Chapter 16
Parker
Anya found me sitting at the foot of my bed, elbows braced on my thighs and my head in my hands.
“Louise just left. She brought supplies and somewhere for Leo to sleep tonight.”
Leo .
Something sharp lanced through my ribs, and I breathed through it.
“I’ll keep him in my room tonight,” she continued, eyeing me carefully. “I’m guessing you don’t have much experience with babies.”
I managed a slight shake of my head, my eyes pinching shut slightly.
Everything hurt. Ached. My skin and my bones. My head was pounding. My chest tight. Not a single inch of my body didn’t feel the impact of this.
“He’s been fed, and we got him back to sleep. We don’t … we don’t know his sleep schedule, so it’s hard to say how long he’ll be down. When Willa was this age, she still woke up several times every night.”
How was she so calm?
It felt like someone locked a scream deep in my chest, and it pressed violently inside me, clawing desperately to find a way out, but I fucking refused to let it. I’d absorb it into my skin, even if it meant feeling the unease for days.
This situation right here was what that saying was made for: fuck around and find out.
I’d done that. I’d done that plenty, and this was what happened. I couldn’t look Anya in the eye and tell her a single solitary thing about the woman who dropped off that baby. Other than where she lived at the time, yet I sure as hell couldn’t find my way back there if someone asked.
It felt like a sick cosmic joke, coming on the heels of that incredible sex with Anya. Oh, you think you’re getting better? You think it’s this easy to move on?
Think again, asshole.
My eyes remained closed, and it took a second to make sure my throat worked well enough to form words. They were heavy in my chest, and the effort it took to dredge them up was considerable.
“How old is he?” I asked, and the scraping, rough sound that came out of my mouth sounded like someone else was speaking.
“Based on his birth certificate, about six weeks.”
Something horrid and bitter clawed up my throat, but I swallowed that down. The tattoo on the side of my ribs felt like it was screaming too, like it was writhing on my skin. If that was fresh when I met her, when we … when I spent the night with her, it wasn't long before my dad died.
Anya came closer, and each step had my heart rate spiking. At my feet were photo albums that I’d torn from the closet. Sheila sent them with me when I was home a few months earlier.
Baby books that my own mother had put together. Pictures of my dad standing proudly in the hospital, the wrapped bundle in his arms, wearing a hat identical to the one Leo had on his head. Pictures of my brothers lying on the carpet with me when I could hardly lift my head. Ian’s haircut was stupid, a bowl cut that my mom probably thought was adorable, and when we looked through the pages at home, we’d all given him so much shit about it.
God, Sheila. I tried to imagine breaking this news to her too. The wife thing already had her freaking out. Another grandchild. I blew out a shaky breath at the thought. My family, as a collective unit, was going to lose their fucking minds.
Anya crouched down and picked up the album sitting open at the top of the pile.
Moving my gaze up to watch her process what I’d been sorting out for the last hour felt fucking impossible, but I did it all the same. Her mouth fell open gently at the first couple of pages, and her blue eyes widened imperceptibly when she flipped through a couple more.
“Just say it,” I said.
Her eyes met mine and held. “He looks exactly like you.”
The tightening of my jaw felt like someone clamped a vise over my bones, tightening it more and more until I worried my teeth would crack.
Anya closed the book and set it on the dresser. She’d pulled on some of my clothes when she left the bedroom, and it was a testament to the breathtaking bomb dropped on my life that the memories of equally breathtaking sex with her couldn't even break through what was tangling my brain. There was no sleepy moment of waking up with her in my arms, no luxuriating in what had happened. No hands wandering. No unhurried kisses. No second round as the sun set. No third round before bed.
Or maybe that wouldn’t have happened anyway. I’d never really know.
Instead, it was this.
Just the sound of her yelling my name—fear and panic coloring her voice—startling me into wakefulness. I wanted to be thinking about sex. I wanted to be repeating the sex. Wanted to start working through a list of what we could do together in this time when she was mine, even if it wasn’t real.
I didn’t want to be doing this , whatever the fuck this was.
It didn’t seem I had much choice, though, as I watched her come closer and sit next to me on the bed.
“I don’t know how to say this, and I don’t always have the gift of subtlety, so I’m just going to go with my gut right now.” She paused, her fingers wringing together slightly on her lap. “Your name is on his birth certificate. He is your twin, Parker. We can get a paternity test, but I think that boy is yours. And I know you think you can’t do this, but?—”
“You don’t know that he’s mine,” I said through gritted teeth. “She could be anyone. She could be a stalker, for fuck’s sake. If I were smart, I’d call the police right now.”
