Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
The days have somehow morphed into another week, and the baby kicks as if they’re on Quintin’s side. Violent little jabs at my organs and bouncing on my bladder; it’s like I deserve some sort of punishment for my inaction.
But today is the day. Today is the day I do the thing Quintin pushed me to do. Today is the day I find my unborn child’s biological father and see if he wants shit to do with us.
With my baby daddy’s business card in hand, I remind myself I’m doing the right thing.
It’s time to face the reality of our fleeting encounter and get some answers.
So, armed with a mix of hope and trepidation, I stand outside the towering building in an unzipped parka, my belly exposed.
My palms grow clammy, and my heart races in my chest. With each passing moment, my breaths become heavier, and my mind races with a million possibilities of how this meeting could unfold.
At least I won’t be puking on his shoes. He completely missed that stage of pregnancy.
Only a few moments later, I see him—Matthew—through the glass walls. He’s smiling as he ends a call, stopping short to tuck his phone into his suit jacket.
My heart sinks when I notice him shove his hand into his other pocket and pull something from it—a fucking ring. He slips on a wedding band so effortlessly, I nearly miss it. If that wasn’t enough, the back of a familiar head passes right by me, heading toward him.
Oh, hell no. Please, no.
He looks up, and it’s almost like he sees me and is ecstatic at the sight. If only that were the case. The moment is short-lived before he leans in to kiss Paula on her fuchsia lips. The sight shatters my already-fragile heart into a thousand pieces. He’s fucking married .
And to her ? My God.
It isn’t like I harbored any sort of hope he and I would be together, be a family, not when I’ve met and already fell in love with someone else.
But I know Paula has been married for almost ten years.
She always bragged about how she married young and wouldn’t want anything to do with the dating pool now.
Little does she know, the dating pool is in her bed.
I quickly blink, my vision blurred by tears. I can’t see them together, knowing he’s a piece of shit liar and I’m left with the consequences of our reckless night.
The thought of being labeled the homewrecker between him and the woman who was supposed to propel my career forward is far too much to bear.
As if he feels me staring, he glances in my direction, over the top of his wife’s head. I see the flicker of recognition I never noticed at the event. Wide eyes take in my swollen belly, and then they narrow.
He knows what I’m here for.
And it’s in this moment I find the nerve to approach them. As I stomp over, his eyes widen, and he reaches for his wife, his hands settling on her shoulders before running down her arms. A touch meant to soothe the impending blow?
I think not.
She turns when I call out her name. “Paula!”
Pain twists in my chest when her eyes light up at the sight of me.
“Daniela! What are you doing here?”
She sidles closer to her husband, reaching to grip his hand. It’s a silent reminder this asshole belongs to her.
Even if I had him for a few hours over seven months ago.
“Just running an important errand,” I offer as I meet Matthew’s shrewd gaze. “I assume this is your…”
“Husband,” she supplies, pride in her tone as she places a hand on his chest.
Your husband, the father of my child.
I don’t miss that he doesn’t reach out to shake my hand, remaining silent, as if he’s trying to figure out the connection here.
“You did such a beautiful job on the party. I can’t wait to keep working together,” she gushes as she leans into him.
I catch the way his eyebrows raise at the thought of seeing me again, at the notion that the consequences of his actions might actually break his facade of a happy home.
In lieu of a response, I offer her a wide smile, and I hear a familiar ringtone. She glances down at the phone in her hand and steps away to answer it without so much as a parting word.
“I have to take this.” She aims the words at her husband, and I keep my eyes trained on him as she gives us space.
With her occupied, he turns to me, eyes narrowed as he assesses me. “Surely you aren’t here to tell me that’s my responsibility,” he hisses, gesturing toward my protruding belly.
Grief and anger slice through me, and I swallow it down as a fierce protectiveness takes over.
“I was giving you the opportunity to be a man, but I can see that just isn’t who you are,” I tell him with a jerk of my chin, daring him to insist this baby isn’t his.
“Why would you keep it? Why would you then work with my wife? What kind of sick, twisted game are you playing?” He glances over at Paula, who’s blissfully yapping away, heading toward what I can only assume is her car.
“I didn’t even remember your name , let alone how to find your wife.”
“And what kind of woman does that make you?”
My palm itches to meet his face with as much force as my body can muster.
We stand there a moment, and I take a deep breath before I make an offer that goes against every instinct in my body.
It’s the right thing to do.
“Regardless, this is your baby?—”
“ That has nothing to do with me.” He leans in, and I wonder how I ever let this man in my bed, in my body .
“You listen to me. My kids will come from that woman and only that woman.” He jerks his thumb toward Paula, and her eyes catch mine.
She frowns a moment, walking back toward us with her phone still pressed to her ear.
By the time she reaches us, she’s ended the call.
“What’s going on here?”
Matthew straightens, his face contorting into a smile that looks near painful. How did I ever sleep with this bastard?
“I was just insisting on connecting her with some of my coworkers,” he says, his eyes only briefly meeting his wife’s before returning to glare at me. But even behind the glare, there’s a pleading there.
Don’t tell her.
Paula scoffs, rolling her eyes as I finally look at her again.
“I doubt they have the sort of taste a woman like Daniela requires. With no one to lead her, she’d be lost,” she muses as she shoves her phone into her purse.
These assholes belong together. “We’ll miss our reservation if we don’t leave now. ”
He nods, and she gives me a small wave as they walk away.
I am resigned to maintain this secret, apparently, whether I want to or not.
The weight of my secret is suffocating now, and I feel a pang of sadness for my unborn child, who’ll never know their biological father, never know where certain features came from, never know half of their family’s medical history, or why they possess certain habits.
My emotions overwhelm me, and I find myself sitting on a nearby bench, struggling to compose myself.
It isn’t just the realization I’ll be raising this child without their father, but the knowledge the man I created this baby with was a vile human being.
He’d rolled out of my bed and into his wife’s arms, who’d probably, in a fit of rage at the discovery, try to take my child from me.
Maybe I’m overthinking, creating scenarios that’ll never come to fruition, but the threat is enough for me to let out a tearful sob.
As I cry, garnering looks of concern from strangers, I think of Quintin. Why couldn’t he be the father of my child? Why would the universe bring him into my life to show me what a loving partner and coparent could look like when I can’t have him?
As I walk, the pain of my situation overwhelms me, the longing for a life that I could have had with Quintin as the biological father of my child growing stronger.
“I wish he was your father,” I whisper to my unborn child, rubbing my belly under my chunky sweater. “I wish it could be you and me and Quintin.”
A happy family.