and I knew she’d keep her word. At least I trusted that she would.” Raya shoots her sister a look of disappointment.
“And the emails. Where did you get those emails making it look like Easton ordered you not to continue your pregnancy?” Alba demands.
Raya huffs, speaking with her mouth full of chips. “Jeez, Alba. It was photo editing. We all took that class in school.”
Alba wobbles across the room and drops into an armchair. She looks like she’s reassessing her entire worldview. Everything she thought she knew has been shot to shit now that Raya has bulldozed her way back into town.
My eyes catch on Raya’s gleaming engagement ring as she casually licks the salt from her fingertips. It makes me see red.
“Why the fuck did you have to lie, though?” I grind out. “Why did you even have to drag my name into this?”
Alba’s head bobs weakly in agreement. “Why didn’t you just stay quiet about Jagger’s paternity? Or better yet, why didn’t you just name the real father?”
I’m so angry. This woman has brought so much unnecessary chaos into everyone’s lives and I’m struggling to make sense of it.
