Outer Core (7 page)

I start the car and slowly roll it to the nearest trashcan where I bring it to a stop again. Stepping out, I chuck my drink with a great vengeance into the can. A splash of liquid mocha sloshes back out, missing me by an inch.

The pulse in my head turns into a migraine by the time my first meeting finishes. The rest of the day passes with me policing myself not to go through the rabbit hole that is gossip websites or call Daniel and confronting him.

The jingle of keys coming in contact with the glass bowl shakes me out of my brief bubble of contradictions. Daniel's voice, speaking to someone on the phone, echoes from the living room. I give myself a quick peek in the mirror, agitated, running a hand over my loose waves, and switch the light off.

I make my way to the living room. Needless to say, I'm one tight spring of edginess and apprehension. Earlier today, I decided to find out what's really going on over a face-to-face conversation. Color me conservative, but I don't think that a, “So hey, have you knocked up someone else lately?” is the kind of conversation one should have over the phone with her significant other. And since we haven't talked thus far, I had the entire day to try not to obsess too much over my morning's encounter, and not to come up with the worst scenarios. The “try not to” part didn't work too well.

Noticing me entering the living room, Daniel closes the distance between us. Still on the phone, he bows to kiss my lips. He gives my waist a small squeeze and passes by me, unbuttoning his shirt en route to the hall. I follow him to the bedroom, glaring at his back fairly astonished by his inability to read the blizzard in my eyes. Seems like the only time men are really in-tune with our emotions is when we emit pheromones into the air.

Finishing his call, he drops the phone on the bed and resumes unbuttoning his shirt.

“So how was your day?” I say.

With his fingers still working the last button, his eyes lift to mine. His special smile comes before he answers. “It was. Yours?”

At their own volition, my arms wrap around my waist. I stare at him, taking an inward “try to bridle all the crazy” inhale and tread forward with caution. “Everything's fine?”

I'm not certain if my eyes are playing tricks on me, or it's just my overloaded distressed mind, but for a fleeting moment, he appears distraught. When his eyebrows rise in question and in tandem to his arms folding over his chest, said worry I thought I might have noticed is gone. “Yeah. What is it, Hales?” His demeanor may transmit confidence and nonchalance. However, the tick of the muscle above his jaw tells me otherwise.

“Funny, earlier today I was asked whether you're going to have a child . . .” His eyes hone in on mine, his features hardening. “With someone called Robin, and whether you are leaving me. So I'm a bit curious, you see.” True or not as this might be, every word leaving my mouth is a stab in my stomach. Together, they feel like a merciless slaughter.

“I'd never leave you.” Curt and fierce. Not the answer I was hoping for, though
.
Denial would have worked better here. He takes a step toward me. I hug my waist tighter, defensive.

“Daniel.” His name scrapes out of my lips. “What's going on?”

“It's nothing.” He takes another step. Reflexively, I signal for him to stop. “I didn't want you involved in this.” He shakes his head, cursing under his breath.

My hand drops to my chest because, all of a sudden, it's a little hard to breathe. “Involved in what exactly?” Uncontrolled, my voice is a few octaves higher.
There's smoke, there's fire.

“Fuck's sake.” He inhales through his nose. “Hales, baby, believe me when I say, you should not be involved in this.
It's nothing
.”

“Can you stop for a second?” My quills stand at attention. “What in the hell is going on?” My eyes bore into his. “What shouldn't I be involved in exactly?”

He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Some gold-digger claims I'm the father of her child.” Daniel's face stones over while his eyes take a quest to disclose what goes on in my mind.

“Why would she even say, claim, something like that? Did you . . . D-Does she have, ah, anything to base it on?” I desperately wish I could close my eyes and erase seeing the flinch across his face I just witnessed. My body tightens as though preparing for the impending punch.

“It's that woman I—the one I was with when we broke up.” He takes a step toward me, and I take an involuntary one back. “Hales, I promise you nothing's there but an attempt to get some money, or publicity, or I don't know what.”

