Page 52 of Mating of Convenience
Even though part of me really wanted to get home and take that stupid pregnancy test, I was dead curious what Laurence wanted to tell me where we wouldn’t be overheard, so I told him it was no problem for me to meet him outside.
And now here I was, waiting for Laurence in front of the ice cream parlor where I’d had coffee with Nathan not too long ago. When Laurence finally showed up, though, he didn’t want ice cream. “Could we go for a walk?” he asked before I’d even finished greeting him.
His complexion was so light that it was hard to tell, but I thought he looked paler than usual.
“Sure, we can go for a walk,” I said, walking away from the ice cream parlor and the people who sat outside enjoying the last days of summer we were going to have this year.
It took a few minutes before Laurence felt confident enough to say another word, but I’d gotten used to waiting for him to speak and I didn’t try to rush him. There was no point, anyway. He’d just clam up. I liked the fact that he trusted me enough to make the odd request he’d made today and I wasn’t going to ruin that.
Next to me, Laurence stuck his hands in his pockets and cast his gaze down to the pavement as we walked. Every now and then, he’d shoot furtive glances to our sides as if to make sure that no one was paying too much attention to us.
I had no idea what caused his sudden paranoia, but I was dying to find out.
When he finally opened his mouth, though, he spoke so softly I had to strain my ears to hear him. “My ex is fighting me for custody over the twins,” he said.
“That’s horrible.” But why was he comingto mewith that issue? “Have you talked to... uh... someone who’s proficient with legal and custody stuff?”
“Yes.” He licked his lips. “Someone at the shelter is doing all sorts of research for me.”
The question in my head still remained. Why was he telling me about this? Not that I wasn’t interested in hearing about his troubles, but still...
“There’s something...” Laurence paused, and then he finally lifted his head to look at me. “There’s something I haven’t told anyone before and I don’t know what to do. But I trust you. I feel like maybe I can tell you and you won’t tell anyone if it’s not wise.”
“You can trust me,” I promised, even though I couldn’t promise that I would have any solutions for him. “I’ll help you if I can.”
Laurence nodded. “I knew you would.” He took a deep breath. “I was just wondering...” He stopped to look around again, but there wasn’t anyone in our vicinity who could have overheard our conversation. Eventually, Laurence’s words left him in a rush. “I wasn’t always faithful to my ex.”
“You cheated on him?” Was that really such a big deal? Laurence’s ex was an abusive asshole and if Laurence had cheated on him, he’d deserved it.
“Only once. I mean, it wasn’t really cheating. We were broken up for a few weeks. I was staying with someone else.”
It didn’t seem like he was going to continue speaking, so I helped him. Really, it wasn’t that hard to put two and two together here. “You had sex with your friend?” I asked. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to judge... I married my best friend.” Spreading the fingers on my left hand, I pointed at the wedding band. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Laurence stopped gnawing on his thumb to look at me. “It kind of just happened. I felt really bad after. I mean, not because it was a bad experience or anything...” His face flushed. “I just felt so guilty. I never told my ex. I never told anyone. Not until today.”
“Thank you for trusting me. So uh...” I scratched the back of my head. How to proceed here? “You think the twins might be your friend’s children?”
“They could be.” Laurence lowered his gaze to the pavement again. “Sometimes I think they look a lot like him... or there’s something in the way they act... Maybe it’s just my imagination, though. Wishful thinking, you know?” The way he said that let me know this wish had been with him for quite some time. It wasn’t a desire that had formed in him only recently.
“I obviously never got them tested or anything,” Laurence continued. “I was always a little scared what might happen if my husband realized that the kids didn’t take after him, but he never noticed at all...”
“But now you’re hoping that you’ll get an advantage in the custody battle if it turns out that your ex is not the biological father.”
Laurence nodded. “Do you think I should try? I don’t want to get the kids tested if there’s no point. It could be upsetting.”
Upsetting to you or to the kids?I got the feeling it was going to be both. And yet, wasn’t it important to find out the truth? “Are you still in contact with your friend?” I asked.
Laurence shook his head. “I haven’t seen him in a long time. I was scared that I would screw up again if I kept being around him, and Howard always got kind of angry when I spent too much time with alphas who weren’t him, anyway. I didn’t want Howard to be angry. It scared the kids.”
What a mess.I couldn’t help the thought. If it had been me, I would have punched the guy and left at the first sign of aggression toward me or my children. But then, I would never have married an alphahole to begin with. I knew what drove other omegas to do so, I’d learned about the fears and the lack of self-worth as well as the social conditioning that kept them in place, but personally, I could never imagine being attracted to someone who wasn’t as sweet as Nathan. Sure, I’d dated other alphas, but that was just... fooling around.
“I’m glad you left him,” I said, trying to shift my focus back on Laurence rather than thinking of my own husband--and the pregnancy test that was still waiting for me back home. I had to be thinking about a different test now, namely, a paternity test for Laurence’s children. “I think we should definitely figure out who fathered your twins. We just need to think of a way to keep everything on the down-low until we know the results.”
“Things won’t stay on the down-low once we ask Howard to agree to a test,” Laurence pointed out. “He’ll be livid when he finds out that I cheated on him.”
“You didn’t cheat on anyone, you guys were broken up at the time, remember?” I slung one arm around Laurence’s shoulders, hoping to instill some confidence in him. “Besides, he can’t touch you now and he can’t touch your babies either. You got out from under his grasp and you’re not going back.”
“Okay.” Laurence swallowed. “Thank you.”
