18. Maya
18
MAYA
I pressed my fingertips into my temples, massaging my head as I tried to figure out exactly how I was going to make these numbers work. So, if I had that much coming in from work, but then I had to pay that much in doctor’s bills…and how long was it before my health insurance kicked in, again…?
I sighed and rested my head on my forearms, right on top of the papers I’d laid out in front of me to try and figure out the financial situation I was facing now that I was pregnant again. I had forgotten how much being pregnant cost, especially when you didn’t have health insurance. I’d blazed through most of my savings when I was pregnant with Matty, but I’d forgotten all about that until that test had turned up positive.
Which I still couldn’t believe. In fact, I had been in firm denial of it until I went to the doctor earlier this week to confirm that, yes, I was actually pregnant. There was no shadow of a doubt about it now, I was with child, even if I had no idea whose child it actually was.
Which was a total mess in and of itself. I had considered taking the route of ending the pregnancy, but honestly, I couldn’t even really entertain the thought. Even if it might be the more sensible option right now, I was a mom at heart, and the thought of Matty getting to grow up with a sibling was too tempting for me to deny.
And I knew, at least, that their father had the money to support them, whoever they might be. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to admit to it, when the time came, but at least I had some practice now, given that I had told Devon the truth about Matty.
Not that he had given me much of a choice. And not that he hadn’t deserved an answer before that, if I was being honest. If I had just come clean to him when we first started working together again, maybe I would have been able to keep my distance and keep from sleeping with him again. Though that wouldn’t have dealt with the issue of his co-stars, of course.
He had taken it…better than I had expected. He’d let me leave without any argument, though perhaps he had been too much in shock to fight me any further on the matter.
I couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like, discovering that he was a dad like that, out of the blue. I’d had years to wrap my head around being a parent, but here he was with a kid dropped into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world.
My heart twinged when I remembered the pain in his voice, the way he had spoken to me, like he would have done anything to be part of Matty’s life. But I was standing my ground there. Matty was young, but not so young that he wouldn’t be susceptible to the stress and publicity that would explode around him if people knew he was Devon’s secret love child. These guys couldn’t even blow their noses without attracting attention from the press of the entire country, and the thought of my son being thrust into the limelight like that scared the hell out of me.
And the downside of sticking to my principles on this? I was going to have to find some way to handle all of these bills alone. I sifted through the bills in front of me, trying to figure out if there were any that I could push back a little…
My rent was the only thing that jumped out. Olivia, who owned the building, had been a single mom herself, and she was sympathetic to the struggles I went through raising my little boy alone. Maybe I could beg for a little reprieve, just for the rest of the month.
I pulled out my phone and dialed up her number—it rang a couple times before she answered, her voice as bright and warm as it always was.
“Hello, Maya. You alright, dear?”
“Yeah, I’m…I’m good,” I replied, taking a deep breath as I tried to prepare myself for what I was going to ask her. “Look, I know it’s never a good time to ask you something like this, but I was hoping…I was hoping that you might be able to give me an extra couple of weeks to pay the rent this month?”
I winced as I waited for my answer. She fell silent for a moment, and then let out a small snort. “But you’re already paid up for the rest of the year, Maya. What are you talking about?”
My eyes widened.
“Wh-what?”
“You’re paid up till the end of the year,” she repeated, as though I might just not have heard her properly. “I got the account settled up yesterday. You didn’t know about it?”
“No,” I blurted out. “Who—what are you?—”
“Yeah, I got a deposit in yesterday morning, it should have cleared by now,” she remarked, and I heard her rustling some papers at the other end of the line. “Here it is, yes—your rent and utilities, paid in full for the rest of this calendar year. You really didn’t have any idea…?”
“No—no, I didn’t,” I confessed. My head was reeling. Who would have done something like this? And why? It wasn’t like Lana could have paid off such a huge bill out of nowhere, though I knew she would have if she was able.
“Oh, well,” Olivia muttered, sounding confused. “I suppose it was just some Good Samaritan.”
“It must have been,” I agreed, trying to keep my voice as steady as I could. “Hey, Olivia, could you—could you tell me the name on the account that transferred the money in?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied. Another pause as she went through the papers on her desk, and then she answered, “Hart. The name on the account is Hart. Does that ring a bell…?”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Yeah, it does. Thanks, Olivia. I’ll talk to you soon…”
And with that, I hung up the phone and stared off into space for a moment.
