Chapter Fourteen

Deacon

A baby .

I would have been a father.

Jenna and I made a life together, a baby, and she never thought to tell me? Why would she keep something like this from me?

I poured myself another glass of scotch and took a massive swig, not thinking twice about the burning sensation in my throat as the liquid went down.

My phone rang for the umpteenth time tonight and I turned the screen over to see who it was. Jenna. I hated ignoring her, but I wasn't in the right head space to talk to her. So I shut it off and tossed it aside.

I didn't feel like talking to anyone tonight.

I went to pour myself another glass, but there was none left. "Shit!" I yelled and shot up off the couch a little too fast, as I felt the affect it had on my head. That only pissed me off even more, though, not feeling completely myself thanks to all the scotch. But it numbed the damn pain and that was all I wanted right now—to numb the pain.

I raked my hands through my hair but really felt like putting my fist through the wall. I was never so full of anger in my life.

I deserved to know dammit. I deserved to know we were having a baby. And I certainly deserved to know when we lost our baby. Because that was what it was— our baby. She didn't conceive that child on her own. We made that baby together and we were going to raise it together.

Who knew, though? Maybe she never planned on telling me about our child at all. What, was she always going to keep my child from me? I was spiraling, I knew—Jenna would never do that.

"Dammit!" I shouted in the empty house. I picked up the glass and threw it across the room, watching it slam into the wall and shatter into a million tiny pieces.

I widened my eyes at the sight of all the glass on the floor and lowered my head in my hands. "We were going to have a baby," I said aloud, my words cracking with emotion. "I was going to be a father."

I started to cry for the loss of a baby I never even knew I had.