Chapter 14
Sam - Seven Days After Chloe’s Birthday
I didn’t sleep.
But instead of spending the night in a panic spiral, I’d used the time productively. By dawn, I had a clear plan: a list of contact numbers to call, notes on exactly what I needed to say to Jenna, and a strategy for how to handle things when Chloe was ready to talk.
Jack and Harper had stayed the night, taking the guest room.
Jack had left for work early after getting a rundown of my plan and making me promise to call him with updates.
Harper emerged from upstairs around six-thirty, took one look at me sitting at the kitchen table with my organized notes and a single cup of coffee, and smiled.
“That’s more like it,” she said. “You look like yourself again. Jack’s parents are going to keep Emma today.” She settled into the chair across from me. “So I can stay as long as you need me to.”
I nodded.
“Any luck?” she asked gently.
“Her parents aren’t picking up. Might be screening my calls.” I rubbed my eyes, feeling like I’d aged ten years overnight. “I left messages explaining there’s been a misunderstanding, but I don’t know if they’ll even listen to them.”
“They’ll listen.” Harper set a mug of tea in front of me. “But you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that they won’t tell you where she is, even if they know.”
“I know. But I have to try.” I pulled out the small velvet box I’d been carrying in my pocket. “I bought this ring months ago, Harper. Was going to propose on her birthday.”
Harper was quiet for a long moment, her expression shifting between sympathy for me and something that looked like painful recognition.
I knew she was putting herself in Chloe’s shoes - the woman who’d been kept in the dark while the man she loved spent time with his ex.
Her own experience with Jack’s secrets was written all over her face.
“I know that. But Chloe doesn’t know that. ”
“She doesn’t know any of it. She thinks I’ve been planning to leave her. She thinks Leo changes everything between us.”
“Doesn’t he?”
The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“Doesn’t having a son change things between you and Chloe?” Harper’s voice was careful, probing. “Not the way Jenna probably convinced her it does, but practically speaking? Your life is going to be different now. Chloe’s life would be different, too, if she chose to be part of it.”
I thought about Leo asking if I was his daddy, the way his face lit up when I pushed him on the swings, the protective instinct I felt every time I was around him.
“Yes,” I said honestly. “Everything’s different now.
I’m a father. I have responsibilities I didn’t have before, priorities that have shifted in ways I’m still figuring out. ”
“And?”
I picked up the ring box, turning it over in my palm. “Having Leo doesn’t make me love her less. It makes me love her more because I can see what an amazing mother she’d be, what an incredible family we could have together.”
My phone rang, and I lunged for it, hoping it was Chloe. “Hello?”
“Is this Sam Mitchell?” The voice was female, and I recognized it immediately despite never having spoken to her directly. I’d walked in on the end of enough calls between Chloe and her mother to know that measured tone, the careful way she spoke.
“Yes.”
“This is Erin Parker, Chloe’s mom. I got your message.”
We’d been trying to arrange a meeting for months, but something always came up on one side or the other. We’d finally settled on the summer holidays as a sure thing. Now here I was, talking to her mother for the first time over a phone call in the middle of a crisis.
Despite the situation, relief flooded through me so suddenly that I felt dizzy. “Mrs. Parker, thank you for calling back. I need to find Chloe. There’s been a terrible misunderstanding–”
“About the little boy.”
“You know about Leo?”
“Chloe called us yesterday evening from the road. She was… very upset. She said you had a son you’d been hiding from her, that you’d been planning to end your relationship, so she was leaving for a few days while you moved out.
” Erin’s voice was carefully neutral. “She said it was just like what happened with Sean.”
From the road. She was driving somewhere, but where?
Just like what happened with Sean. The ex-fiancé who’d cheated on her, who’d destroyed her trust in relationships entirely.
“Mrs. Parker, it’s nothing like Sean. I never cheated on Chloe.
I never wanted to leave her.” I took a breath, keeping my voice steady.
