Chapter 23
TATE
Everything began to spin. When I finally lifted my eyes to Blair’s again, the look on her face told me everything I needed to know.
Rather than scream like I wanted to, I instead vowed not to do or say anything to scare this little boy right now. He didn’t deserve that. And I didn’t want his first impression of me to be a bad one.
Blair continued to stand there frozen.
“Who’s that, Mommy?”
Mommy.
What had been a 99.9-percent certainty now moved to 100 percent.
I knelt, my voice gentle. “I’m a friend of your mom’s.”
Blair cleared her throat. “Nicholas, sweetheart, go play with your toys for a bit, please.” She pointed. “In the living room.”
Nicholas.
He wouldn’t move. Instead, he clung to her leg as if he was trying to protect her. It pulled at my heartstrings, though at the moment it felt like my heart was hanging out of my chest.
“It’s okay. He doesn’t have to go anywhere,” I spoke softly so as not to scare him, staring at his face in awe.
My face. Or at least the one I’d had when I was his age.
When he let go of her and ran over to a corner in the living room, I stepped inside the house without permission. There was no more handling this situation delicately.
Tugging on my hair, I mouthed to her, “What the fuck?”
Her face reddened. “Tate...”
“He’s mine, right?” I asked, my voice choked with emotion.
“Yes,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes for a moment to grasp the enormity of that. To grasp the fact that my life would never be the same. Any plan for how to handle Taylor had gone straight out the window.
I finally opened my eyes. “How did this happen? We were safe.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It just did.”
“I’m so fucking confused right now.” I pulled on my hair again and paced.
She followed me. “I’ve both dreamed about and dreaded this day.
Before I knew who you were, I dreamed of finding you and telling you.
But then at the wedding, everything changed.
That dream became more like a nightmare.
And I hadn’t figured out what to do yet.
But please know I was going to tell you. I would never keep this from you.”
I turned to her. “This is why you said you needed more time.”
Blair nodded. “Before I found you at the wedding, I’d resigned myself to the fact that you’d never know him. I wasn’t happy about that, but I’d accepted it.” She paused. “This? You being Taylor’s father? I don’t have a plan for this scenario, Tate.”
I still had so many questions. But those could wait. There was only one thing that mattered right now. I walked over to where Nicholas was playing, sat on the couch, and watched him. I soaked in every inch of him as Blair stood in a corner of the room and looked on.
His eyes were like saucers as he focused on adding a block to his structure without the rest toppling over.
Eventually I had to force myself away because there was still so much I needed to ask Blair, and I realized it was probably better to do that while his attention was on the toys.
I walked past Blair and into the kitchen. She followed.
“I need to know everything,” I told her, leaning against the counter. “From the very beginning. Tell me what happened after you got back from our trip, how you found out you were pregnant.”
“Well, I didn’t know I was pregnant right away.
There was no reason to think that, because we were safe.
” She shrugged. “It was a fluke. I didn’t know for almost three months.
I hadn’t felt sick or anything. Just noticed I wasn’t getting my period, so I went for a test.” She exhaled.
“Those first few months after I got home, I was mostly devastated about losing my phone. I spent those days really mad at myself—mad that I’d never asked you for your full name.
” She shook her head. “Of course I didn’t know the half of it then.
I wondered if the stress of losing you had caused me to skip a couple of cycles.
It wasn’t until the third one I missed that I decided to take a test just to be sure. ”
I had to force myself to breathe. “You’ve been out here all this time, raising my kid.” I let out a long breath. “Blair, this is…”
The right words escaped me. There were no words. I didn’t know whether to mourn all that was lost or celebrate. Never mind me, though. What about her?
“What happened to your plans?” I cried. “School. Did you graduate?”
Her gaze fell to her feet. “I dropped out. I’m only now finishing nursing school. I didn’t have that much longer to go, and I joined an online program recently to finish my degree.”
My chest constricted. This had impacted her life so profoundly. “After you found out, did you try to find me?”
She nodded. “First, I redownloaded the app, hoping you were still on there, but you must’ve deleted your account.”
“I did.” I sighed. “I figured you had my number and wouldn’t need the app to reach me.”
Blair continued, “I even enlisted Taylor’s help to get a roster of names from the resort—people who’d stayed there that week. But there was no Tate.”
Shit. Of course there wasn’t. “My name wouldn’t have been on there anyway, because I didn’t pay for my room the normal way. If there’s a room open, anyone in my family can take it without having to formally book it. So I wouldn’t have been on any official list.”
She chuckled. “Because you own the freaking place. If only I’d known that.”