“And have them do what? We don’t know where she went. We don’t know what she’s driving. We have a name, sure, but that’s not much to go on. Not tonight.”
“Anya, I can’t have a kid.”
Instead of staying on the bed, she shifted onto the floor in front of me, crouching so that I had no fucking choice but to look at her. “You are freaked out, and that’s fine,” she said firmly. Her hands hovered for a moment, but then she grasped mine in her own, and the tightness in that grip had something monstrous trembling under my ribs. “You want to call the police? I can’t stop you. But what if he’s your son, and you hand him off to social services? If you send him off without figuring this out, I promise you, it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Your son , Parker,” she whispered. “He’s just a baby. He’s innocent and sweet and didn’t ask to be here. And that poor girl. Do you know how hard it must have been for her to come here? She is doing what she thinks is best, and that’s you .” Immediately, I shook my head, but her face was unyielding. “Yes, it is.”
I stood so fast that Anya had no choice but to drop my hands as I paced the room. “I don’t know how to have a kid. I don’t want one. And you think I don’t already have things haunting me?” I said fiercely. “I know what that feels like. What regret does to your insides.” I smacked my chest with an open palm. “It sits here like fucking acid, eating away at you. Eating away at the parts of you left behind. I’ve felt it every single day for the past two years, and I don’t think there’s anything left. I don’t even know who I am with what’s left behind, okay? You want to talk about pretending, Anya? I pretend every fucking day like I don’t feel like I’m dying inside because of what I did.”
My chest was heaving like I’d run a fucking marathon.
Her eyes were bright and glossy as she stood, but no tears fell.
I pointed at the kitchen. “That kid needs someone who isn’t empty inside, Anya. I don’t have it in me to love anyone else like that. I can’t .” My voice cracked on the last word, a vow I’d made to myself all those nights I lay awake.
Anya licked her lips, rolling them together once they weren’t dry. Briefly, she pinched her eyes shut, and when she opened them, I fucking knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say.
“Bullshit,” she whispered.
My head reared back. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” She set her hands on her hips. “I call bullshit. Being scared of something is entirely different from being incapable. You love your family. You love your teammates. And you are not empty inside, no matter what you say. If you were empty inside, you wouldn’t care what your family thinks or how worried they are about you. You married me just to make them feel better because you love them.”
I scoffed. “That’s different.”
“Bullshit,” she repeated.
“Careful,” I warned her.
“It sounds like everyone has been careful with you,” Anya said. The words were gentle but unyielding, and a mesmerizing, fierce sort of light blazed in her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. “No one in your life is punishing you the way you’re punishing yourself, and maybe you want them to.” My heart hammered in my ears as she took another step closer. “Maybe you wish they were angry and yelling, telling you how horrible and selfish you were when your dad was sick. Would that make you feel better?”
Boom .
There wasn’t a single person in my life who’d ever put words to that. To the sick, twisted feeling that took root deep in my chest. I did want them to yell at me. Tell me I was horrible. Punish me even a little bit like I’d been doing in my head for months. But hearing it? Being willing to admit it? That was different. Especially on a night like this one. I gave her a warning look, something dangerous shuddering through my bones. “Anya …”
She raked a hand through her hair, eyes lingering on my face as she shook her head. “I’ll stop. I’m sorry if that was over the line.” She closed her eyes briefly, a reluctant grin tugging at the edges of her mouth. “Sometimes it’s hard to forget I’m not a real wife, and I don’t think the fake wives are allowed to say things like that.”
Like I fucking knew.
She didn’t feel fake. The kisses didn’t. The way her nails dug into my skin didn’t. The way she felt around me didn’t—tight and perfect and so damn responsive. But she was right. This wasn’t a real marriage, and now I had a very real child to deal with. Whether he was mine or not was yet to be determined.
At my lack of a response, Anya licked her lips and nodded across the hall toward her bedroom. “I’m going to take a quick shower while he’s sleeping. I didn’t … clean up afterward, and I’d like to do that before we leave tomorrow.”
She couldn’t meet my eyes, and the telltale blush on her cheeks told me more than anything else.
“You don’t need my permission,” I told her.
Her jaw tightened, eyes flashing briefly. “No, but I do need to make sure you won’t ignore him if he wakes up.”