“How can you be so sure? W-what if she's really pregnant?” I blink at him, the words leaving my mouth tasting bitterly surreal. This can't be happening. Not now, not when we're . . . It's supposed to be our child. I feel sick.

“It's not mine, Hayley. It's all about money.” His answer comes out coated with irritation.

“How do you know? How can you be so sure? What if you're wrong?” My eyes hold his, shooting unspoken warnings. I lift my hand. “Daniel, I wear this ring because I am planning to marry you someday. I want to know what I'm in for.” The intensity of our locked stare is about to spark by shorting. “
Not that it would make me change my mind
. But what if you have a child out there? What kind of a man, person, would it make you not to at least find out?”

His teeth graze his bottom lip repeatedly, his eyes narrowed at me. “It's not mine, Hayley. You want me to go into details? I was covered when we . . .”

I close my eyes. The content of my stomach shooting up my throat. I open them, giving him a hard look. “You can't be sure! This is not a gut feeling situation.” I raise my voice. “Accidents happen! It's something you have to find out.” I've long abandoned my attempt at keeping myself composed.

Daniel's eyes morph from riled to majorly pissed. “You know what, if it's so important to you, I'll have a goddamn paternity test.” His voice takes a louder, rougher tone. “Find out if by any miracle I'm the goddamn incarnation of the Holy Spirit and have impregnated this woman!” He takes another step and finally reaches me. Daniel sends his hand to my forearm. My physical response as I jolt back from his touch leaves us both in momentary shock. I give him another muddled look and turn to leave. My fleeting defense mechanism goes into gear. Not really knowing what I'm doing or where I'm going. Daniel follows me out of the room.

“Hales, if you are running away again, I . . .”

I spin to face him. “You're what, Daniel?”

He closes his eyes, hanging his head down. He takes a deep breath and looks up at me. His voice lowers as he says, “If you think for a second I'm letting you run away again . . . We're way past this.”

His words sober me up. “I'm not going anywhere.”
My
words almost a whisper. I look behind him at some indistinct point on the wall. “Some masochistic part of me wants you to walk me through that night.”

“Don't.” He shakes his head. “How did we even end up here?” comes an exhausted murmur.

My livid stare darts to him. “What can I say? What led us to this point, Daniel? Well, your successful endeavor is hard to erase given it is shoved in my face in the form of a
child
.” It's safe to say, my irritation with the situation is back.

“Alleged child, for fuck's sake. Can you not be that girlfriend now, Hayley?” He echoes my gaze.

Angry fire licks all the way up from my belly to my mouth. “For fuck's sake, Daniel, which girlfriend? The one that feels sick to her stomach thinking about you screwing someone else? Oh, I'm sorry for being that kind of . . .
fi-an-cée
.” I lean on the hall's wall, needing space. Needing to calm the heat storm gathering velocity in me. Needing badly for everything to be a bad joke.

Daniel mirrors me, leaning on the opposite wall. “No, the one that brings back something we agreed to bury a long time ago and starts a shitfest about it.”

“I can't believe you sometimes,” I snap.

“It's you I can't believe sometimes.” Daniel spreads his hands to his sides in frustration. “Christ Hayley, I . . . Can . . . Not . . . Rewrite . . . Our . . . History.” Silence falls between us after Daniel's last words dissolve into the fury, confusion and multitude of uncertainties we're sharing. “Why are we fighting?” His voice is softer. His head leaning on the gray wall, his eyes on mine. Weary.

“We aren't.” An unbidden tear rolls down my cheek.

Daniel pushes himself from the wall with a start. With one hurried step, he's cupping my face, his eyes soulful. In a tender, worried voice he says, “Hales, you're crying.”

Something about his concern, the candor of his voice, the look in his eyes that can never be more caring, brings me to burrow under his arms. Pressing my face to the hard planes of his chest, I let him hug my bruised ego and heart. “I'm not crying; it's just stupid liquid frustration,” I murmur under my breath.

Daniel lets me be, embracing me tight, pressing soft kisses on the center of my head. Wordlessly, he slides to the floor, taking me with him. Until he is leaning on the wall with me cuddled under his arm.