Devon. Devon was the one to pay up my rent and bills for the rest of the year. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know what he intended to get out of it, but there was nobody else it could have been, nobody else who would be that invested in setting me up financially and who would have had the cash to follow through on it.
I pulled up his number on my phone at once, hesitating for a moment before I actually dialed it. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to him, how I was going to thank him. What if he expected something in return? What if this was his way of forcing me to remain in contact with him, something he could hold over my head when I felt like I would be better off keeping my distance…?
But I knew Devon. Well, at least, I had known him. And the version of him I’d known all those years ago would never do that to me. He wasn’t that kind of guy, the kind of guy who would twist and force his way into my life if I didn’t want it. And besides, I needed to thank him for going out of his way to help Matty and me. I wasn’t going to sit around and pretend like I didn’t care about how much he had done for us, the difference he had just made to our lives by giving me this freedom.
I pressed the call button and lifted the phone to my ear, drumming my fingers on the table as I waited for him to pick up. It didn’t take long, as though he had been expecting my call all day.
“Hey,” he greeted me, and despite myself, my tummy flipped at the sound of his voice.
“Hey,” I murmured, staring down at a spot on the table in front of me, picking at a coffee mug stain just for something to do with my hands.
“I…I was just in touch with my landlord,” I explained to him, deciding the best course of action was to just get to the point. “And she told me that someone had paid up our rent for the rest of the year. Someone who went by the name Hart.”
“Right.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was.”
I let out a deep breath. I didn’t know how to respond to that. Of course, there was nobody else it could have been, but hearing the confirmation was something totally different.
“I…I don’t know what to say, Devon. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. It’s the least I could do.”
“The least you could do?” My ears perked up.
He fell silent for a moment before he replied, and then he pushed on. “Yeah, I mean, I haven’t been part of Matty’s life so far,” he pointed out. “I should have been paying child support, something toward caring for him, but I didn’t. Consider this a down payment on all of that.”
“You really didn’t have to do that?—”
“I know I didn’t. I know you can handle taking care of him yourself. But I wanted to.”
I felt a smile tug at the corners of my lips.
“That’s really sweet of you, Devon. Thanks. It’s going to make a big difference for us, over the coming year—takes the pressure off me.”
“That was the idea,” he replied softly, and I could hear how glad he was in the tone of his voice, how pleased he was that I was actually seeing this for what it was. After our confrontation the other day, I figured he must have thought there was no way to prove to me that he could be there for Matty and me. And while this was just money, it was proof, at the very least, that he was willing to try. And God only knew how much I had hoped for that over the years.
“Can I see him?”
His next question caught me off guard, though I knew it shouldn’t have. I parted my lips, some part of me wanting to brush him off and tell him that it wasn’t a good idea. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t shut him down just like that, not when I could hear the hope in his voice, the need. I’d never had to suffer being apart from my son, but I could only imagine how brutal it was. Even though he had only just discovered his existence he was clearly enthused about the chance to get to know him, and I knew I couldn’t keep it from him forever.
“I…I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”
“It doesn’t have to be at your place,” he assured me. “Bring him to set again. He can hang out with all three of us, it won’t have to be a big deal. He doesn’t have to know he’s there to see me.”
I bit down on my lip, hard. Being around all three of them, when I knew there was a whole new secret that I was keeping? It didn’t feel like a good idea.
“Please, Maya.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t deny him this, not after what he had just done for me, no matter how much I might want to.
“I guess…I guess one more visit wouldn’t hurt,” I replied. “Just don’t tell him anything, okay? I haven’t spoken to him about who his real dad is, and I want to have that conversation with him when he’s old enough to make his own decisions about it.”
“Right, right,” he replied, sounding excited. “But you’ll bring him down? I can see him?”
“I guess so…”
“I’ll figure something out with the rest of the guys,” he told me. “Just let me know when works for the two of you, and we can take it from there, right?”
“Right. Devon?—”
But before I could say another word, he’d hung up the phone, clearly too excited to stick around any longer. As I stared down at the empty screen, I wondered if I had just made a huge mistake—and if Devon could really keep his mouth shut when it came to the truth about our son.
Guess I’m going to find out, one way or another…