24. Taylor
24
TAYLOR
“Shit,” I muttered to myself as I glanced down at my phone. Waiting there, sent while I had been busy on set, was a message from my nanny telling me that she wasn’t going to be able to pick up Martha from school.
This was the last thing I needed. I was meant to be staying late on set tonight to wrap up some action stuff that had been pushed back, and Martha was supposed to be dropped off at a friend’s house this afternoon where I would pick her up later. But I couldn’t go down to the school and meet her there—everyone would see me, and any chance I had of keeping her cover would be blown.
I hovered my fingers over the keys as I made my way back to my trailer, trying to think of what to respond. But before I could fire anything off, I crashed straight into someone in my distraction.
“Crap, sorry—” I muttered, but then I lifted my head and saw that it was Maya standing before me.
She stared up at me for a moment, frozen. It was the first time we had seen each other properly since our confrontation in the makeup trailer, when I had discovered she was pregnant. Which I was still trying to wrap my head around. Not the part about her being with child, no, that didn’t bother me—I adored Martha, and I would welcome any more kids into my life with open arms. The part that got to me was that she had been so willing to keep it from me and the rest of the guys. I didn’t want to raise a kid with another woman who would hide the truth from me. I knew how that turned out, and I had no intention of walking into that mistake all over again.
“It’s okay,” she replied, a furrow appearing between her brows. “Is everything okay? You seem?—”
“It’s fine,” I shot back, cutting her off and going to walk past her. But before I could, her hand darted out and caught my arm, stopping me in my tracks. I looked back at her, annoyed—but the sympathetic look on her face told me she had already guessed what I was going through.
“Is it something to do with Martha?” she asked.
“What? How did you?—”
“I know that look,” she replied, gesturing to the expression on my face. “It’s the look that says something annoying has happened with my kid and I don’t know how to deal with it. The same one I had yesterday when the sitter I had booked canceled on me and I had to bring Matty to work.”
I paused, and ran a hand over the stubble on my head. No point trying to keep it from her, she could clearly see through me. After a pause, I nodded.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Yeah, that’s what it is. My nanny just told me she can’t pick up Martha from school, and I don’t have time to do it myself. But I can’t just send anyone down there, I need to know that they’re able to keep their mouths shut about me, about all of this, and?—”
“Let me do it for you.”
I stared at her for a moment, and then let out a snort.
“Yeah. No. Not happening.”
“Why not?” she demanded as I turned and started toward my trailer again.
“Because you’ve not exactly proved yourself worthy of my trust lately,” I growled back at her. She stared up at me, her eyebrows raised.
“Taylor, I know you’ve got issues with the way I’ve handled things in my personal life,” she replied, not budging an inch. “But I’m talking to you parent-to-parent here. You helped me out before, and I want to do the same for you right now. Are you going to let me?”
I was surprised by how forthright she was. I had expected her to be doing everything she could to play it cool after what had happened the other day, but I guessed this pushed past the tension between us.
“It’s fine. I’ll find someone else to do it.”
“You just said you wouldn’t be able to get anyone at short notice.”
“You don’t have to worry about it?—”
“I thought that was your problem, me not worrying about it enough?” she reminded me. “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to show you?—”
She stopped herself before she could go any further down that path, though I knew at once what she was getting at. She was trying to show me that she could be trusted with this kid stuff—that, regardless of the fact that she had kept the pregnancy from me, she was still a good mother, and she wasn’t going to let anything change that.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I can handle this. I’m fine.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Taylor, I know how hard this job is, remember?” she pressed me. “And it’s even harder when you won’t accept help from people. I can pick up Martha, take her where she needs to go, and be back here in an hour or less. They don’t need me till this evening. I promise, this is the easiest way to go about this, if you’ll stop being stubborn about it.”
“I just don’t know if I can trust you.”
“Then let me show you that you can,” she pleaded with me, shaking her head. “I know—I know I should have been more honest with you. But you have to understand how hard this has been for me, how confusing it’s all been. And how—how everyone deserves a second chance. Even when they screw up.”
I stared down at her for a long moment. She didn’t break my gaze for a second. And I had to admit, there was something to what she was telling me. As much as it would be easier to just tell her that she had lied to me, that she had kept something so huge from me, that I couldn’t trust her around my daughter or anything else…I knew that I needed her right now. She understood where I was coming from better than anyone else on this set, and she knew how important it was to create a life of somewhat-normalcy for your kid, even in the midst of such chaos.
“Please,” she added. “Let me do this for you. Let me show you that you can trust me.”
This was…new to me, that much was for sure. After Martha’s mother had screwed up, had cheated on me and lied to me more times than I could count, she had never asked for another chance to prove herself to me. She had never tried to make amends or fix up the damage that she left in her wake. No, none of that had seemed to matter to Emily at all. She just assumed that I would roll over and take it because that was what I had done up until that point, and I had proved her right, because I wanted the best for my daughter.
But Maya was asking for a chance. And I guessed, given that she might be having my baby, I should at least give her that.
“Okay,” I murmured, and she clapped her hands together, beaming.
“Okay, great!” she exclaimed. “Well, I know where the school is, but where am I taking her afterward? And what should I tell them…?”
I filled her in on everything that she would need to know, and dropped a text to the school to inform them that someone else would be picking Martha up that afternoon. I wasn’t sure how my daughter would feel about a stranger turning up to take her to her friend’s place, but she was a sociable little thing. No doubt she and Maya would be the best of friends by the time Maya arrived back on set.
“Thanks, Maya,” I told her, before she took off to take care of business. “I—I owe you.”
“No, you don’t,” she replied, flashing me a smile. And with that, she was off. I watched her as she went, and felt something shift inside of me at the sight of her so willing to do what she could to help me out.
Like we were a partnership. Like I had helped her before, and now she was doing what she could to take the weight off my shoulders. I had been a single dad for so long, I had never really allowed myself the space to think about what it would be like to share this work with someone—well, the work, and the good parts too. The joy, the excitement, the success—all the parts that made being a parent worthwhile.
I realized, as I headed back to my trailer, that there was a smile on my face. I didn’t know quite where this left us. But I knew that whatever anger I had been holding against her had begun to dull, to be replaced by something that felt a whole lot more like affection.
And maybe even more.