Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Jessa
The second the words are out of my mouth, I instantly regret them. The color has drained from his face as he stays there frozen.
For ten years I’ve hated a man I invented, one who deserved every ugly thing I ever thought. And yet today, as I watch the look in his eyes, the hurt, I feel guilt flood through me.
I don’t want to feel guilty. I don’t want to feel like a monster because I lashed out at him, not toward the man who was the reason I ate one meal a day through a pregnancy, the reason I left college with a year to go.
“I didn’t know you were in this town.” The words tear out of me even as I hate myself for them. “If I’d known, I’d never have set foot here.”
“Why?” He utters the word quietly. I’d rather he shouted. “Because you didn’t want me getting a chance to see my own daughter?”
My head drops. He hooks two fingers under my chin and tips my face back up, giving me nowhere else to look.
“I don’t remember sleeping with you, Jessa,” he murmurs.
“I swear it. I’ve tried to remember that night, but I can’t.
The memory isn’t there.” His thumb rests against my jaw.
“But Mia is mine. When you came to me back then, nobody told me. I’ve spent the last decade unaware of her existence.
If you hadn’t told me how you were treated, I would have no way of knowing.
I would never have turned you away.” His voice roughens.
“But the past is the past. The fact remains that she’s mine.
I’m asking you not to take her from me now. ”
A chill goes through me. “How can you know she’s yours? Did you take my daughter’s blood to get her tested?”
“I gave blood the night she was poisoned.” He doesn’t look away. “It happened at the healer’s. She needed it, so I gave it.”
The floor tilts under my feet. “So you tested her.” My voice climbs. “That was behind my back, in a room you wouldn’t let me into. You ran a paternity—”
“There was no paternity test.” He cuts me off. “I’ve had my suspicions for a while. She has my birthmark, same shoulder, same notch broken through the edge. She hates carrots. She’s allergic to the same flowers I am.”
“That’s not proof,” I whisper.
“No,” he agrees. “But it was enough to make me sure. If you want certainty, get your coat. There’s a clinic two towns over that opens at seven, and I’ll drive.”
I catch his forearm and hold on. “No.” The word tears out of me.
Paper makes it real. It goes to lawyers, then to judges, and I know how much a judge cares about ten years of sleepless nights once a rich man walks in.
He looks at me and then sighs. “All right.”
I don’t understand why he’s so agreeable right now.
“How long have you known? Be honest.”
He studies me. “The night she got poisoned. They needed a blood transfusion.”
“And you said nothing.” I search his face. “It’s been more than a week since then, and you didn’t say a word.”
“I wanted you to tell me yourself.” He lets go of my chin. “You’ve not exactly kept your disdain of me a secret, now have you? I knew that the second I pushed, you’d run.” His mouth twists. “So I waited. I thought you would slowly trust me and tell me the truth.”
My knees buckle, and Marcus catches me before I can fall, steering me into a chair. He then drops to one knee beside it, boxing me in without laying a finger on me.
“I had nothing to do with it,” he tells me. “I really don’t remember sleeping with you.”
“Was I that insignificant to you?” My voice splinters halfway through. “Was I just another notch on your bed pos—”
“No.” His hand closes over mine. “That’s not what happened.
I think I was drugged that night. When I had my suspicions about Mia, I called Voss, my old manager.
” His jaw works. “He confirmed that you came looking for me.” He leans in.
“Jessa, I wouldn’t have walked away from my own child. Nor will I do so now.”
My eyes burn. “So you want Mia.”
“No.” He looks straight at me. “I want both of you.”
My spine locks. “That’s not possible, Marcus. I can’t.”
“Give me a chance.” His thumb moves once across my knuckles. “Whoever I was ten years ago, he’s gone. And even that man wouldn’t have abandoned you or made you suffer this much.”
The tears come, and I can’t stop them. “You’re lying,” I whisper.
“I’m not.” He doesn’t blink. “Tell me what you need to believe me, and it’s yours. Take money, papers, a lawyer’s number, the house in your name. I want the two of you here.”
“And if I say no?” I lift my chin. “If I drive Mia to Brenton tomorrow?”
“Then Bella and I follow you to Brenton. I won’t take her from you.”
I suck in a breath. Does he really mean it?
“You own a school,” I remind him cautiously.
“I built it, so I can hand it to a board inside a month, and I’ll delegate whatever won’t fit in a suitcase.” He shrugs. “Wherever you go, Jessa, I’m going. I want to be near my daughter.”
