Chapter 29
Anya
The first time Parker Wilder smiled at me, I should have seen this coming. Should have seen the ominous clouds on the horizon that he’d break my heart without even realizing it.
I sank onto the edge of the bed and stared up into his face, a terrible ache lodged in my throat. No. I would not cry.
He ran a hand through his hair, his shoulders deflating on an exhale, and his eyes stayed on mine.
“Now what?” I asked, my hands curled into tight fists on my lap.
His jaw tightened. “You should tell your family the truth.”
“Maybe in a few days.” I sighed. “My dad is … he’s a wreck. Seeing Isabel hurt ...” I swallowed hard. “It triggers a lot for him.”
Our eyes held, and eventually, he looked away. “I bet it does.”
Fear was the worst kind of shackle because even if you knew what it was, to shake its hold was like slicing through metal with your bare hands. Even my father, one of the strongest men I knew, was victim to it at moments like this. He’d lost love before, and the idea of it again, with Isabel, it had him rocked.
Sitting still, even for a few moments, was hard because the need to be with my family was a fierce push. But as much as I didn’t want to do this with Parker, we had to.
I had to force myself to ask the things I didn’t want to ask, risk detonating another landmine in his chest and my own to come out the other side of this with the truth in hand.
“Was it the sex?” I asked quietly.
His eyes burned as they held mine. “No.” Then he closed his eyes. “Sort of.”
Fighting the push of tears at the back of my throat, I managed a short nod. “I didn’t … I didn’t intend for that to happen when I came to find you.”
“I know. If anything, it’s on me.” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “I promised myself I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t do that anymore to ignore the shit I didn’t want to face.” His hand dropped by his side, and the heavy look in his eyes was almost my undoing. “It’s easier, isn’t it? To seek out something that feels really fucking good when everything inside you is a tangled mess.”
Parker felt good.
I felt good when I was with him.
But that didn’t mean he was wrong. The last two months of my life was a jumbled blur, I’d spun directions so fast that it was a miracle I was still standing. And at the center of it, I’d pushed aside all the things I didn’t really want to face.
When I didn’t say anything, he pushed off the wall and came to join me on the bed. His shoulder brushed mine as he sat. “It’s Leo too. It’s our families. And all the other shit we didn’t account for, and now we’re stuck right in the middle of it, and it’s not as simple as I thought it would be.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “It never is, is it?”
“No.”
“My life feels like a soap opera right now.”
“Yours? I had a baby dropped off on my front porch. I think I win.”
I smiled. Just a little. “We doing sad shots again?”
Parker laughed. “Dear God, no.”
I ran my hands through my hair and let them fall back into my lap. “I think … I think this might trigger a midlife crisis,” I said. “Can you have a midlife crisis in your mid-twenties?”
Parker let out a small huff of amusement. “No, I don’t think so.”
I studied the hard lines of his profile before speaking again. “What’s the tangled mess you were trying to avoid tonight?”
He thought for a moment. “This. Having this conversation. My mom said a few things to me before we left, and I think I knew then that we’d have to come clean.” Parker glanced sideways. “What about you?”
“How I got here.” I stared down at my hands. “Looking back now, I don’t even recognize the person I was with Max, and I think doing something crazy, something impulsive and wild, it felt like I was reclaiming some piece of myself that I lost. I missed that part of me, you know?”
Parker let out a low noise. “You didn’t seem lost to me.”
“Maybe you’re not the only one who’s good at wearing a mask.” I closed my eyes, weariness creeping through my bones like a stain. “Mine was just in place longer. You saw the real me, but I was still trying to get reacquainted with her, I guess.”
“I wonder when we’ll feel like we’re there,” Parker said.
Tears pressed at the back of my eyes, and I took a few deep breaths to keep them from falling. “Soon, I hope.”
“If anyone was lost, it was me,” he said. “I have to do better than this for my son, you know? He’ll learn everything from watching me.” Parker’s voice went rough with emotion. “And I have to decide what I’m teaching him. If I can’t make the right decisions at moments like this, how can I expect him to?”
It didn’t feel like the right decision to walk away from him. From Leo.
But I knew it was.
All along, he’d been clear about what he wanted, and what he didn’t. And what he wanted now was to be the best version of himself for his son. It was one of the dozens of reasons he was so easy to love.
“You’re going to be a really good father, Parker.” A tear slipped down my cheek, and I didn’t wipe it away because I didn’t want to draw attention.
“I’m glad one of us is confident.”
I laughed quietly, quickly swiping at my jaw.
