Maybe Matt's Miracle by Tammy Falkner Read Free Book Online Page B

hard. “There wasn’t a fucking choice. You guys were my life, and I was all you had. No choice.”
    Paul stepped into fatherhood the way some people step into college, into a job after school. He gave it everything he had. We’re only a year apart, but I never could have done what he did. He gave up everything, even his own happily ever after, for us. God. Now I feel awful. We ruined his life.
    “ I couldn’t have raised them without you,” he says. “Where I was weak, you were strong. And where I was strong, you were weak.” He’s right. We did complement each other.
    “ You gave up full time with Hayley for us.” Now I’m pissed.
    “ I am Hayley’s father, and I always will be. I have her half the time, and it works out well for the two of us.”
    It does. It really does.
    “ What about now that they’re all out of the house?”
    “ What about it?”
    “ Now that everyone is taken care of, why don’t you take care of yourself? Go get yourself a real life. You and Kelly keep falling together. Why not make it permanent?”
    He shakes his head. “I don’t love her.”
    “ But—”
    “ I like her. We’re friends. But that’s it.” He shrugs. “And she’s seeing someone. It’s getting pretty serious.”
    “ When was the last time you guys…?”
    He grins. “Yesterday.”
    I roll my eyes. “Then it can’t be very serious with this other guy.”
    “ Just the fact that there’s another guy means it’s not serious with me.” He heaves a sigh. “And I don’t love her. That’s one thing I’m sure of. Because the thought of the woman I love sleeping with another man should tear me up inside, but it doesn’t. There’s something wrong with that.”
    “ Okay.” I don’t know what else to say to him.
    “ So, about April,” he says.
    “ I don’t want to talk about April.”
    He glares at me. “Too bad.”
    This is Paul. This is what he does. “What do you suggest?”
    “ She’s getting married, man. It’s time to get over her.”
    I throw up my hands. “I’m trying.”
    “ You should go to the wedding. Get it all out of your system. Take a hot chick with you.”
    “ Where am I going to get one of those?”
    He looks at me like I’ve gone apeshit. “Dude, you can find tail anywhere.”
    Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places.
     

 
    Skylar
     
    I spend all day on Monday working out my employment issues. I had a meeting with my immediate supervisor, who rushed to assure me that my job was not in jeopardy, that my situation was discussed during the meeting, but only to the extent that they all wanted to know if there was anything they could do to support me through this transition. What an asshat Phillip is. And what’s worse is that I almost believed him.
    I couldn’t be happier that this situation forced me to cut my ties with him, particularly when I walk around the corner and find him by the water cooler standing much too close to another one of the first years. She looks a little frazzled when she sees me, and she very quickly walks in the other direction.
    Phillip starts toward me but I wave him away. “Don’t even think about it,” I warn. I keep walking.
    He follows me all the way to my car without saying a word. He doesn’t speak until after he watches me fumble with a box of papers and my trunk. He doesn’t offer to help me. Not once. Would Matt stand there and watch me while I struggled with a box? Something tells me he wouldn’t. I really shouldn’t compare anyone to Matt, though, since I truly don’t know him.
    “ You’re going through with it, aren’t you?” Phillip asks, folding his arms across his chest.
    “ Going through with what?” I ask, blowing my hair from my face.
    “ Those kids,” he spits out. “You’re keeping them.”
    I laugh. “They’re keeping me, actually,” I say.
    “ I never took you for stupid.”
    I snort. His face turns red. “The only stupid thing I ever did was pick you. Asshole,” I say under my breath as I