CHAPTER TWELVE
The last thing Alex needed after an already overemotional day was to hash out the details of how Boo had come to be, but he knew better than to argue Ian's point.
Still, if Alex needed to tell anyone that story, did it have to be his long-lasting crush he'd wronged not once, but twice, and both times were related to said story?
You picked him, Alex reminded himself as he prepared a bottle for Boo. You went to him, knowing he was bound to have questions.
It would have been easy to dismiss those questions if they were coming from mere curiosity—Alex had managed just fine with his parents and his manager, after all—but he knew they weren't. Ian was asking for professional reasons, even though he was actually personally affected by it all, since the timeline aligned with their last meeting, and the one before that.
The night they'd spent together, which had been supposed to mark the beginning of something new.
Alex pushed that aside. He'd promised himself he was going to stop torturing himself with all the what-ifs. Nothing could come from that at this point.
Nothing good, at least.
Neither of them spoke until they settled on the couch, and even then there was a stretch of nothing but the sounds of Boo drinking from the bottle and the muffled street noise coming from outside.
As he stared down at his son, Alex figured he would never be ready to tell this story, so the only option was to start anyway.
"For the record, I don't think this has anything to do with the current situation, because there's merely a handful of people who know bits of this story and only two aside from me who know the whole of it, one of them being a very expensive lawyer who knows better than to break client confidentiality.
But still, I don't want you to wonder, and maybe there's something I'm missing, and if there is and it puts Boo in danger…
" Alex shook his head. "I can't take that risk.
So, here it goes. About fourteen months ago, I had an ill-advised one-night stand with a woman I've known for over a decade, someone I consider one of my closest friends.
We were both drunk and miserable, and nostalgic for shit that we were starting to realize hadn't been all that good for us and yet was still important. "
Once upon a time, it had been everything. The three of them, the music they'd made together—they'd been living the dream.
"Nostalgia is dangerous, and so is toasting to it with too many tequila shots," he went on, gaze still fixed on Boo's blissed out face as he continued to drink from the bottle.
"We knew sleeping together was a mistake and there were no expectations on either side, especially since our true interests lay elsewhere.
We moved on, and neither of us brought it up again, until three months had passed and I got a call.
She was panicking and crying, and I boarded the next plane.
She was pregnant, the baby was definitely mine, and she didn't want it.
She never saw herself becoming a mother. "
Swallowing hard, Alex closed his eyes as he recalled that conversation.
"I don't need any more reminders of my mistakes. I'm haunted by them as is."
"She had been thinking about abortion, but she knew I hoped to have kids one day, so she offered to carry the baby to term if I wanted it.
" Alex paused and opened his eyes. Boo's eyelids were dropping, but he was fighting it as he kept staring up at him.
"I was terrified. I did want kids in theory, in some faraway future, but I never pictured anything like this, and definitely not anytime soon.
But when she told me, it was like a switch turned in my head and I wanted this desperately.
She signed all the paperwork relinquishing her parental rights.
We made it sound as if she was a surrogate for me, because neither of us wanted the kid to ever feel unwanted. "
"Is there a possibility she might have changed her mind?" Ian asked quietly after a while, and Alex realized he'd fallen silent, too absorbed in Boo.
"No." He shifted his son upright against his chest to burp him and inhaled the familiar scent of the baby to calm himself.
"We're still in contact and if she wanted to meet him or whatever, she would have asked, since she knows I wouldn't tell her no.
But she doesn't. We talked about it, before and after Boo was born.
She truly never wanted kids and going through the pregnancy didn't change that—the opposite, actually.
She only saw him once, while they both had to stay in hospital for a few days after she gave birth two weeks before she was due.
That was six months ago," Alex added, nuzzling Boo's head.
"She went into labor in the evening, called me, I caught the first flight out of DC and got there half an hour before he was born. "
A sharp inhale from Ian pulled Alex out of his head, and he looked over to see Ian's wide eyes.
Then it clicked.
"Yeah," he whispered, rubbing Boo's back when his son let out a grumbling sound. "That was my emergency that night. I wasn't… I wasn't running away. I really needed to leave."
Ian glanced at Boo with an expression Alex couldn't read.
"Good call."
"I'm sorry for—" Alex cut himself off when Ian shook his head.
"If you'd stayed instead of going, you wouldn't be the person I thought you were."
And now? Alex wanted to ask. What do you think of me now?
It wasn't a fair question, though, nor was it the right time to ask. While Ian deserved an explanation—not just for that night, but also the one before it—that wasn't why they were talking right now.
"She's not going to change her mind," he said instead, offering an easy truth, one he was certain of. "And she might not want him, but she doesn't want to hurt him, either."
Em didn't want anyone to get hurt, and it was at once the best and the worst part about her.
"Could she have told anyone?" Ian asked, and Alex shook his head.
"I don't think so. I mean, even her mother only knows the surrogacy story. From what I gathered, none of her friends knew she was pregnant, since she hid away as soon as she started to show."
"And how many people know about the baby's existence?"
"Aside from the hospital staff and the aforementioned lawyer, the two of us, her mother, my parents, my manager—and now you.
That's it." Alex got up when Boo's grumbling increased, a sure sign of an impending crying fit.
"If I believed someone was after him, I wouldn't have come here. Nothing's worth that risk."
"Of course you wouldn't." Ian's certainty was a balm on Alex's fried nerves.
"But we've already gone over what you think, so now we're going over everything else.
We may find nothing, and that's fine. A little over-protectiveness, especially from a first-time parent, is not unheard of. No one would blame you."
Alex rocked back and forth as Boo started to whimper.
"I would blame me," he admitted quietly after a while. "Of course, I hope it's nothing and I'm overreacting, but I don't want to be a helicopter parent."
Ian raised his eyebrows. "Wow, that's quite a jump."
Alex sagged. "I know, I know. I'm probably too tired to think straight, and I need to take Boo upstairs anyway, so—"
"Of course." Ian got up from the couch before Alex even finished. "We can pick it up tomorrow, since we'll have time before you have to leave."
"We'll have time."
Alex exhaled slowly and nodded, turning away before he'd say something he shouldn't and ruin everything.
Again.