8. Stefan
— ? —
Stefan
I couldn’t stop pacing.
Back and forth across the hotel room, my hands in my hair, my chest so tight I could barely breathe. The image of that little girl was burned into my brain. Brown eyes, the dimple.
My dimple. My eyes. My daughter.
Her first word. I wasn’t there for it. Some other sound came out of her mouth for the very first time and I was hundreds of miles away, not knowing she existed.
Her first steps. She learned to walk without me. Took those wobbly, uncertain steps toward someone else’s arms. Someone else caught her when she fell.
Her first birthday. And I was nowhere. I was sitting in my office in Chicago, staring at a photograph of my ex-wife, drowning in whiskey and wondering what I did wrong.
Three years. Three years of firsts that I would never get back.
How could Layla do this to me?
I stopped at the window and pressed my forehead against the glass. The Savannah skyline stretched out below me, all historic buildings and church steeples, and I hated every inch of it. This city had been hiding my daughter from me for three years. This city knew her when I didn’t.
How could she hate me so much that she’d keep my child from me?
I slammed my palm against the window frame. The glass rattled but didn’t break.
What did I do? What the fuck did I do to deserve this?
The knock at the door made me jump.
I crossed the room in four strides and yanked it open. Jaden stood in the hallway, straight off the first flight out of O’Hare, still wearing the clothes he’d thrown on when he got my text. Wrinkled shirt. Jeans. Hair sticking up on one side.
“I came as soon as I got your text.” He pushed past me into the room, his eyes scanning my face. “What the hell is going on? Your message didn’t make any sense.”
“Close the door.” I was already pacing again, unable to stand still.
He kicked it shut behind him and grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop. “Stefan. Talk to me. What are you talking about?”
“I have a daughter.”
Jaden’s hand fell away from my arm. His face went blank, then confused, then something that looked almost like fear.
“What did you just say?” His voice came out strangled, like someone had their hands around his throat.
“Layla.” I pulled away from him and started pacing again. “She was here. In a coffee shop this morning. She had a little girl with her, and she’s mine, Jaden. One look at her and I knew. She’s mine.”
“Hold on.” He held up both hands, backing toward the bed. “Slow down. Start from the beginning.”
“I walked into a coffee shop.” I stopped in front of the window, my back to him. “I just wanted coffee. That’s all. I was jet-lagged and tired and I had a meeting in two hours and I just wanted some fucking caffeine.”
“And Layla was there?” Jaden’s voice was careful now, the way you talk to someone who might be losing their mind.
“She was sitting at a table by the window.” I turned around to face him. “Laughing at something. Looking happy. Looking like she hadn’t spent the last four years destroying my life.”
“Jesus.” He sank onto the edge of the bed, his hands gripping his knees. “And the kid?”
“She was sitting across from her.” My voice cracked and I didn’t try to hide it. “This tiny little thing with dark hair and brown eyes and my face, Jaden. She had my fucking face.”
“Are you sure?” He leaned forward, his expression intense. “I mean, are you absolutely certain she’s yours? Maybe she just looks like you. Maybe it’s a coincidence.”
“She has the dimple.” I jabbed my finger at my left cheek. “Right here. The same dimple I have, the same one my father has, the same one that shows up in every Graham family photo going back three generations. That’s not a coincidence.”
“Okay.” Jaden rubbed his hands over his face. “Okay. So you think she’s yours. What did Layla say?”
“She told me to leave.” The anger flared up again, hot and bitter. “She grabbed her things and she grabbed the kid and she told me to get the hell away from them.”
“Did she deny it?” He dropped his hands and looked at me. “Did she say the kid wasn’t yours?”
“She said I was being presumptuous.” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “That’s the word she used. Presumptuous. Like I was making assumptions based on nothing.”
“What’s her name?” Jaden’s voice had gone quiet. “The kid. What’s her name?”
“Cece.” The name caught in my throat. “Her name is Cece. She’s three years old.”
“Three.” He did the math in his head, I could see it happening. “So Layla was already pregnant when she left.”
“She must have been.” I stopped in front of him, my hands clenched at my sides. “She must have known. She must have found out she was pregnant and decided to run instead of telling me.”
“Why would she do that?” Jaden shook his head slowly. “That doesn’t make sense. You two were happy. You were trying to have kids. Why would she hide a pregnancy from you?”
“I don’t know.” The words came out broken, jagged. “I’ve been asking myself that question for four years and I still don’t have an answer.”
“What happened when you talked to her?” He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “At the coffee shop. What exactly did she say?”
“She said I didn’t deserve answers.” I shrugged off his hand and walked to the minibar, grabbing a tiny bottle of whiskey. “She said I didn’t get to show up after four years and demand explanations.”
“That’s bullshit.” Jaden followed me across the room. “You’re the one who got left. You’re the one who didn’t know. How does she get to be angry at you?”
