22. Duncan
DUNCAN
I ended the call and stared at my phone, her voice still echoing in my ears. The controlled desperation I'd heard told me everything I needed to know—this wasn't about work or family dinner plans. This was a real crisis, and she was handling it alone.
The hotel address came through in a text message five minutes later, along with a room number. I didn't bother changing out of my tuxedo. I grabbed my keys and drove through the city streets faster than I should have, my mind spinning with possibilities.
The hotel was a standard business chain, the kind of place corporate travelers stayed when they needed functional rather than luxurious.
I took the elevator to the third floor and found her room at the end of the hallway.
The muffled sound of a child coughing came through the door before I even knocked.
She opened it almost immediately, and I felt my breath catch.
Ivy looked exhausted, her hair falling out of its elegant updo, her face pale with worry.
She'd changed out of her navy dress into jeans and a wrinkled sweater, but it was the small child clinging to her hip that made my world tilt sideways.
The little girl had dark hair and enormous hazel eyes, and she was staring at me with the solemn curiosity of a toddler. Behind Ivy, I could see two other small forms curled together on the hotel bed, fast asleep.
"Duncan," she whispered, shifting the child to her other hip. "Thank you for coming."
I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me, my eyes taking in the scene. The space felt cramped and chaotic—a diaper bag sat open on the floor next to bottles of children's medicine, toys scattered across the carpet, and the faint smells of fever and exhaustion hanging in the air.
On the bed, wrapped in a hotel blanket, lay a small boy who was clearly sick. His cheeks were flushed with fever, and every few seconds, he coughed in his sleep. The sound was harsh and congested, the kind that made your chest ache in sympathy.
"What happened?" I asked, though my voice came out rougher than I intended.
Ivy shifted the little girl again, who had buried her face against Ivy's shoulder. "This is Elena," she said quietly. "The two on the bed are Chrissy and Sammy. Sammy spiked a fever tonight, and his breathing got really bad."
I nodded, still trying to process what I was seeing. "You said it was a family emergency."
"It is." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "My mom's immune system is compromised from the chemotherapy. We couldn't risk keeping the kids at the house if Sammy has something contagious."
The pieces began falling into place. The panicked phone call from her father. The way she'd fled the gala without explanation. The terror in her eyes when she'd seen his name on her phone.
"So you brought them here," I said, gesturing around the small hotel room.
"I didn't have a choice. A pediatrician came to examine Sammy—she thinks it's RSV, but we won't know for sure without tests." Ivy's voice cracked slightly. "I've been trying to keep his fever down, but it's been hours and nothing's working."
I watched her rock Elena gently, the automatic motion of a mother comforting her child. The little girl's eyes were heavy with sleep, but she kept glancing at me with wary curiosity.
Something shifted in her expression. "Duncan, I need to tell you something. I should have told you a long time ago."
My stomach clenched. Here it comes, I thought. The other shoe dropping. The secret she'd been keeping that would explain everything.
She walked to the bed and carefully placed Elena next to her siblings, tucking the blanket around her small form. When she turned back to me, her hands were shaking.
"The children," she started, then stopped. "They're mine. All three of them."
I felt the words hit me with stunning force, but I kept my expression neutral. "I can see that."
"No, Duncan. You don't understand." She wrapped her arms around herself, and I could see tears gathering in her eyes. "They're yours too."
The room went completely silent except for the sound of my own heartbeat roaring in my ears. I stared at her, waiting for the words to make sense, waiting for my brain to process what she'd just said.
"What did you say?"
"They're your children." The words came out in a rush now, as if she'd been holding them back for so long, they couldn't be contained anymore.
"The night we were together, I got pregnant.
I found out and I left Boston, and I was so scared and ashamed that I never told anyone. Not my parents, not you, not anyone."
I turned away from her, my legs carrying me to the hotel window without conscious thought. The city lights blurred together as I gripped the windowsill, my knuckles white with the force of my grip.
Three years. She'd been raising my children for three years, and I'd known nothing about it.
"Duncan, please say something," she whispered behind me.
I couldn't speak, couldn't think. Every interaction we'd had over the past six weeks was suddenly reframed in my mind. Every careful professional boundary we'd maintained. Every moment I'd wondered why she seemed so familiar, why I felt drawn to her in ways I couldn't explain.
The little boy on the bed coughed again, and I found myself really looking at him for the first time. Even flushed with fever, I could see the resemblance—the shape of his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw. The same features I saw in the mirror every morning.
"How old are they?" I asked, my voice sounding strange and distant. It was more than three years ago that we were together. Almost four now… My brain just wouldn’t calculate the math.
"They just turned three in September."
