Chapter 32 Max
Max
“Ican’t believe how perfect she is.” My voice cracked under the strain to keep it quiet so I didn’t wake her.
The last two hours had gone by in a blur of doctors, nurses, weighing, holding, staring, loving, and with every moment, I just wanted more.
Turning, I looked at Daisy as I lifted her hand to my lips. “Just like her mother.”
Her blush made my heart beat lighter.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it,” she said, and it was the first attempt to broach what had happened before the monumental, perfect moment that our daughter was born.
“There was nothing that could keep me from you—from both of you,” I promised and kissed her knuckles. The back of her hand. Her palm. “It’s over, Daze.” She looked at me. “They’re never going to come near you—come near Lucy again.”
“Max…” Her eyes rounded, hope overflowing through them. “How?”
My jaw tightened, but before I could speak, the door opened.
“Sorry to disturb Mom and Dad.” I’d never get tired of being called Dad. “Just wanted to check and see if either of you needed anything?” Jennie asked.
Daisy and I looked at each other and then said, “No,” in unison.
“Okay.” Her smile flattened. “Is it okay if I tell your family member it’s okay to come in? He’s been waiting…”
Family. Todd.
I looked to Daisy. “Your call, baby.”
I was more than happy to tell him to take a hike, but maybe putting off this conversation was worse than getting it over with.
“Yeah, he can come in.”
Jennie left, and there was a moment of privacy.
“We have to talk to him, Max.” She stared at Lucy, but I could see the turmoil fighting through her expression. He was her father too.
“I know.”
As soon as I heard the door, I stood and walked to the edge of the bed like a lion protecting his mate and cub.
My ribs strained against every breath, air cracking to reach the depths of my lungs, as my best friend walked into the hospital room where my wife had just given birth to his baby.
“Max.”
Without my worry over Daisy clouding my gaze, I saw him clearly. Thinner. Nervous. But the bags under his eyes were gone. Same with the bloated look he always got when he drank too much. I wanted to ask if he’d stopped drinking, but that was a question for a different time. A different friendship.
“Congratulations, Daisy,” Todd was the first to speak, tucking his arms over his chest as he came a little closer but not too close. Especially to me. “Max.” Our eyes met.
The man who’d fathered Lucy and the man who wanted to be her father.
I brimmed with tension, every moment I’d been in the presence of his father earlier, hitting me like a freight train. If they sent him, if they thought I was going to let him anywhere near Lucy—
“If you’re here because of what I said to your father earlier—”
“You talked to my dad?” Todd’s arms dropped, and if I wasn’t so skeptical of him and why he was here, I’d think he had no idea.
“Max?” Daisy’s surprised gasp came from behind me.
“I did,” I answered them both, but my gaze never left Todd’s as my voice lowered an octave. “But if you didn’t know, then why are you here?”
Every single question—assumption—hanging in the air between us.
Are you here to get Daisy back?
Are you here because you want to be a father to the baby you never wanted?
“I wanted to apologize to Daisy…and to explain.” He looked briefly at me, but then his attention turned to my wife.
I wanted to step in front of him. I wanted him to explain to me first, but then I felt small fingers curl around my wrist and then slide to my hand.
Let him, her hold seemed to say.
“I know you said you didn’t need my apology, Daisy, but I need to give it.” He swallowed. “It’s part of the program.”
I stilled. How many times had I tried to get him to get help? To go to an AA program? He never would. Always said he didn’t need it.
“I shouldn’t have…left you…you both the way I did, but I just wasn’t capable.
Wasn’t ready to…explain.” Nerves shivered over him.
He shifted his weight, his eyes losing some of their steadiness.
He ran his hand along the back of his neck and then blew out a breath.
“I’m just…I guess I’ll just start at the root of it. ” He grimaced. “I’m gay, Daisy.”
Daisy gasped, and I stiffened, Todd’s truth hitting me like alcohol on the back of my throat, burning as it soaked in deep.
He was gay.
It wasn’t that I’d never thought…never wondered…every once in a while…But I was his best friend, and we had plenty of gay friends, so I figured if he was, he’d tell me. Trust me.
“It wasn’t you,” he said, like he knew what I was thinking. “It was me. I was trying…not to be.” He let out a bitter laugh. “My parents…what they wanted—”
“But your dad…” I croaked, and Todd’s head snapped to mine.