“I don’t know.” I cracked open the bottle and downed it in one swallow. “But she looked at me like I was the enemy, Jaden. Like I was someone she needed to protect her daughter from.”
“Her daughter.” He grabbed another bottle from the minibar and opened it. “You mean your daughter.”
“She doesn’t know that.” My voice cracked again. “Cece. She doesn’t know I’m her father. She looked at me like I was a stranger. She asked Layla who I was and Layla said I was no one. Just someone she used to know.”
“Fuck.” Jaden took a long drink. “That’s brutal.”
“She waved at me.” I closed my eyes, seeing it again. That little hand. That cheerful smile. “When Layla was carrying her out. Cece looked back over her shoulder and she waved at me and she said she hoped I wouldn’t be sad anymore.”
“Stefan.” Jaden’s voice was soft now, almost gentle.
“She has no idea who I am.” I opened my eyes and looked at him. “My own daughter waved goodbye to me like I was some random stranger in a coffee shop. She doesn’t know my name. She doesn’t know I exist. She’s been alive for three years and she has no idea she has a father.”
“Are you absolutely sure she’s yours?” Jaden set down his bottle and faced me. “I’m not trying to be a dick, but you need to be certain before you do anything. Have you considered that maybe Layla moved on? Maybe she met someone else and the kid is his?”
“The timeline doesn’t work.” I shook my head.
“Unless she was cheating.”
“She wasn’t cheating.” The certainty in my voice surprised even me. “Layla would never cheat. She’s a lot of things, but she’s not a cheater.”
“I don’t have answers for you, man.” Jaden stood up and gripped my shoulders. “But I think you need to find them. Whatever happened four years ago, you need to know the truth.”
“How?” I pulled away from him and walked to the window. “She won’t talk to me. She made that very clear. She told me to leave her alone.”
“So you’re just going to give up? You’re going to walk away from your daughter because Layla told you to?”
“Of course not.” I spun around to face him. “But I can’t force her to talk to me. I can’t force her to let me see Cece. If I push too hard, she might run again. She might take Cece and disappear and I’ll never find them.”
“So what’s the plan?” Jaden crossed his arms. “You just wait around and hope she changes her mind?”
“I gave her my card.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
“And if she doesn’t call?”
“Then I figure out my next move.” I dropped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. “I have rights, Jaden. If Cece is my daughter, I have legal rights. I could demand a paternity test. I could get lawyers involved.”
“But you don’t want to do that.” It wasn’t a question.
“No.” I sat up and looked at him. “I don’t want to traumatize a three-year-old with courtrooms and custody battles. I don’t want Cece’s first real memory of me to be me forcing my way into her life against her mother’s wishes.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want to understand.” The words came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep in my chest. “I want to know why Layla left. I want to know what I did wrong. I want to know why she hated me so much that she’d keep my daughter from me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t hate you.” Jaden sat down beside me. “Maybe there’s something else going on. Something you don’t know about.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But the way you described her reaction, the fear on her face, the way she ran. That sounds like more than just anger. That sounds like someone who’s scared.”
“Scared of me?” I turned to look at him. “What would she have to be scared of?”
“Not scared of you.” Jaden held my gaze. “Scared of something. Or someone. Maybe you’re just the guy who got caught in the middle of something he doesn’t understand.”
“That’s not helpful.” I fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling again.
“I’m trying to figure this out. Because none of it makes sense. Happy couples don’t just implode overnight. Loving wives don’t run away and hide pregnancies from their husbands. Something happened that you don’t know about.”
“My mother said she couldn’t handle the pressure.” I closed my eyes. “She said Layla felt suffocated by the Graham family expectations.”
“And that tracks with the woman you married?” Jaden’s voice was skeptical. “The woman who went toe to toe with your mother at every family event? The woman who told Stella Graham to go fuck herself at your wedding reception?”
“She didn’t tell her to go fuck herself.” A ghost of a smile tugged at my mouth. “She just suggested that my mother might benefit from removing the stick from her ass.”
“Same thing.” Jaden laughed, but it faded quickly. “My point is, Layla wasn’t the type to buckle under pressure. She was the type to push back. So why would she suddenly decide she couldn’t handle it and run?”
“I don’t know.” I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at him. “But I’m going to find out.”
“How?”
“I have a week.” I sat up, a plan starting to form in my head. “I have a week in this city, and somewhere in this city is a woman who has all the answers. I just need to figure out how to get her to talk to me.”
“Without scaring her off.”
“Without scaring her off.” I nodded. “And without traumatizing Cece. Whatever happens between me and Layla, that little girl is innocent. She doesn’t deserve to get caught in the crossfire.”
“So what’s the first step?” Jaden sat up beside me.
“I wait.”