“That’s bullshit.” Gritting my teeth, I jerked out of Pick’s arms to scowl. “I’ve seen him at his worst before, and I was the one to help him work through it. Why doesn’t he know I would help him again?”
“I don’t know, Felicity. It’s been a long time. Maybe he thinks...” Letting me fill in that blank for myself, he shrugged and sent me a helpless look.
But I had no idea what he was suggesting, so I growled. “He thinks what?”
“The first thing he heard about you was that you’d been living with some other guy. After that, why would he assume you two would just pick up where you’d left off?”
I hiccupped out a strange sounding sob, hating that Knox knew I’d moved on...tried to move on...whatever. If he knew I’d lived with someone else, then he surely knew I’d had sex—
Nausea rolled through me.
“He wouldn’t even talk to me,” I choked out. And no wonder. I’d had sex with other men. I hadn’t recognized him when I’d seen him. I’d made fun of his T-shirt, and he’d heard me.
I had to be the worst girlfriend ever.
Wait. Gasping as that word ran through my brain, I realized we’d technically never broken up. He’d been ripped away from me and thrown in jail, and I thought I’d never see him again. But if we’d never really broken up...did that mean we were still together? Was I a cheater?
God, I was worse than Cam.
“What am I going to do, Pick?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”
When he opened his mouth as if to offer the best advice in the world, one of his kids toddled into the room.
Julian lit up when he saw me. “Buh buh.” Opening his arms, he hurried forward.
My heart melted at his greeting, so I swept him up and hugged him to me, rubbing my nose against his hair. “Hey, there, handsome man. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Buh buh,” he repeated, pressing his chubby palms against my cheeks. “Buh buh.”
“Okay, okay,” I caved. “You want bubbles, I got it. You know, you’re lucky I remembered to bring some this time.”
I fished a piece of gum from my pocket, and Julian babbled eagerly as I unwrapped it and stuck it in my mouth.
“Buh buh. Buh buh.”
“Give me a second to chew, kid.” I chomped as fast as I could to soften the gum. “I’ll get you a bubble.”
Pick leaned his back against the wall and stuck his hands in his pockets as he watched us, smiling and shaking his head. “You’re just as bad as everyone else with spoiling my kids.”
“Whatever. There’s no such thing as spoiling a baby this cute. Isn’t that right, handsome?” Layering the gum over my tongue, I blew a bubble, and Julian squealed with glee as he slapped his hand over my mouth, popping it.
We went through the whole chewing, blowing, popping thing again a few times before Pick pushed away from the wall and yawned, rubbing his chest through his shirt. “I’m going to make some coffee. Want some?”
“Uh...okay.” Carrying Julian, I followed Pick into his kitchen, and it finally hit me how quiet the place was. Yeesh, I must’ve been a bit too preoccupied with Knox to even think of anything else. “Is Eva not home?”
“She took Skylar with her to the store to get some clothes for Parker.”
I paused, still unsettled to hear that name so much for the first time in years.
“The girls have always been early risers; they like to get all the shopping done before we guys even roll out of bed,” he was saying as he pulled down coffee filters and a can of ground beans.
“Clothes?” was all I could think to utter.
He glanced back and lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah. Clothes. He had nothing when I found him at the hospital on Wednesday. He’d only just then gotten free maybe an hour before. He wasn’t even aware his old house had burned down or, you know, anything about his family.”
I gasped and sank into the nearest chair I found. Julian patted my cheeks again, demanding another bubble, so I blew one without thinking. “He really didn’t know? About anyone? No one notified him at all when practically his entire family died?”