Chapter Twenty-One
After a dreamless night, I panicked the next morning when I felt a feather soft kiss touch the scar on my stomach. My eyes flew open and I caught Cooper’s messy blonde hair in my fingers. Shaking my head frantically to each side, I whispered, “Don’t.”
He didn’t move and he rested his hands on either side of my belly button, digging the tips of his fingers softly into my skin until I moaned. “I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you, Wills.”
I released a bitter laugh. “I should be the one apologizing. I’ve been selfish and you’ve been hurting just as much as I was. ”
He lifted his head, furrowing his brow. “I’m fine. Maybe Dickson and I will eventually work things out, maybe not. The point is that I’ve learned to deal with it.”
Sighing, I closed my eyes, arching my back a little when he trailed little kisses from my hip bones, to my scar, and to my breast. He settled himself between my legs and groaned when my phone vibrated in the pocket of my jeans, which I’d left on the floor last night. At first, I ignored it, dragging his mouth down to mine, but when it continued to ring, I pulled away from him.
“Leave Willow alone,” Cooper said, grinning, and he slouched back against the pillows, watching me as I plucked my phone out of my pants.
There were several missed calls from my mother, a few from Kevin and a cryptic text from Jessica.
11:16 a.m.: Have fun explaining this one. Leaving today. Don’t ever call me again.
My parents called again before I could even exit out of the message. I answered, and it was my father who spoke up. “There’s a fifteen minute phone call that you made to one of your friends on Leah Dishes this morning,” Dad said in a numb voice.
I felt the air slowly leave my body. “What”
“Everything is there, kiddo. Everything about the baby and Tyler Leonard and your boyfriend’s secret,” he said. “What the hell were you think—”
I disconnected the call before Dad could get another word in and fumbled anxiously through my call records. My breath was puffing out of my chest in slow, choppy gasps, and Cooper sat up in bed, his brows knotted in concern. His hand brushed my shoulder blades, but I shoved it away. Finally, I found the last call I’d made. It was to Jessica from 12:18 a.m. to 12:41 a.m.
After I’d gotten to Cooper’s place the night before.
Cooper touched my shoulder again, shaking it, and I flinched. “Willow, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve f**ked up.”
I punched in the web address for Leah’s blog with prickling fingers, ignoring Cooper’s questions. When it popped up on the screen of my phone, I dry-heaved. There I was at the top—the same photo of me and Tyler that had been posted on the site a few weeks ago—with the headline:
AVERY SPILLS ALL ON LEONARD LOVE CHILD
Even though I shouldn’t have, I pressed the triangular play button over the audio clip and released a cry when I heard myself freaking out at Cooper last night.
His face froze. “What the f**k is that?”
“I accidentally called Jessica while we were arguing.”
We listened to it for a long time—to ourselves letting out secrets we’d never told another soul—and we didn’t say a single words. Twelve minutes into the audio clip, a commotion from downstairs brought us both to our feet. Too numb to move, I sat there, half-listening to the recorded call, half-listening to the sounds of Cooper’s footsteps as he shrugged into a pair of shorts and bounded out of the room. I heard him yelling and then Paige’s voice, and when he returned to me a few minutes later, his face was drawn.
“There are cameramen setting up on the beach,” he said. “In front of my f**king house. Jesus, Wills, I—” He caught himself when my face fell, holding his hands out in front of him. “It’s going to be alright. We’re going to . . .”
I buried my face into my hands, but he pulled them away. “I’ve got to call Miller and—”
“He’s already here.”
I didn’t dare look at any of the faces that surrounded me when I walked downstairs a half an hour later wearing the same jeans I’d worn the night before and one of Cooper’s t-shirts. Paige and Eric, Miller and myself sat around in Cooper’s giant living room, while he argued with someone—Dickson from the sound of it—in the next room.
“Evie will be okay, alright? I—” Cooper raged, and my shoulders sagged even more at the mention of Dickson’s wife. He paused for a moment and said, “I don’t know if she’ll be. I don’t know anything right now.”
“I want to go home,” I said.
Paige moved hesitantly forward, kneeling down so her hazel eyes could take me in. “I think you should stick around, Willow,” she said in a soothing voice.
“Miller, please just take me home.”
Cooper was still in the other room talking to Dickson when I left, and I didn’t interrupt to tell him I was leaving. I put on my poker face, letting Miller guide me through the throng of cameramen flashing their Nikons at me—once when we left Cooper’s place and then again when we returned to my house.
But the second I locked the door to my rental house behind me, I burst into tears again. I dragged my hands through my hair and buried my face into the suede fabric of the couch so the paparazzo around my rental house couldn’t hear me as I screamed.
I screamed at myself for being so stupid and as I sat there, rocking back and forth, I screamed at Jessica not just for recording such an intimate phone call but for the tiny blue bag she’d left on my coffee table. I balled up in the corner of the couch and stared at it, biting my lip so hard it bled.