Chapter 17 Paige
PAIGE
Noah cries all the way home, and even the hum of the car doesn’t settle him.
We pull up into my driveway outside the two-bedroom home my mom left me.
What I wouldn’t give to have her here right now.
Navigating pregnancy on my own was hard enough, but the emotional turmoil after seeing Ryan again might break me.
As I pull in, I see Rowena Evans hunched over her mailbox a few doors down. She straightens up when she hears Noah’s cries and frowns in our direction.
I give her a big smile and a wave before unbuckling Noah from his car seat. But she just shakes her head at me, no doubt tutting that my toddler has the indecency to not know how to control his emotions yet.
“Old biddy,” I mutter as I carry Noah up the drive.
My lawnmower is by the side of the house. I didn’t have time to put it away after a job this morning, and it’s lying on its side. It hasn’t been windy, and I have no idea what could’ve knocked over something so heavy.
I carry Noah over, ignoring his cries, and crouch by the lawnmower. Between the blades are a handful of chunky stones and a thick stick. Deliberately placed.
A chill creeps through my veins and freezes my limbs. Who would do such a thing?
I glance up the road, and Rowena is retreating up her driveway. Could she have done this?
Noah lets out a long wail, drawing my attention back to him.
“Let’s get you sorted, buddy.”
I straighten up and kiss his scrunched up forehead while jiggling him on my hip.
He must be picking up on my uneasiness, so I take deep breaths as I walk him around the yard, trying not to think about someone sabotaging my lawnmower.
“Here’s the dwarf maple that Nanna planted when I was a little girl about your age. Look how the leaves are turning red. They’ll all fall off soon.”
I pick a russet-colored leaf and hold it out for him. He takes it in his chubby hand, and the wails turn to sniffs.
I pick another leaf and brush it over his face. He closes his eyes, and the sniffs soon turn to giggles.
Mom planted the front yard with dwarf varieties that provide color all year round. It was helping her plant the garden that fostered my love of horticulture.
Her presence is strong in the garden she loved, and I talk to Noah softly as we tour the yard, pointing out the changes in the plants. By the time we’ve done a circuit, we’re both calmer.
Until Hudson’s car pulls up outside.
Dread sits heavy on my chest. But if there’s going to be a reckoning with my brother, I may as well get it over with.
He slams the door of his SUV and stalks up the driveway.
He has the good grace to stop when he sees Noah, and his mouth forms an angry line, holding in whatever he wants to say to me.
Noah wriggles uneasily, and I turn toward the house. “Let’s get you inside.”
Hudson doesn’t say a word as he follows us inside. He leans against the kitchen counter with his arms folded while I get Noah a drink and some apple slices.
We go through to the backyard, where I drop Noah into his sandpit before retreating to the porch and out of earshot.
Only then does Hudson speak.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was Ryan?”
He keeps his voice low, but the tone is all righteous indignation, as if he has a right to know.
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “When you refuse to tell anyone who the father of my nephew is and then it turns out to be my best friend, then yeah, you do have some fucking explaining to do.”
“Shhh.” I glance at Noah pushing a digger through the sand. “Don’t use that language in front of him.”
Hudson gives me a look that calls out my hypocrisy, but he doesn’t say anything.
He’s right. For three years, I refused to say who Noah’s father was. Mostly because I didn’t know his name. What was I going to put on the birth certificate, Sergeant Gray? It seemed better to leave it blank.
Noah throws the digger, and some sand blows into his face. He lets out a cry, and before I can get up, Hudson strides over, scoops my son into his arms, and gently wipes the sand out of his eyes.
As I watch Noah smile up at him, and Hudson set him back down into the sand, all the fight goes out of me. Hudson cares about Noah, and he deserves to know the truth. I’m just not sure he can handle it.
Leaving Noah in the sand, he strides back to where he was sitting underneath the covered porch.
“I didn’t know it was Ryan you went through BUD/s with.”
Hudson grunts at the admission. I take a deep breath and spit out the truth, steeling myself for Hudson’s reaction.
“We met one night in a bar. It was supposed to be a one night thing.”
“A one night stand.” Hudson winces.
My mind goes back to the hotel room. It was supposed to be one night, but the smell of his skin and the way he whispered my fake name made one night impossible. “It turned into two nights.”
“Okay, I don’t need the details.” Hudson runs a hand down his face. “But didn’t you talk? Didn’t you think a special forces guy named Ryan might be my SEAL teammate?”
I shake my head. “We agreed to no names.”
Hudson scrunches his face. “Paige, you’re killing me. Didn’t you use…protection?”