For a long beat, we stare at each other, processing. Daniel brushes a lock of hair over my shoulder. His hand comes back to rest on my chest, his finger retracing my collarbone. “I didn't want you involved because I knew just how upset it would make you. That's why I didn't tell you. I have people working on it.” He takes a silent breath. “I'm not sure how it started circulating. It's hard to keep these kinds of things under control when the other party is trying to do the exact opposite. For the money, publicity, or God knows what.”

I just stare at him, listening to his voice. I've lost the will to talk about it any longer. I'm left with a sense of bitterness that's soaring around my heart.

“Have the paternity test,” I say with an exhausted sigh.

“I will if that's what you want.”

“You should want it too. You need to know.” Jekyll is definitely fighting Hyde and whatever was about to come out of Daniel's lips remains unsaid. The next words to leave
my
mouth jostle my insides before they meet air. “The articles online said that the two of you are friends. That, that's what Rob – what she said.” I can't even bring myself to say her name.

Daniel closes his eyes for a stretch. “Baby, we met once. There wasn't much talking. We've never met after that. I didn't even know her name before Brian, my PR guy, told me about it. There was never anything cordial between that woman and me, let alone any sort of friendship.”

“I believe you,” I say in a dainty voice.

His eyes grow softer. “I love you. I'm sorry you have to go through this.”

I rest my face on his chest, closing my eyes. Daniel wraps his arms around me, holding me in his embrace till evening washes the house in darkness.

“You ready?” Tasha asks as she settles herself on one of the kitchen's highchairs. Green eyes perfectly lined 70's-style run over me. Her mid-forehead bangs slightly sway from side to side as she concludes her assessment with a tilt of her head. “Sure?”

I roll my eyes. “Out with it already.”

Tasha shifts her pencil skirt clad bottom on the chair, and with much unnecessary drama, she turns to open her thin notebook. In unison, both our faces adhere to the screen for some good ol' self-flagellation. Green attentive eyes examine every angle of the woman in the tight navy dress that showcases a notable baby bump, while mine are cemented to the face, studying it fastidiously in sheer masochism.
Yet again
. It's a new interview with
the
redhead. She's really cashing in on her childbearing situation.

“Humm,” Tasha wrinkles her nose. “She's, she's . . .”

“Pretty?” I raise my stare from the screen. “Elegant. Normal? Everything you don't want someone like her to look like?”

“I was about to say that that red looks like it came out of a bottle.” She wrinkles her nose again, this time with a twist of a mouth.

“She's an event planner,” I add. Somewhere between the lines, the pictures tell us both that she doesn't look like some bimbo gold-digger. She seems completely ordinary, pretty and ordinary and so much more. She looks like the kind of women who'll wait for the other side to make the first move. A notion that makes me want to retch all over the screen. It's not okay to feel such healthy hatred toward someone you've never met
. But apparently, someone who had the pleasure of meeting your boyfriend's penis.

“She looks like someone who has better places to go in the afterlife,” Tasha deadpans. My lips pull up. Gotta love my besties. If someone is, God forbid, out to hurt me, he has no place in this world.

“What are we looking at?” Ian says, coming back into the kitchen, buttoning his jeans.

“You could have done that in the bathroom,” Tasha scolds, pointing at his fly.

Ian shrugs it off and wedges himself between us, looking at the screen. “Who's Little Red Riding Ho?”

Tasha and I snort in stereo.

“The alleged sperm robber,” Tasha fills in with a nod.

Ian's hand sneaks in from behind Tasha and me, slamming the screen shut. “No!” Fazed, we turn Ian's way. “No! Enough. I'm not letting you sit here and gobble up shit that will start a crapfest in your gorgeous head.” He taps my head with his finger. “Seriously, why do you need to know who she is, how she looks, or what she does? What good will it do you?”

Tasha traps her lip between her teeth, bobbing her head in agreement. “Sorry. He's right.”

“Nu-uh.” Ian smacks my hand just before it reaches the laptop. “Leave the vile device alone!”