He rubbed at the back of his neck before speaking again. “Every decision I’ve made for the last two years has been selfish, Anya. And I never thought I’d be that person, you know? It’s the little stuff, which builds up to the big stuff, the choices you can’t take back. Things you never thought you’d do. Feeling things you never thought you’d feel. But I just … I didn’t want to feel stuck in those places. In the grief and the sadness and the worry of what everyone would think if I couldn’t move on fast enough.” Parker tipped his head back. “I overcorrected. And God, it kills me to think I might have made anything worse for you by dragging you into my problems.”
“I don’t think you were dragging me much of anywhere, Parker,” I said lightly, our eyes catching. “I went pretty willingly.”
That willingness was a dull ache between my legs, in the marks on my throat and my thighs. I’d wear the proof of him on my body for a few more days. And in my heart for a lot longer than that.
Parker pulled in a deep breath. “I should call Milicent tomorrow. See how she wants to handle this.”
An icy hand of panic gripped my throat, and I tried to fight its hold. Imagining headlines and comments and judgment. It didn’t matter, I told myself. None of what they said mattered. The only thing that did was sitting right here in this house. “I don’t think we should rush into any announcements yet,” I said. “Let the dust settle with Leo first. I’ll have a justifiable reason to be gone for a while with Isabel.”
For a moment, he sat quietly, his shoulder brushing mine as he inhaled, then exhaled. “Makes sense.”
From across the hall, Leo started crying. Parker sighed, and then stood, but I stilled him with my hand. “Can I get him while you make the bottle?”
The way he looked at me sent a shiver down my spine because for just a moment I thought … this is it. I’m not alone in this. But his eyes cleared, and he nodded.
I needed to get home, but I could take a couple of extra minutes. Parker’s bedroom was dark when I walked in, but I turned on a lamp on his dresser, taking a second to inhale the crisp, clean scent of him that was so strong in this space. When my lungs felt sated, I walked toward the bassinet. Leo’s face was scrunched up as he cried, his forehead wrinkled and his pacifier already spit out.
I picked him up and with one hand, unhooked the velcro across his chest. “There we go, little lion,” I whispered, kissing his forehead as he popped his arms out and stretched. My eyes burned as I inhaled his sweet scent. “I’ll miss you,” I told him quietly, stomach twisting in knots at the thought of leaving. “Of all the things I couldn’t have predicted out of this, you were my favorite surprise.”
As I rocked him back and forth, and his cries quieted, tears slid silently down my cheeks.
Love was never convenient, was it? Not true love. The real thing was the most disruptive force on earth because you couldn’t hide behind anything to avoid it—not fear, not grief, not the lies we tell ourselves.
The difference was I didn’t want to hide from my feelings, and Parker … Parker still wanted to shelter his own heart from any future hurt. It was one less thing he’d have to say goodbye to, even if he’d never said those words out loud.
It was the best and worst part of coming to know someone. Everything Parker said was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. I couldn’t make him come out from behind that wall, no matter how I felt. It was up to him to make that decision, just like every other hard decision he’d made up until now.
I loved them both, and telling Parker would only make this difficult. He was trying to get better, to be better for his son, and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—begrudge him that. No matter how much pain it caused.
I was still crying when Parker entered the room with a bottle in hand, a burp cloth already slung over his shoulder. His eyes locked in on my tears, his brow furrowing immediately.
“I’m okay,” I said, like a giant freaking liar. “Just gonna miss this little guy.” Then I swallowed. “This is better, though. He shouldn’t be confused as he gets older, you know? If I stayed too long, he might not … he might not understand why I’m gone all of a sudden.”
A sob caught in my throat, and I pushed it down, pinching my eyes shut. A brush of skin against cheek had my eyes flying open. With gentle swipes of his thumb, Parker dried my tears.
“I wish I could’ve met you when I wasn’t so fucked up,” he said quietly.
Another tear fell, melting into his thumb where it lingered on my face. I couldn’t speak without blurting out something maudlin and dramatic that I’d likely regret for the next seven to ten business days. It was a miserable business, setting aside your feelings.
His eyes were red-rimmed as they traced over my features. “I’m glad it was you. Even if it didn’t last long, even if you don’t remember it, I’m glad you were the one I married first, golden girl.”
There was a blinding pressure on my chest, his words wrapping around my throat, stopping me from saying something I’d really regret. None of them were lies, but the truth wouldn’t be any easier for him to swallow.
Like please let me stay .
Like the only life I can imagine now is this one .
Like I love you .
“I’m glad it was you too,” I said instead.