2. Luciana Creed
LUCIANA CREED
My mouth opened, but no words came out. Not even a fucking sound. All I could do was close it right back as Maddox’s words replayed in my head.
Why didn’t you tell me?
There was no need in playing stupid as if I didn’t know what he was talking about, no matter how dumb the expression was coating my face. Yet, I didn’t want to say the wrong shit, like, why the hell would I tell you that you got some slut pregnant and now our whole future was ruined?
No, I couldn’t say that… Though I wanted to.
Instead, I just continued to stand here and not say shit.
“So, you ain’t got shit to say?” He then asked me. Again, I said nothing as I rapidly batted my eyes, feeling myself getting upset as I had to relive the whole moment all over again.
From the moment I first checked his email, because he never signed out, to her ass thinking she was talking to him and told him that she was pregnant. The slut even sent an ultrasound from the doctor to let ‘him’ know it was real. I was sick to my fucking stomach.
…and now, I was sick all over again.
Grabbing my stomach, I took off running to the hall bathroom, closing and locking the door behind me. I was now in my second trimester, and I could already tell this pregnancy was about to wear me the fuck out. This was about to be a long ass, miserable, nine months.
Almost an hour had passed since I ran to the bathroom and I walked out to Maddox still standing in the same spot, waiting for me. Now, the whole time I was in there, I wasn’t throwing up. I was just trying to buy time, thinking his ass would just drop the whole thing.
Boy, was I wrong.
“You done?” he asked, giving me a look of death with one brow raised.
I stopped a few feet away from him and folded my arms across my chest, mostly because I needed something to do with them.
I couldn’t believe he was still standing in the exact same spot I’d left him in almost an hour ago.
Same posture. Same expression. Same cold stare that made it impossible to tell what the hell he was thinking.
That should’ve made me feel better. Instead, it made me nervous, because yelling I could handle. Anger I could handle. This quiet version of Maddox… I couldn’t.
My eyes moved over his face carefully, searching for something. Anything. A clue. A crack. Some indication of exactly how much damage Gia had done before he came home.
The problem was, Maddox had always been hard to read when he wanted to be, especially when something really mattered.
“What exactly did Gia tell you?” I asked, but the second the question left my mouth, I wished I could grab it and shove it right back in.
Maddox’s expression didn’t change. Not even a little. Yet somehow the air in the room shifted anyway.
His head slightly tilted as his eyes stayed locked on mine.
“What exactly did she tell me?” he repeated.
Shit.
My stomach dropped immediately, because I heard it. The same thing he had heard that made him repeat it.
I didn’t ask what he was talking about…
I didn’t deny anything…
I didn’t even act confused…
I asked what Gia told him, which meant I already knew, and judging by the look on his face, he knew it too.
Silence continued filling the space between us until it became uncomfortable.
Then painful… Then damn near unbearable… I swallowed hard before looking away first.
“Maddox—”
“Nah.” His voice wasn’t loud, but it stopped me immediately from saying what I was going to say. “Fuck that…”
My heart started beating faster.
“Maddox… Baby?—”
“What exactly did Gia tell me?” he repeated again, pushing away from the wall. “That’s the question you came up with?”
I rubbed my hand across my forehead, feeling the beads of sweat forming there.
This was going left fast—too damn fast if you asked me.
“I don’t know what she said. So, that’s why I’m asking.” The lie sounded weak even to me.
“You don’t know?” I said nothing as I looked away. “I’m asking you a fucking question, Luciana.”
The way he said my name made my chest tighten. Not because he was yelling, because he wasn’t. There wasn’t any emotion in his voice at all. No anger. No sadness. Nothing.
Just pure disappointment…
…and that felt worse.
“What exactly am I supposed to think right now?” he asked.
“I walk in this gotdamn house asking why you didn’t tell me I had a fucking daughter, and the first thing out your mouth is asking what Gia said.
I’m not even ‘bout to insult my own intelligence by asking how you know her, because it’s clear as day you already knew exactly who the fuck I was talking about. What I’m trying to figure out is why.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Maddox shook his head before dragging his hand across his beard. For the first time since I’d walked out of the bathroom, he looked away from me.
It was just for a second, though.
When he locked his eyes back with me, he asked, “All this fucking time, you knew and ain’t say shit. Even when I told you about her, you knew and ain’t say a gotdamn thing. You sat in my fucking face like it was your first time hearing the shit.”