I felt Daisy squeeze my hand, confused.
“Todd McCormick isn’t my father,” Todd rumbled. “Not in the ways that matter…nor the ways that don’t.”
“Wait, what? Todd, what are you talking about?” Daisy gaped.
“The night of my dad’s party—the night we, ahh…
” He trailed off, and seeing that we all understood where he was going with that, he cleared his throat and continued, “You disappeared, and when you were gone for a while, I went to look for you. I thought maybe you’d wandered off into one of the quieter rooms of the house.
I heard low voices—noises coming from my dad’s study, but when I went inside, it wasn’t you.
It was him. With their neighbor, Matthew. They were…together.”
Daisy’s jaw dropped almost as far as mine had. “What?”
“I closed the door—left them. And that’s when you found me, and all I wanted to do was forget what I’d just seen.” He paused and drew a steadying breath.
Daisy sat forward. “You never said anything.”
“Honestly, I was a mess. I wanted to forget everything about that night, but I couldn’t,” Todd said, rocking back on his heels.
“I confronted my dad the next morning, and he…acted like it was nothing. Told me it was nothing. That this was how his life—my mom’s life—had been from the start.
That it was how our life went. That legacy came first.”
“Oh, Todd.” Her voice carried every emotion with it that I’d felt the night he’d told me this.
“I was in a fog. Spiraling. I hate to say it, but I wasn’t even thinking of you, Daisy.
I was just thinking of how blind I’d been.
I had this pit in my gut, so I took a DNA test.” Even the memory looked like it was a fist to his gut.
“I’m not his son. Not biologically, anyway.
Which was ironic because that night I caught him, my first thought wasn’t ‘holy shit, my dad is fucking another guy,’ it was ‘holy shit, maybe this is why I feel…why I like…’” He shook his head.
“I know that’s not how it works, obviously, since we’re not related. ”
“Oh, Todd…”
“I got the results right after you told me you were pregnant,” he went on like he hadn’t even heard her.
Maybe that was the only way he could keep going.
“I know I was a mess after that, Daisy, and I’m sorry.
All I can say is…it wasn’t you.” His shoulders fell with a sigh.
“I’d just learned my dad was basically in the closet.
And then that you were pregnant, and I was going to be a dad.
And then that my dad wasn’t my dad. And I just…
I did what they told me to do because I was too lost to do anything else. ”
I glanced at Daisy then and saw tears streaking down her face. Only my incredible wife would be able to feel pity for the man who’d left her at the altar.
“Anyway, I tried to convince myself it was going to be okay. That I cared about you—loved you in a different way. That I wanted to do the right thing for our baby.” His chin dipped. “But the weight of…hiding who I was, I couldn’t…”
“The drinking,” I filled in the blank he’d left open.
Looking at me, he nodded. “I thought I could drown it out. I mean, we’d been together for four years, and I’d mostly buried that part of me for longer. I thought I could do it again.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“Can’t stop a seed from searching out sunlight.” His expression was sad but without regret. “Maybe I could’ve buried it deeper if I hadn’t…if he hadn’t…” Todd’s face reddened, and he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“You met someone,” Daisy breathed, and Todd’s head snapped up.
“Not met. We already…knew each other.”
“Scott.” I hadn’t realized I’d been seeing my friend through a fog all these years, but as soon as he started to clear it, I began to recognize all the signs. How close they’d been in college. Why Scott reappeared when he did…after Todd’s wedding was announced.
“We were close in college, but especially back then, I ignored the way I’d catch him looking at me…
and the way it made me feel. And after we graduated, I think that’s why we lost touch.
Anyway, when my parents announced our engagement, he showed up at the country club.
” Todd lowered his head. “I thought I could ignore how I felt.” His words echoed my mindset about Daisy.
I thought I could ignore how I felt about her.
And like him, I’d done everything I could to hide it, and like him, it had wrecked me.
“But he kept showing up—wouldn’t give up—and with everything that happened, he was the only place that felt safe. ”
“You could’ve told me,” Daisy said, her tone both sad for him and hurt that after everything, he hadn’t trusted her with this.
I felt the same.
“I know.” He pared me a guilty glance. “I could’ve told both of you.” He sighed. “It wasn’t you. It was me. I was drowning in everything I was trying to figure out. I wouldn’t have known what to say or how to say it.”
“You could’ve called off the wedding or at least postponed it…”