“Tell me where you are right now.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll tell your parents you’re an alcoholic.”

That made me choke on my laughter. Hilarious. I stopped rolling and stood up, swaying back and forth. Everything spun. My throat closed in on my last meal.

“You go do that.” I hung up.

She called again immediately. I picked up. I was looking for a fight. Hell, if Vaughn was here, I’d punch him in the nuts just to start one.

“Miss me?” I asked.

“You’ve been drinking a lot recently.”

“She’s sharp, too. Whaddaya think? Did I get my brains from you or daddy dearest? By the way, who is daddy dearest, exactly?”

“It’s not a conversation for now.”

“Guess it’s a conversation for never.”

She sounded like she was running. Where, I had no clue. I didn’t care, either. All I cared was that I had a punching bag I could go to town on.

“Knight, stop moving. You’re zig-zagging,” she snapped.

First of all, I didn’t even realize I was moving. Second of all, and more importantly, how did she…?

I looked up and realized she was descending the stairs from the promenade to the beach. Hot damn. She’d found me. I had no clue how, but she had. I turned my back, walking away from her. But my intoxication slowed me, and she was fast because of her eagerness to help. She caught me in three strides and yanked me by the back of my Balenciaga jacket.

“Knight Jameson Cole, you do not get to drink your troubles away and talk to me like this. I’m worried, you understand?”

I turned around, chuckling in her face. The laughter made my stomach feel even emptier. “No. I don’t. You’re nothing to me. A simple no one who has yet to understand her role in my life. My mother—my real mother—is dying in the hospital, and the girl I love is on the other side of the continent, fucking some douchebag named FUCKING JOSH she thinks she fell in love with. And I’m putting up with this shit and keep chasing her ass because…because…because I can’t not have her in my life. Don’t you understand?”

I pushed her. Not aggressively, but enough to make her stumble away from me. “You did this to me. Now I’m this broken puppy begging for love. I would take any crumb Luna throws my way. I’d self-destruct in order not to deal with what’s waiting around the corner for Mom. You made unconditional love conditional for me. You fucked nature in the ass, Dixie. You don’t do that. You don’t mess with nature.”

She stood there and took it as I pushed her again. She stumbled backward. The waves broke at our feet. I opened my mouth, and swear I got drunk again just smelling my own fucking breath.

“And all because of what? My biological father didn’t want you? Did he dump you for someone hotter? Didn’t want to put a ring on it?” I shook my head, chuckling. “Did you get pregnant to trap him? Did it not work? Did he bail because he was too young? Because he was too old? Because he was too married? Who’s the sad fucker who created me? Who’s the asshole I share DNA with, who was smart enough not to get trapped by your annoyi—”

She slapped me across the face. I tripped back, falling on my ass. She advanced toward me, and for a minute, I thought she was going to strike me again. Was I above hitting my biological mom? I was too drunk to remember. My gut feeling told me yes. I didn’t flinch. I let her run to me in full force. She stopped a few inches away, collapsing on the sand beside me and bursting into sobs.

Jesus H.

“Uh…” I stared at her blankly, getting more and more sober by the nanosecond. The chilly air and the train wreck also known as Dixie was like a bucket of water. She was crying so hard I thought she was going to have a heart attack or something.

“I believe it is my turn to have a meltdown, ma’am,” I pointed out dryly.

She wiped her tears away, her eyes meeting mine, zinging with fury. “You wanna know why I never mentioned your dad to you? Not because he dumped me. Or because he was married. Well, maybe. Maybe he was both those things. The truth is, I never told you about him because I don’t know his name, okay? I didn’t even know I was pregnant for the longest time.”

I scratched at my imaginary stubble. How dumb was she, exactly? How had she not known she was knocked up, and for how long?

“Explain,” I gritted out.

We were still on our knees, on the sand.

“I was a cheerleader in high school…”

“Big surprise.”

“Knight,” she warned.

I waved at her to continue.

“I was a cheerleader in high school. It was sophomore year. We got invited to a college party in Dallas through one of my friends’ older brothers. Somethin’ big. I was a good Christian girl, Knight. I didn’t want to have sex before marriage. We were dancing…drinking, but not too much. I remember feeling dizzy and sitting down. Then the next thing I remember was waking up in my own bed, feeling numb all over. My body was sore, but seeing as I’d danced all night, I didn’t think much of it. There was some spotting in my underwear, but I figured I’d gotten my period. I’d only had a couple spiked punch cups, and I drank lots of water throughout the evening. I didn’t want to start probing and asking questions, to be a problematic, hysterical chick. As far as I was concerned, everything was okay. My girlfriends had known I wasn’t feeling well, so they’d taken me home.”

Well, spank my ass and call me Sandra. I had a feeling I was about to hate myself a little more after hearing my how-did-I-get-here story. For the first time, I didn’t throw shit at her and let her finish.

She took a deep breath. “Three months later, the symptoms started. They were creeping in on me slowly. You were so smart, Knight.” She shook her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “Even in the womb. I was hungry all the time, and my breasts were tender. I didn’t have any nausea or anything, so at first, I chalked it up to hormones. I remember polishing off two plates of chicken fried steak and my mama telling me I ate like a pregnant girl, and that’s when I remembered I hadn’t had my period in a while. The next day, I went to buy a pregnancy test. I told myself there wasn’t a chance I was pregnant. I’d never had sex in my life, and when you’re young, your period is not always regular. Imagine how shocked I was when all three tests were positive.”

I hung my head, drawing in a breath. I had to admit, she was unlucky more than she was an asshole.

“I dug into my memory, trying to figure out what happened. Then I remembered the party. I went and confronted my friend’s older brother, the one who threw the party, but he was cagey and insisted no one had touched me, said I was making it up because I wanted to pin the pregnancy on some frat boy with a rich daddy. The news about my pregnancy broke. My parents were crushed. They couldn’t show their faces at church. Neither could I. I dropped out of cheer. My grandmamma stopped taking my calls, crossed the street when she saw me walking by. My friends took a step back. Nobody wanted my reputation to rub off on them. Two weeks after I became public enemy number one, I found a note in my locker. Anonymous.”

She reached for her bag and hunted inside it, producing her purse. She sniffed as she explained as an afterthought, “I take it with me everywhere I go. Every time I think about you, Knight, and feel like I don’t deserve to live in this world for giving you up, I read this. Horrible, I know. I’m not proud of it either, you understand? Just because something bad happened to me, I went and did something bad to my baby. Only I always knew I was protecting my boy. I was introduced to Rosie and Dean before I was sure I was giving you up. The adoption agency made the connection, and giving you up became bearable, because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what kind of mother Rosie was going to be.”