Chapter Seventeen
LIAM
T he blaring of a phone ring tone jolts me awake from my dead sleep. What the hell? I thought I silenced it when I fell into the bottom bunk of the bed in the on-call room at around five this morning. Twenty-four-hour shifts are a bitch, but at least we can catch some sleep in between cases.
I’m so out of sorts, I don’t check the caller ID before I answer it. “Hello?”
“William Stokes!” Mom’s voice shrieks from the speaker and I have to pull it away from my ear so I don’t burst an eardrum. “What the hell are you doing?! How could you knock up some random woman?!”
“I… what?” Then my brain connects the dots as the last bit of sleepiness vanishes. “What are you talking about? Ella isn’t a random woman. Where’d you even hear about?—”
“You aren’t even going to try to deny it?!” she wails, and my phone pings with text messages. I put her on speaker and scroll through the links to different news sites she sent me. “There’s no point anyway. What do you have to say for yourself?”
My heart starts to pound out of my chest as I click on each of the links. “Stokes Fortune Spawns Secret Baby,” “Billionaire Stokes Not Stoked to Be a Father,” “Rumors of Stokes Secret Love Child: Fact vs. Fiction.”
No. No, no, no.
My blood runs cold at the images. Ella, Macie, Ollie, and me and the park. Us in front of her parents’ house. How did the paparazzi find us? How did I not notice them following us?
“This can’t be happening,” I mutter, scrolling through one of the stories.
“Oh, it’s happening alright, mister!” Mom nearly screams. “My election is coming up! How is it going to look that my son goes around fucking women out of wedlock?! How could you do this to me, Liam? After all I’ve done for you… Have you done a paternity test?”
Combined with the shock of the articles, her question catches me off guard, and I stumble over my answer. “No, I haven’t. But, I mean?—”
“That’s it. That’s how we’ll play this.” Mom’s hysterical shrieking banshee routine is gone and now I’m left with the no nonsense leader. “You will get a paternity test, William. Immediately. This woman?—”
“Ella,” I correct her, not liking how she’s talking about the women I love.
“That woman,” she doubles down, making my blood boil, “is simply a gold digger looking to drain you of every penny you have. I’ll be announcing the test at my damage control press conference.”
“Damage control?” My voice shakes with barely restrained anger, the shock of the situation giving way to the sensation of fierce protectiveness. The love of my life and my daughter do not require damage control. “Do not speak about her like that. You’re jumping to conclusions and have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
“How can I know anything when you don’t even answer the phone? All I know is that my election is on the line here, Liam, and you don’t seem to care.”
With that, she hangs up on me, and I’m left staring at the phone, stunned.
What the hell just happened? And Ella… fuck. Ella. I need to call her and warn her. Shit, what if she already knows? What if she reads about it before I can tell her? It’s seven in the morning, so I still have another four hours on my shift so I can’t even go see her. The hospital is understaffed as it is. Regret swirls in my gut as panic fills me. What the hell have I done? Why did I wait to tell her?
Stupid, stupid, stupid .
I navigate to her name in my phone and press “call.”
Voicemail. Shit!
I call again. Voicemail. Again.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Typing out a quick text message, I hope it’s enough to minimize the fallout that is sure to be catastrophic.
Maybe… maybe she’s sleeping. Or… or she already knows and is ignoring me.
What if everything is so colossally fucked up there’s no way to fix it? What if she doesn’t want to be with me once she knows? What if Ella doesn’t let me see Macie anymore?
The thoughts light a fire under my ass, and I’ve tried calling her five more times by the time my pager goes off, and they need me in the ER. Panic swirling in my gut, I make my way over to help with a toddler who stuck a marble up their nose.
The only thing that slightly consoles me is the fact that Mom will be trying to keep a lid on this, so I have some time. I’ll work the rest of my shift as normal, and then go find her. If she’s at work, hopefully, she won’t be on her phone. Then when I see her tonight, I can tell her about everything before she reads about it on the fucking news. If she hasn’t already heard about it.
