“Where’s your head with all this?” Carter asks. “Is this . . . The baby, the move to L.A.—is it really a deal breaker for you?”

“She didn’t give me a chance to make a decision. She didn’t even tell me, just changed her plans to exclude me.” I realize that’s the part that hurts the most. She was ready to leave for her interview without telling me at all. Was she going to wait until the news made its way back to me through the grapevine? Or maybe she planned to call me from California and tell me from there. Was she too scared, or did she—

I cut the thought off before it can fully form. I know she wasn’t planning to pretend the kid was mine. That’s not how Shayleigh functions.

“Teagan said Shay’s a mess about it,” Carter says, and I know he’s poking around for more.

“That makes two of us.”

He takes another sip from my bourbon. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I needed this.”

I shake my head. “That’s okay. You can have it. I don’t have the stomach for the hard stuff tonight, after all.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah,” I say wearily. The last person to preface a question with that was Shay. She wanted to know what I would have done if I’d known Abi wasn’t mine. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that she didn’t tell me about her pregnancy on Monday because I gave the wrong answer. Every second since she walked away from me this afternoon, I’ve been mentally poking at my answer—testing it for inaccuracies. But I gave her my honest response.

“Are you in love with my sister?”

“Fuck, I thought you were going to ask me something difficult. Yes. Of course I’m in love with her. Madly.”

Carter’s eyes widen and his jaw goes slack. I’ve shocked him. I don’t know if he wasn’t expecting that answer or if he wasn’t expecting it to come out so easily. “Wow. I thought you two might be on your way there, but . . . already?”

“Always.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “And I’m pretty sure it goes both ways.”

“Me too,” he says softly. “But if you love her, why are you letting her do this?”

I scrub a hand over my face. “Fuck, Carter. I think she might be a better person than me, because she stepped back twice. Two times she stepped back so I could do what I needed to do for my daughter. And if she wants to move to L.A. and raise this kid on her own, then I . . .”

“You don’t want her to stay?”