I press my lips together and nod. “Yeah, we did.” I’ve thought about this a lot over the past three years, especially in those first few months when I was in denial about my pregnancy.
“The only explanation I can come up with is that the condoms were past their expiration date. They’d been in my purse since before college. ”
“Did you check the date on the box afterward when you found out?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t have it. We went through the entire package.” I can’t keep the grin off my face as I remember our bodies pushed together in the shower, on the bed, against the nightstand…
Hudson groans and hunches forward with his head in his hands. “Stop. I don’t want to know anymore.”
I giggle at his discomfort. It’s a relief to finally tell Hudson, even if it is hard for him to hear it.
“Not funny.” He sits up with his head still in his hands. “Also, condoms have expiration dates?”
“Yup.”
His expression is half disbelief and half horror, which makes me laugh even more. “You got a package in your bedside table you need to go home and check?”
He runs a hand through his hair, and if I know my brother, that’s exactly what he’ll do.
“Lighten up. It’s a low statistical chance, and we just got lucky.”
“Lucky? You got knocked up.”
I glance at Noah, who’s busy making tracks in the sand. It felt like the end of the world when I realized I was pregnant, but Noah has become my world. “That’s not how I see it.”
He follows my gaze. “Okay, so Noah is the happy result. But are you sure it’s Ryan? Were there… others…?”
He can’t look me in the eye when he says it, and it makes me grin even more.
“You mean was I picking up men for sex regularly?” I stick my chin out, daring him to say something about a woman wanting to take care of her needs.
He swallows. “Were you?”
He’s apprehensive, and damn, I wish I had been, just to see my brother squirm under his outdated notions of how women should behave. But this is a time for truth.
“No.” I shake my head. “Mom had just died. It was a one off thing for me.”
His expression softens at the mention of Mom, and his hand comes to rest on my shoulder. “Those were tough times.”
“They still are.” A dull ache throbs in my chest. My mother wasn’t there when I needed her the most, which reminds me of something Ryan said.
“Why did you leave the Navy?”
Hudson frowns at the change of subject. “I tore my ACL, and they discharged me.” He shifts in the chair, and his eyes dart sideways.
He’s lying. But if I’ve just spilled the truth to him, then it’s time he did the same for me.
“Ryan said you left because of me. Because you didn’t want me to have the baby on my own.”
Hudson sits back and takes a deep breath. “He said that.”
“Is it true?” My voice is a whisper. I hate the idea that Hudson gave up the military for me.
Hudson scratches his jaw, stalling. Finally, he sighs. “I couldn’t be out there on missions knowing you were struggling here on your own. With Mom gone, Avery away at college, and the father a no show, it was clear that my duty was here with my family.”
“But I’m fine on my own. Noah and I are doing fine.”
He didn’t need to give up anything for me. Mom raised both of us on her own. As much as I appreciate and love him even more for it, I don’t need a man around, not even my brother, and certainly not at the expense of something he loves.
He shakes his head slowly. “However tough you think you are Paige, you can’t do everything on your own.”
Tears sting my eyes. “You loved being a SEAL. You didn’t need to give it up for me.”
He puts his hand back on my shoulder. “Family first, Paige. It was the right thing to do.”
Damn these SEALs and their senses of honor. It was Ryan acting with integrity at that bar all those years ago that attracted me to him. Maybe he’s not so different from my brother.
I swipe at my tears as the realization of what Hudson gave up hits me. But that’s my brother, always doing the right thing. There’s no gray area with Hudson. Something’s wrong, or it’s right. And leaving his sister pregnant and on her own wasn’t right in his eyes.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He pats my shoulder, and I pull him in for a hug. We embrace quickly before he pulls away.
“Now, that asshole needs to do the right thing.”
I raise my hand. “Can you first acknowledge that he didn’t know and therefore isn’t an asshole?”
“He’s an asshole by proxy,” Hudson grumbles. “Besides, now he does know, so I expect him to step up.”
As nice as it would be, I have few expectations. I’m just not sure Ryan’s capable of doing much at the moment, even if I like the idea of it. The image of him and Noah playing together runs through my mind, drawing a wistful sigh from me.
He needs to recover and heal himself first. “He’s in a bad way, Hudson. Go easy on him.”
Hudson grunts noncommittally.
“Please promise you won’t go all medieval on his ass and insist he acknowledge his son. He’s got a lot to process, and he’ll need some time.”
Hudson sighs. “Fine. But don’t expect me to be cool with this straight away. I need time to process, too.”
“Fine.”
He shakes his head. “You’ve got a soft heart under that armor, you know.”
“Don’t I know it,” I mutter.