“I was planning to propose to her on her birthday. But that evening, a woman I had a fling with five years ago texted me with a photo of a boy she said was my son. I panicked and made the wrong call - I tried to handle it alone instead of bringing Chloe in immediately. Then someone lied to her, convinced her that having a son meant I didn’t want to be with her anymore. None of it’s true.”
Silence on the other end of the line, then: “You’ve been keeping this secret for nearly a week.”
“I wanted to have all the answers before I told Chloe - the paternity test results, some idea of what this would mean for our lives. I thought if I could just figure everything out first, I could present her with a clear picture instead of dumping chaos on her.” I closed my eyes.
“I’m an idiot who thought I could handle everything myself instead of trusting her to help me figure out a complicated situation together. ”
The truth was, I’d been imagining Chloe as part of my future for so long that I couldn’t picture it without her anymore.
Not the big moments – the wedding, the family we’d build – but the small ones.
Coming home to find her scrubs draped over the bathroom door because she’d been too tired to hang them up properly.
The way she’d steal fries off my plate, even when she’d ordered her own.
Her terrible singing in the shower. The sound of her laugh when I made a bad pun.
I wanted to show her Leo’s drawings and watch her face light up.
I wanted her opinion on how to handle a scraped knee or a bad dream.
I wanted to build pillow forts together and teach him to ride a bike together and figure out this whole parenting thing together, the way we’d figured out everything else.
“I know how it looks. I know why she thinks what she thinks. But Mrs. Parker, I love your daughter. I want to marry her. I want to build a life with her that includes my son.”
I heard Mrs. Parker take a deep breath.
“Mrs. Parker, I need you to understand something. I’ve dated other women.
I’ve had relationships that were fine, comfortable, easy.
But Chloe—” My voice cracked. “Chloe is the only person I’ve ever met who makes me want to be better just by existing.
Not because she demands it or makes me feel inadequate, but because watching her move through the world with that much integrity and compassion makes me want to live up to her standard. ”
I thought about last winter when we’d been snowed in for three days.
Most couples would have driven each other crazy.
We’d made a blanket fort in the living room, binged terrible reality TV, and talked for hours.
She’d told me about her dreams for the clinic and her complicated relationship with her parents’ expectations.
I’d told her about feeling like I was supposed to want more than a bar in a small town, about watching my friends’ lives get bigger while mine stayed small.
She’d looked at me with those green eyes and said, “Sam, your life isn’t small. You’re the heart of this town. People come to the Copper Fox because you make them feel like they belong somewhere. That’s not small. That’s everything.”
The next day, when the roads cleared, I drove to the jeweler’s in the city.
I’d looked at everything they had, but nothing felt right.
So I’d spent ages explaining exactly what I wanted – simple, elegant, nothing flashy because that wasn’t who she was.
The jeweler had to make it custom. I’d picked it up just a few weeks before her birthday, the receipt tucked away in my office safe from prying eyes.
“I can’t imagine my life without her in it,” I told Chloe’s mom.
“Not because I thought we should get married or because we’d been together long enough.
Because she’s the only person I want to share everything with – the good days and the hard ones, the victories and the failures, everything. She’s the one.”
Another long pause, then: “Where is Leo now?”
“Leo and Jenna are staying at a motel in Millfield that I’ve been paying for.
They were moving around a lot after her divorce.
She’d run out of money, and they were close to living out of their car.
I couldn’t let a four-year-old live like that, so I offered to pay for stable accommodation while we sorted out paternity. ” I took a breath.
“And yesterday?”
“I don’t know for sure what happened, but I do know Jenna went to see Chloe yesterday.
I’d bet my life she lied about what was going on - convinced Chloe that I was planning to leave her, which is the exact opposite of the truth.
” I kept my voice level. “My friends, Jack and Harper, convinced me not to confront Jenna immediately, to think clearly first. Which is what I’m doing now - getting the facts, understanding what I’m up against, and figuring out how to fix this. ”
There was a long pause. Then: “Sam, why are your tenants moving out?”
The question caught me completely off guard. “What? My tenants?”
“Chloe mentioned that your tenant called while she was home yesterday. Said they could move out immediately, be out in two days.”