Seasons (Ari AU)

Chapter 14

Ari POV

  I'm positive my sister wants me to see red the way that she is, but I don't, at least not in the same respect. "We need to talk." I take her hand in my own, brushing past Holland without even giving her my usual goodbye, or a simple thanks for the meal, reminding myself that I'll have to call later on and do it instead.  

  I can hear my sister following after us and I swiftly turn around. She halts her steps immediately, probably because of the grimace on my face and the tightness in my jaw. "I will talk to you later," I snap at her before finally following Felicity to the truck where she's already climbed in and looking out the side window. 

  I don't say a word until I'm buckled in and already out of Holland's driveway.  "Why didn't you tell me, Lissy?" I ask, my voice coming off stronger than I'd planned. 

  "I was going to," she mutters, her fingers fidgeting with one another in her lap. "I was waiting for the right time."

  "The right time? You came to visit weeks ago, and then you've been here and settled for the last two. You're trying to tell me that there wasn't a single day during that time that was the 'right time?'" I bite back, my frustration rising higher than I'd like it to. I don't want to come across angry, but if this boy is five years old, there's an incredibly strong possibility that he's mine.

  "We're rarely alone, Ari! That dinner when I came to town weeks ago, you were the one insisting I meet your friend. I had every intention of telling you then, but you got called out and then I didn't see you before I went back to Connecticut. Then, with Jeremy's passing, I didn't think it was the right time. I  just wanted to comfort you, I know he was your best friend, and I didn't want to change the focus and bring it on me."

  "And all the years in between? What about those, Lissy?" I yell back, my anger rising with each breath I take. 

  "I can't talk to you when you're like this," she whimpers, moving herself as close to the passenger side door as possible. "And you certainly won't meet him this way either."

  "What do you mean, when I'm like this?" I ask, my tone both confused and angry. "I'm never like this! In all the years you've known me, or we were together, did you ever see my temper this way?" I give her a moment to answer, to draw her own conclusion that I've never once shown her this side of me, outside of learning she'd cheated on me. Who am I kidding, even then, the anger wasn't the same. But her response doesn't come so I do it for her. "Never. That's when I'm like this. Hell, I didn't get this upset when you decided I wasn't good enough for you then and you cheated on me!" Her head whips to the side, as I say my next words. "How do I know he's mine?"

Holland POV

  "Was all of that really necessary?" I ask my friend as I pass her a slice of pie. Shauna passes it on to Dean and takes the next slice for herself. 

  "Yeah, actually it was. I should've said something sooner and probably would have if it wasn't for everything else going on."

  I take the seat across from her, staring her down. "You mean if your best friend wasn't a needy woman thanks to life's curve balls, you'd have broken your brother's heart earlier?"

  "His heart isn't broken, Holland. What you just saw was frustration that he's being reminded of her indiscretion once more when he thought he'd gotten away from it free and clear."

  I shake my head and push the pie further away from me as the smell is beginning to turn my stomach. "That was early heartbreak. You're blind if you can't see the way he was beginning to care for her again. The touches, his hand on her back, the little whispers into her ear. You just don't want to see that he may have actually forgiven her for her lack of judgement five years ago." I pause, my hand automatically resting on my stomach where Ari had lightly touched it earlier. "I mean, with some therapy they could probably come back from it. Your brother is a good guy, Shauna, one of the best I've ever known. If that kid is his, he's going to love him and make all of this lost time up to him. If he's not, and he wants to pursue this with Lissy, then he'll love him. He's not going to look at a little boy and see his cheating mother, not if he's really falling for her the way I think he is anyways."