Three years old. Three years of birthdays and first words and bedtime stories that I'd missed. Three years of her handling everything alone while I'd been none the wiser.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I turned back to face her, and she flinched at whatever she saw in my expression.
"I was twenty when it happened, Duncan. Twenty and terrified and convinced that you'd only stay with me out of pity or obligation.
" Tears were streaming down her face now.
"I knew what people would say—that I was trying to trap you or get money from you.
I couldn't bear the thought of you looking at me that way.
The idea that I'd just be another scandal that dragged your name through the mud. "
"So you decided to lie to me instead."
"I decided to protect them. And myself." Her voice grew stronger, more defiant. "I was barely more than a child myself, and I did what I thought was best."
I looked at the three sleeping figures on the bed, trying to reconcile this new reality with everything I thought I knew. These were my children. My blood. My responsibility. And I'd been completely absent from their lives.
"Do they know?" I asked.
She shook her head. "They're too young to understand. They know they don't have a daddy who lives with us, but they've never asked direct questions."
The weight of what she'd stolen from me was crushing. Not just the years with my children, but the choice to be their father. She'd made that decision for me, decided I wasn't worthy of knowing they existed.
"You lied to me every single day," I said, my voice low and controlled. "Every conversation we had, every meeting, every moment we spent together. You looked me in the eye and lied."
"I know." She was crying openly now, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. "I know, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Duncan."
I felt something cold and familiar settling in my chest—the same feeling I'd had when Miranda had betrayed me, when I'd realized how thoroughly I'd been played. But this was worse. This was three years of deception, three children who should have known their father.
"I trusted you," I said. "I told you things I've never told anyone. I let you into my life, into my work, into my head. And the entire time, you were keeping this from me."
"I was trying to protect everyone."
"You were protecting yourself." The words came out harsher than I intended, but I couldn't stop them. "You were protecting yourself from having to deal with the consequences of your choices."
She flinched as if I'd struck her. "That's not fair."
"Fair?" I laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You want to talk about fair? Is it fair that I've missed three years of their lives? Is it fair that they don't know who their father is? Is it fair that you've been struggling alone when I could have been helping?"
On the bed, one of the twins stirred and made a soft sound in her sleep. Ivy immediately moved toward her, checking to make sure she was still settled.
Watching her with the children, I could see the depth of her love for them. The way she moved around them spoke of countless nights spent caring for them, worrying about them, protecting them from a world that might judge them for being fatherless.
But it also reminded me of how completely she'd shut me out of that love.
"I need to go," I said, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears.
"Duncan, please. Let me explain?—"
"Explain what? How you've been lying to me for months? How you let me fall in love with you while keeping my own children a secret?" I moved toward the door, my hands shaking with the effort to keep my voice low. "There's nothing left to explain."
She stepped in front of me, her face streaked with tears. "You promised me that you wouldn't hold my past choices against me."
The memory hit me hard. I had said that. I'd meant it at the time, before I knew the full scope of what she'd kept from me.
"I didn't know you'd kept my children from me," I said.
"I was scared. I was so young and scared and I didn't know how to fix it once so much time had passed." She was pleading now, her voice breaking. "I wanted to tell you so many times, but I didn't know how."
Looking at her, I could see the girl she'd been four years ago—young and frightened and overwhelmed by circumstances beyond her control. Part of me wanted to understand, wanted to forgive her for making an impossible choice in an impossible situation.
But the larger part of me was drowning in the reality of what I'd lost. Three years of bedtime stories. Three years of first steps and first words. Three years of being the father these children needed.
"I can't do this right now," I said, reaching for the door handle.
"Duncan, please don't leave like this."
I turned back to look at her one more time. She was standing in the middle of the cramped hotel room, surrounded by the evidence of the life she'd built without me. Her face was wet with tears, her hands clasped in front of her as if she were praying.
"You lied to me for three years," I said quietly. "Now I'm supposed to thank you for telling me?"
I watched her face crumple. She pressed her hands to her mouth, trying to muffle the sound of her crying.
I knew I should stay. I knew I should comfort her, should try to work through this together. But I also knew that if I stayed, I'd say things I couldn't take back. I'd lash out at her the way my father had lashed out at my mother when his anger overwhelmed his control.
I wouldn't be that man. I wouldn't let my hurt turn into cruelty.
But I also couldn't pretend this revelation hadn't changed everything.
Walking back to her, I sucked in a breath and held it. When I stood in front of her I held her face in my hands and pressed a hard kiss to her forehead. "I'm so hurt, Ivy. And I'm furious. And we will talk, but if I don't walk away, I will explode."
Then I walked away from her, opened the door, and stepped into the hallway, leaving her standing there with our children sleeping peacefully behind her, unaware that their world had just shifted on its axis.