After discharging the marble-nose toddler, something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye. Is that… Harvey? He’s moving quickly, keeping his head down as he passes through the ER, and that’s… fucking suspicious.
Without thinking, I go after him, knowing whatever he’s up to can’t be good. Staying a good fifteen feet behind him, I stick close to the wall, causing other doctors and nurses to give me weird looks as they pass by, but my eyes don’t leave Harvey. He stops in front of the elevator and presses the “up” button. The only floor above us in this section of the hospital is the long-term hospice care.
Once he disappears into the elevator, I go to the door that leads to the stairwell and rush up the stairs, taking two at a time so I don’t lose him. I reach the top just in time to peer through the little window on the door and see him disappear into one of the rooms.
Moving as quietly as I can, I slip through the door and slowly creep towards the room I saw him go in. The sound of his voice has me perking my ears as I stop right outside the room, keeping my body against the wall.
“...Aunt Rosa, the papers weren’t where you said they’d be.” I recognize the same tone of voice he used with Ella’s mom. Trying too hard to sound nonthreatening.
I take out my phone and start recording the conversation, having a feeling that I just figured out a way to bring Harvey down.
* * *
Rhett calls me almost as soon as I get into my car at the end of my shift, his timing impeccable.
Clicking the button on my steering wheel, I answer the phone. “Rhett. Talk to me. How bad is it?”
I haven’t checked the news since Mom called me earlier, too afraid to see what kind of headlines they’ve come up with in the last four hours. I figure I’ll drive straight to Ella’s work and try to catch her before she finds out.
“Oh, it’s bad, brother,” Rhett sighs into the phone. “I’ve never seen your mom like this. She’s making Mount Vesuvius look like a damn hot tub with how she’s storming around the hospital. But on the plus side, Cora publicly came out and said you guys weren’t ever engaged.”
A bark of a laugh escapes me. “Yeah, Cora was just going along with what Mom was saying. She knows we never had anything going on between us. I mean, trying to get Mom away from that crazy idea was part of what made me leave Boston to begin with. Not to mention that rumor was the whole reason I almost lost Ella when I first moved back.”
“Well, at least that took care of itself.” Rhett sounds resigned.
“The thing is, she’s demanding that Ella give Macie a paternity test,” I admit, my hands tightening on the steering wheel. “She wouldn’t hear anything I had to say about it either. Ella didn’t even come out and tell me about Macie. I guessed, based on the timing and how much she looks like me. Ella isn’t a gold digger. There is no doubt that Macie is mine. This is only going to hurt Ella.”
“Shit, that’s messed up. What’s Ella’s reaction to everything?” ?”
“I can’t get a hold of her,” I grit out. “Mom called me at seven this morning to scream at me, and I’ve tried calling and texting Ella repeatedly. The only way I got through my shift is by telling myself that maybe her phone is dead or she’s busy at work, which would keep her from seeing anything on the news, at least.”
“Don’t waste another second, Liam. You have to tell her. Even if she already knows, she has to hear it from you .”
“You think I don’t know that?” I snap and immediately wince. “Sorry. I just… I was going to tell her today anyway. And now… now everything is so fucked up.”
“You guys belong together. I’ve never even met her and that much is clear,” he says confidently. “Your intentions weren’t malicious, and I’m sure if you just explain everything… Well, it may not fix itself magically with that, but it’ll be a good start.”
A sigh leaves me. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Rhett.”
“Any time. Call me after you talk to her, okay?”
“You got it.”
We hang up right as I pull up to the veterinary office where Ella works. Rhett’s right. Once she knows the whole truth, and she knows why I kept it a secret for so long, maybe she’ll forgive me.
Before I get out of the car though, I grab my phone and shoot a text to Cora, thankful that she spoke up about our lack of engagement. At least Ella will know I was telling the truth about that .