“My parents own it,” I clarified. “And again, I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about me being entitled.” My thoughts felt like ping-pong balls. I could hardly contain them long enough to make a connection. “What does Taylor know about Nicholas’s father?”
“I told him I’d met an older guy on vacation. And I told him the guy’s name was Tate. He never seemed to suspect anything.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “Fuck.”
“Tate...” Blair murmured.
“Yeah?”
“I’m still processing this, too. I never thought I was keeping anything from Taylor. I didn’t know who you were until the wedding. I don’t want to be responsible for his pain any more than you do.”
I nodded. “I know. We have that in common.”
She ran her hands over her arms. “I’m still not sure we should tell him.”
For me, this discovery changed everything. I looked into her eyes. “He has a brother. He needs to know.”
She sighed. “He’s close to him already. Nicholas sees Taylor as an uncle. He and Juliana even babysat Nicholas once.”
I cringed. “Jesus.”
“I know.” Blair’s eyes welled up again.
I wanted to hug her, but it didn’t seem appropriate. Fuck. I still felt my heart beating for her. “It’ll be okay, Blair. We’ll figure it out. Together.”
She sniffled. “You really need to consider whether telling Taylor is the right idea before we make any rash decisions.”
I wanted to calm her nerves, so I nodded. This was a lot. “We don’t have to do anything right away. We have time to figure out the best way to tell him.”
“Do you want a paternity test?” she asked.
“I don’t need one. He looks exactly the way I did when I was his age.”
Blair chewed her lip. “Well, anyway, I haven’t...”
“You haven’t what?”
She paused. “I haven’t been with anyone else. So there’s no way he could be anyone’s but yours.”
My eyes widened. “You weren’t with anyone else around that time…or you haven’t been with anyone since me?”
Blair murmured, “Both.”
Oh my God. That wrecked me.
“But I would still like you to get a paternity test, just so you have it on record,” she continued. “It would make me feel better to know you have that certainty.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Uh… I’ll go to a lab.” I paused. “Anything you need. I’m not trying to make your life more difficult.”
“I don’t need anything from you, Tate. I’ve been doing just—”
“I know you don’t need me. You’ve clearly been handling everything. But I want to be in his life, Blair. And I want to help you financially.”
“I don’t need it,” she insisted.
“It’s not up for debate,” I pushed back. “Now that I know about my son, I’m not going anywhere. I want to take care of him, even if I have to do it discreetly for a while.”
“How long is a while? Do you think there’s still a chance we may never tell Taylor?”
The idea of keeping a secret so monumental seemed impossible.
But this knowledge could destroy any shred of faith in me he’d mustered.
“Moving back to Massachusetts was supposed to be about rebuilding my relationship with him. I can’t tell you how things are going to play out, except to say that I do believe we need to tell him. ”
“I know Taylor. The truth would traumatize him,” she reasoned.
Immediately, a vision sprang to mind—Taylor accusing me of preying on Blair, of not being responsible, of abandoning a second child. I prayed the answers would come to me, but right now, I needed to focus on what I could more easily control.
“When can I come back to visit Nicholas?” I asked her.
The kitchen overlooked the living room, where he was still playing. She looked toward him. “I don’t know if you should ever come back here.”
My heart sank until I realized what she was getting at. “This house, you mean.”
She nodded. “Taylor could come by on his commute from work. He’s been known to do that. I’m not far from his job. He has to pass my exit to get home.”
“Okay. Of course.” I scratched my chin. “I’ll figure something out. Maybe I’ll rent a place where we can meet, some place farther out of town.”
After a moment, she nodded. “That would work.”
Her agreement brought me relief. At least I could see Nicholas while navigating the rest of this mess. “I think we need to keep this to ourselves for a while,” I said. “I don’t just mean Taylor. I mean other family members, too.”
“I haven’t told anyone, Tate. I can’t imagine explaining the situation.”
“I haven’t told anyone about us, either,” I said. “I don’t think we can risk it until Taylor knows. He deserves to be the first.”
“I agree.”
I moved back toward the living room. “Can I spend some time with him before I have to leave?”
She smiled sadly. “Of course.”
“Thanks.”
I walked over to where Nicholas was playing.
Overwhelmed by a mix of love and sadness over everything I’d missed the past four years, I got down on the ground and helped him finish building a structure with his blocks.
One block at a time. One step at a time, I told myself.
It’s not going to be okay overnight, but someday it will be okay.
“What about this one?” I asked him. “Can I put it on top?”
He nodded enthusiastically. His huge eyes felt like a window into my soul.
Such a beautiful boy. My boy. One who would’ve been fatherless if the original story had been true.
Despite everything, I was grateful the situation had played out the way it did.
I just needed to figure out how to openly love this son without shattering the other.