Every argument I had lined up dies in my throat. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until white spots swim behind them. “Marcus. What am I supposed to do with you?”
“I have a few suggestions.” He lowers my hands from my eyes.
“Don’t even think about saying we should get married.”
His lips twitch. “That wasn’t where I was going.”
Heat crawls up my neck. Of course it wasn’t. “Then where were you going?”
“That you and I should get to know each other again.” He settles back onto his heel. “There’s a hole in my memory of that night, and the people standing around me won’t fill it in. You’re the only one left who can.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Jessa, if you are offended over me not remembering you, imagine how fucked up it feels to me. Contrary to my reputation, I wasn’t exactly a playboy. I should have remembered you.”
I swallow. I can see the sincerity and confusion in his eyes. “What do you want to know?”
“Where did we meet? What happened?”
I look at the window rather than at him.
“I saw you outside a bar in Ashford. That’s where I lived then.
I was walking home after my restaurant’s shift, and there you were on the sidewalk with a woman holding you up.
” My hands won’t stay still, so I knot them together in my lap.
“I recognized you. Half the country would have. I watched you for a few minutes, but then I kept walking.”
“What happened then?” he prompts.
“You came after me. I was three blocks along, and you were suddenly there.”
His brows draw together. “I was drunk?”
“You weren’t drunk, or maybe not that much?
” I try to recall. “Something was definitely wrong with you, though. You were off. Even if I didn’t know you, you felt off.
You kept saying you needed to go somewhere to rest. I tried to walk you into a hotel two streets over, but you wouldn’t go in.
I ended up taking you to my place.” A bitter laugh gets out of me.
“You drank water for two hours, glass after glass, then straight from the faucet. The more you drank, the steadier you got.” My throat closes on the rest. “Then you talked me into bed.”
Marcus stares at me. “Hold on. You’re telling me I talked you into bed while I could barely stand up.”
“Wasn’t much of talking.” My face is on fire. “You just started kissing me, and I…I didn’t push you away.” There’s a chip in the tabletop, and I study it, knowing how red my face must be. “To be fair, I did tell you it was a bad idea. But you were very persuasive.”
That part of my memory is intact. For many nights after that, I could feel the phantom caress of his hands on the insides of my thighs, his mouth in places no one had touched before.
“What happened after that?” Marcus stresses.
“You were gone when I woke up. I found out about Mia five weeks later, so I went to your hotel, except you’d already moved on. It took two weeks to work out where, and the bus fare emptied my account.” My nails dig into my palms. “Your manager met me in the lobby with two men. You know the rest.”
He’s quiet a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he says, hoarse. “I’d have taken responsibility for that child if I’d known.”
I’m starting to believe he would have.
“I didn’t need you to take responsibility for me.” Upstairs, my daughter is still asleep. “Mia was as much yours as mine. All I needed was for you to do right by her.”
The silence that follows my words is heavy.
“Stay for the school year,” Marcus suddenly offers.
“Twelve months. That’s all I’m asking. Let’s find out whether we can make a life for Mia.
” He pauses. “Now that everything is out in the open, it might be easier for you to adjust. I’m not saying it won’t be a handful since Bella is also quite attached to you—”
One corner of my mouth lifts. “Bella isn’t a problem for me. She’s a sweet kid.” The faint smile fades as I ask a question I don’t think he considered before. “If we don’t adjust, if we move, what about Bella? Is she supposed to be shuffled town to town so you can be near your daughter?”
Marcus goes still. His jaw sets, his eyes close for half a second, and I want the words back.
“Bella is all I have left of my brother,” he admits at last, and he won’t look at me. “I’ll make it as easy on her as I know how. If she can’t settle somewhere new, then I stay here with her, and I fly out every week to see the two of you. I’ll keep that up for as long as it takes.”
Shame washes over me. “I wanted to hate you. I thought for sure you’d give me reasons to, but you’ve done the exact opposite. Bella has a good father in you. Mia’s going to have one too.”
His grip tightens on my hands. “Let’s try then, for the girls.”
My mouth is dry. “And what exactly are we trying?”
Marcus just watches me, and then his hand lifts to move a piece of stray hair out of my eyes. “It’s not just Mia that I want, Jessa. It’s you as well. I want us to be a family.”
I pull my hands back. “We can’t complicate this any further.”
“What’s so complicated about us?” Marcus demands.
“I don’t—” I see the heat in his gaze and look away. “I don’t like you like that.”