Me: Heard about you calling off the “engagement.” I appreciate it. Any hard feelings?
Cora: Not at all. But… good luck with your mom. She’s pretty pissed.
Me: Noted.
It’s only when I get out of the car that I realize her car isn’t in the parking lot. Even when I park and pop my head in, she’s not there.
“Excuse me, is Ella here today?” I ask the woman at the front desk, whose name tag reads “Helen.”
“Oh. No, she’s sick,” Helen says, frowning. “Do you have a pet that needs to be seen?”
“Um…” I trail off, now realizing it was kind of weird to come to her work. What did I expect, that she’d be able to stop taking care of her patients and come talk to me? “Yes. I mean, no. Um…”
Giving a pained smile, I turn and walk out the door, mentally berating myself for that colossal fuckup of an awkward encounter.
At least I know where she is now.
Home.
My heart is pounding in my chest by the time I make it to her door, but when I knock, there’s no answer.
“Ella, are you home?” I call out but am only met with silence.
Dammit.
She might be holed up and ignoring me, or… she could be at her parents’ house. Sighing, I turn around and head back down the stairs of our apartment building and get back into my car. Last stop, the Parson’s residence.
It’s pure muscle memory, getting back to Ella’s parents’ house, considering I never got an actual address. I surprise myself though, making all the correct turns and pulling up to the curb at her parents’ house.
Her car is here, next to another car in the driveway I don’t recognize.
I miss her. I miss Macie. I need to see them, even if it’s just to be yelled at.
Taking a deep breath, I get out of the car and start walking up the driveway. The sight of Ella’s friend leaving, heading towards the car parked in the driveway with her keys in her hand, has me stopping in my tracks. I haven’t seen her since the hospital in Boston, but I’d recognize her by her pink hair and cast on her wrist anyway. The cast is covered in hearts and different cartoon scribbles that I have a feeling Macie is responsible for. Brynn’s hard look softens when she sees me staring at the cast.
“Brynn, right? What?—”
“Don’t say anything.” She holds up her hand. “Just listen.”
Swallowing, I nod. I have a feeling I’m about to get the best friend speech.
“I really, really want Ella to be happy. So much so that I’ve been trying to convince her to hear you out because I know that you’re the key to that happiness.”
“That’s—”
“Don’t talk,” she reminds me sternly, giving me a look. “I really, really hope you had your reasons for keeping your real identity a secret. It took a lot of courage from Ella, after all she’s been through, to tell you about Macie. Even if technically, you guessed.” She gives a wry smile and shakes her head before turning serious again. “You should have been honest with her. She kind of gets why you didn’t say anything the first time, but when you came here? Moved your life to Ridgewood Falls? That’s when you should have told her about all of this. Let’s get real here for a second, Liam. You moved here for her. Obviously. No billionaire would live in an apartment in Ridgewood Falls unless they were desperate.”
“I—” I stop myself. “Sorry. No talking.”
“You need to give her time for now. Do not go up to that door tonight. Tomorrow? Sure. But today she’s raw, and angry, and won’t hear a word you say. I’ve convinced her to turn her phone back on, so she’ll see what you say. You need to fix this, Liam. William. Whoever you are.”
“Liam,” I say, scratching the back of my neck. “All my close friends call me Liam, which is why I gave her that name to begin with.”
“That’s good.” Brynn nods approvingly. “Start with that.”
She walks past me, getting into her car that’s parked in the driveway, and as much as I want to go knock down that door and make Ella listen, I know I can’t. She’s the wronged party here, she’s going to be taking the brunt of the firestorm that’s about to rain down on us.
So I leave, for now. I need to figure out how I’m going to deal with Mom and her ridiculous demands for a paternity test. I love my mom, but if it comes down to choosing between all of them… there’s no way that I don’t pick Ella and Macie. No matter what, I’m going to prove to them just how much they mean to me, and how I won’t let anything get in the way of the three of us being together.
Forever.