I held her gaze. “Of course not.”
It was a valid concern, but I couldn’t find the words to tell her that. Everything inside of me felt so hollowed out, scraped clean, like I’d flinch away at the slightest touch. When she turned to leave, I saw the exhaustion stamped all over her face.
She didn’t ask for this either.
Alone in the room again, I tipped my head back and sighed heavily. “What a fucking day,” I muttered. Across the hall, the sound of the shower turned on, and I clenched my jaw, helpless against the mental image of Anya’s naked body underneath the water. Everything about her was long and lean and strong. Toned stomach and legs and arms. High, firm breasts.
A fucking dream.
And after tonight, she was probably more likely to slap the shit out of me than ever touch me again, and I couldn’t even really blame her.
With another sigh, I heaved myself off the bed and walked downstairs. Next to the couch was an unassuming little bassinet—a modern design in tan and white. Spike sat on the arm of the couch, tail flicking lazily as he stared down inside it.
“Don’t eat him,” I muttered. “That would really complicate things.”
He gave a slow turn of his head in my direction, and I swear, if a cat could roll its eyes, that one just did.
Instead of walking over toward the baby, I sprawled out on the opposite arm of the L-shaped couch, legs spread out wide and my throat tight with nerves as I waited for something—anything—to happen.
A few minutes passed, and the room remained quiet.
Eventually, the shower turned off.
After another ten minutes, Anya wandered down the steps, clad in her own clothes now. Her blond hair was slicked off her face, darker because it was wet.
“Still sleeping?” she asked.
I nodded.
Anya sighed quietly, and after a glance down at the baby, moved into the kitchen, fixing herself a late dinner from whatever leftovers Louise had in the fridge. I hadn’t eaten yet either, but the thought of putting food in my restless stomach didn’t sound wise.
With a plate in hand, she joined me in the family room, her disappointment in my reaction like a third fucking person sitting on the couch.
I was used to that. I’d learned to live with that asshole looking over my shoulder, judging my every freaking move. Disappointment was a weighty emotion. Worse than regret somehow because regret usually meant you were looking back on something you’d already done. An action you couldn’t change.
Disappointment was immediate. It hovered over everything like a cloud that wouldn’t go away. What made it even worse was that I didn’t blame her, but I felt like my arms and hands and legs were locked down, refusing to let me get any closer to him.
Like if I didn’t touch him, none of this was real.
My eyes closed because that was how it felt with Anya too. If I’d never touched her, if I’d kept my distance, kept things simple and easy like she’d asked, then we wouldn’t feel real either.
“I know you don’t need my permission for this, and you’ll certainly never come out and ask,” Anya said. Slowly, I opened my eyes and braced for the impact of whatever was about to come out of her mouth. “But I’m going to take him in my room overnight. I won’t tell you to get some sleep because I don’t think you will. Let yourself be freaked out for a night.” Her gaze was unrelenting. “That baby needs someone who is all in, and tonight, that’s not you. But tomorrow, you don’t get to act like this, not when we’re around your family.”
My jaw was clenched so tight, I struggled to breathe evenly. It felt like a year ago that I kissed her. Maybe even longer. I gave her a small nod. “Thank you,” I said, my voice strained and tight.
There was an entire world outside of this room, completely unaware of what was happening. Completely unaware of how thoroughly our lives had just changed. We’d have to address it eventually. We’d have to address what happened between us eventually, but I couldn’t do it tonight. Based on the look in Anya’s eyes, she wasn’t going to either.
I stared at the bassinet until my eyes felt gritty and dry, then I stood. Without a backward glance, I disappeared into my room for the rest of the night, where I stared at the ceiling and tried not to listen to the sound of her voice as she talked to the baby.
The racing of my brain was impossible to slow—a macabre slideshow of what it was like for those few months before and after my dad died. It was empty nights with women I didn’t remember, waking hungover more than sober, feeling sick and exhausted with grief but unwilling to stop and feel a single second of it. I was unwilling to unload it on anyone because I was terrified that it would be more than what they could handle. After, I’d stopped with the women, but still numbed myself when I couldn’t take the pain.
But I wasn’t like that anymore. I wasn’t that version of myself. But he was still there, lurking under the surface, like I was cleaved straight down the middle, unsure of which version of me would win out.
Tomorrow , I thought numbly. I’ll try again tomorrow .
It was my last clear thought when exhaustion finally pulled me under.