I felt tears forming in the corner of my eyes immediately, because I knew what was coming. Once Maddox accepted that I knew, the conversation would change.
It was no longer going to be whether I did it or not, but why I did, and that was the part I wasn’t ready for.
Even so, I quietly admitted, “I found the emails.”
The words seemed to hang in the air between us as neither of us said anything after my little confession.
Maddox didn’t even blink.
“I found them,” I repeated, my voice barely above a whisper. “You had left your email open on the laptop. I wasn’t looking for anything. I just saw her name.”
His jaw flexed hard. I watched the muscle tick before settling again.
Still, he didn’t yell…
Still no shouting…
Nothing…
No lie, that shit made me want to cry even harder, because this wasn’t a fight. It was a reckoning—the kind you couldn’t talk your way out of.
For a long while, Maddox just stared at me. His eyes moved over my face like he was seeing somebody different than the woman he’d been married to all these years. Then he looked away, dragging his hand across his beard before letting out a slow breath.
“You know what fucked me up the most?” he asked in a low tone.
I swallowed hard but didn’t answer. “When I finally met her, and she looked just like me.” He couldn’t even look at me when he said that.
His eyes were fixed somewhere over my shoulder.
“She didn’t hesitate. Ain’t act shy. Ain’t do none of that shit kids normally do around strangers. ”
I looked down as I whispered his name, “Maddox?—”
“Nah, let me finish… Do you know how crazy that felt?” he asked. “Looking at a little girl that got my eyes looking back at me? One that I didn’t even know about.”
Tears burned the back of my eyes, because I wasn’t prepared for this part. I had spent years convincing myself this situation was about Gia.
The pregnancy…
The marriage…
The secret…
I wasn’t prepared for him to make it about that little girl.
“I sat there looking at pictures when Gia first told me about her, Luciana.” I swallowed hard when he said that. “A whole damn childhood that I missed.”
His laugh was short and harsh.
“Birthday parties. Christmases. School pictures. Dance recitals. School projects and spelling bees and shit. Years of her life that I’ve missed.”
I briefly closed my eyes and whispered, “Maddox, baby?—”
“No.”
This time when he interrupted me, all I could hear was pain in his voice.
“Don’t keep saying my fucking name every time this shit get uncomfortable for you.” The words sliced right through me. “You know what I think when I look at pictures or when I see her?” he continued. “Not once have I thought about Gia… or you.”
That surprised me enough to look up and his eyes met mine immediately.
“Not once… I don’t think about another woman. I don’t even think about the one night stand I had.” Hearing that almost broke me, but I held my composure. “I don’t think about none of that bullshit. I always think about everything I missed.”
The tears I’d been fighting finally spilled over, because deep down… that was the one thing I never wanted him to focus on… the years he missed.
“Her first day of school. Every time she got sick and wanted her parents. Every accomplishment. Every report card. Every time she probably wanted somebody to tell her they were proud of her.”
His voice cracked before he looked away. Maddox Creed wasn’t the type of man who let people see him crack. Yet here he was standing in front of me trying to process nine years of moments he’d never get back.
“You made that decision for me.”
The words landed like a punch, causing me to immediately shake my head.
“No, Maddox, it wasn’t like?—”
“How was it?”
His eyes snapped back to mine, and for the first time since he walked through the door, there was anger there.
Not explosive anger, though… It was worse. This anger was that controlled kind of anger.
“You found out I had a daughter and decided I didn’t need to know.”
“Maddox—”
“You found out she was pregnant and decided for me.”
Every word hit harder than the last.
“You decided what I could handle.” His voice dropped lower. “You decided what kind of father I would’ve been to her.”
I couldn’t even find a response, because everything I had prepared to defend if the truth ever came out, suddenly sounded stupid, selfish and weak.
I’d spent years convincing myself I did what I had to do to protect my relationship… To protect our future… To protect the life we eventually built… But standing here listening to him talk about his daughter… none of those reasons sounded good enough anymore.
Not even to me.
The silence felt suffocating. Maddox just stood there looking at me, waiting, but there wasn’t a single explanation I could give that was going to undo any of this.
Nothing was going to give him those years back.
Nothing was going to change the fact that he once had a daughter out there growing up without him.