Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 28 TESSA

My phone rings shortly after he walks out, but I’m shaking now and sobs have started to rack my body, so I don’t pick up.

A text comes through a second later from Sara.

Sara: I need to talk to you. Call me.

I can’t call. I can’t form words right now, so I wait it out.

The door opens ten minutes later. The bar isn’t far from our place, so she must’ve walked home to tell me whatever it is she needs to tell me.

She’s alone, which means she left Shane at the bar while she walked home by herself in the snow to get to me.

She spots me on the floor in front of the fire crying, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. She runs over to me and sinks down to the ground, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “What’s going on, Tessa?”

“He’s married,” I sob. “He has four kids.”

She sucks in a breath. “That’s what I needed to tell you. At the bar, everyone was talking about some award he’s up for. There’s a whole article.”

I try to suck in a breath, try to stop crying, but it’s like trying to stop a freight train barreling down the tracks. “He told me about the award. I’m not allowed to tell anyone about the baby, or it could hurt Paul.”

She looks confused. “How would it hurt Paul?”

“Because this award is a prestigious honor, and it comes with grant money,” I say, my voice shaky as I force the words out. “Even just having him in contention will mean attention on our little practice.”

“Like enough attention that it could even turn Lakeshore from a little practice to a huge and successful one?” she asks.

I nod. “And I want that for Paul and Marsha. They’ve been so good to me.”

“He doesn’t deserve it,” she says quietly, tightening her arms around me in solidarity. “The award, I mean. Cameron Foster does not deserve that award.”

She’s right. The man deserves exactly zero awards after the way he treated me today…the way he’s treated me for the last three months, really. Unless it’s an award for Douchiest Doctor. That he might win.

“He told me to take care of it .” Just saying the words presses a fresh bout of tears behind my eyes. How could someone who takes care of kids for a living—who saves kids’ lives for a living—suggest I just get rid of what he deems to be a problem?

I don’t want to take care of it…not in the way he means. I want this baby. I want to be a mother.

Sometimes I think it’s all I’ve ever wanted.

And I want to figure out how to take care of it in a different way than he suggested. I want to hold it in my arms as I care for it. To love it. To mother it.

“Oh God. Are you serious?”

I nod. “Send me a link to the article.”

She lets go of me to link the article in a text, and I click it once it comes through.

Chicago United Hospital is proud to announce that Dr. Cameron Foster, pediatric surgeon, is one of three doctors across the United States in contention for this year’s United States Medical Association’s Doctor of the Year award. Foster will be recognized for demonstrating the highest values of leadership, dedication to patient care, community engagement, and family values. The father of four spends countless hours off the clock volunteering around the Chicagoland area with his wife, Christine.

Ice claws at my chest as I look at the photograph below the first paragraph. I study the six people in the photograph, and there’s no mistaking that the four children look like a mixture of the man who knocked me up ten weeks, five days ago and the woman smiling beside him as he draws her in close.

My eyes move down to the caption.

Foster with his wife Christine and their four children: Charlotte, Carter, Colton, and Caroline.

How absolu-fucking-lutely adorable. Cam Foster and his wife Christine and their four kids who all have names that start with a C.

He’s married , a detail he conveniently left out. He doesn’t wear a ring. He doesn’t have photos of his kids around his office. He fucks nurses in the late hours after everyone leaves.

He’s cheating on his wife. I’m the other woman, and I had no idea.

God, after everything I learned about my father just a couple months ago…

I feel sick. I feel violated. I feel like I’ll never be able to trust another man ever again.

How many other nurses has he screwed over the years? Does his wife know? Do his kids?

I toss my phone aside. I can’t continue reading the article praising the man who screwed me every Sunday over the last month for being a family man .

He’s trash. A flaming hot pile of shit trash.

His wife should know who she’s married to.

His boss should know what sort of family values he upholds.

I wish I could shout it from the rooftops.

But that would only hurt the people I care about.

“What are you going to do?” she asks quietly.

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’m going to start showing soon. All my clothes are getting tight. And with a sec—” I cut myself off.

I was about to say I read that with second pregnancies, mothers often show sooner than with the first.

I’ve never told anybody about the first baby.

Apart from the hospital staff and adoption agency, my parents and Auntie Jane are the only ones who know what happened.

“Um, with a, uh, second to think about it, I might come up with some answer,” I finish feebly. Luckily she chalks up my sentence to the general confusion at everything that’s gone down today.

“Just say it’s somebody else’s,” she suggests.

“And walk into the office every Monday through Thursday hoping I don’t bump into him?” I ask, and the realization hits me.

I don’t want to quit my job…but I also don’t know if I have much of a choice.

I’ll give it a little time.

I’ll think about it.

But I’m not going to be able to hide the fact that I’m pregnant very much longer. I can wear big dresses and sweaters, sure, but in the next three or four months…a sweater isn’t going to cover up the truth, and given the fact that I’m supposed to wear scrubs to work, it’s going to be even harder to hide it.

I’ll figure it out. I’m not alone anymore now that Sara knows.

And maybe the next person I should tell is my mother…except the last time my parents discovered that I was pregnant, well, my entire life was flipped on its head mere moments later.