Chapter 5
Hannah
Anger coursed through my veins, its fire igniting me, pushing me to the edge as Derek stood next to my daughters. His green eyes shone with disbelief...pain. So much fucking pain. I felt it too, but kept it hidden.
It was better that way. Always is.
Evie opened her mouth to say something, the poor thing terrified I wouldn’t be able to handle the situation, but I waved her off, silently asking her to leave. Nathan placed a hand on her back, whispering something in her ear before they both walked away.
“I have two daughters.” I kept my words nonchalant, though inside I could feel the wind knocked out of my chest as Derek scoffed, shaking his head.
He knows.
I could see it--the calling he had to them, the way his eyes filled with both love and guilt at the sight of them. It was there, palpable, sucking the air out of the room. His grip around the edge of the playpen turned his knuckles white, but he didn’t move. Didn’t budge.
“You have two daughters? Like you made them on your own. Right...why don’t you tell me the truth? Hm? Like I asked you to do so yesterday? Remember? That’s the one fucking question I asked you, Hannah. The one truth I asked from you.”
I let out a laugh. “Like you’ve earned that right...” Derek visibly flinched at my words, but I was too far gone to give a damn. I was done caring, done with protecting everyone else’s feelings, because who would protect mine? “You have absolutely no right to make demands, to ask for an explanation. Why should you? You don’t even know if they are yours.”
Oh, I saw it then.
The pain.
The hate.
Sadistic, maybe, but a small part of me felt relief. A twisted, sick part of me, hoped he would feel the same hurt he caused me.
“Don’t you dare pull that bullshit with me,” he said, his words laced with venom.
I didn’t back down. No way I could.
My mom taught me better than that.
“It’s true. For all you know I went and fucked around with Blake since you think we were working together to take all your goddamn money anyways. Maybe I did.”
His jaw ticked, his hands fisted to his sides, but he held on.
How thin was the thread that held him together?
How much weight could it handle?
“You should have told me.”
I rolled my eyes. “You wouldn’t have believed me even if I put the test in your face. I did tell you, remember? I told you and you treated me like shit. You made it very clear what you thought of me.” I approached him, shoving my finger in his chest, taking the knife and twisting. “You made this choice, not me. And now, you expect me to open the door to my life—a life you forced me to start without you. You expect me to slam the brakes so you can join in, to allow you into the life of my children like it’s your right. They are not yours. They never will be.”
The thread snapped.
Derek took a step forward, taking my arm in his hand, pulling me toward him. I couldn’t help the stunned gasp that left my lips as he held me against him. The fury in his grip sent a cold chill down my spine because this was the Derek that held me captive. This was the Derek that didn’t let go.
“Don’t. Don’t pretend like you can erase what happened between us. Don’t minimize it. I know I fucked a lot of things up and said things that hurt you, but I didn’t know they existed. I didn’t know they were real. If I had known, I wouldn’t have walked away. You know that damn well.”
I couldn’t take the intensity in his gaze.
For the first time, I looked away. My stomach churned and my heart burned as he continued.
“So hate me all you want. Ignore me, avoid me--I’ll deal with it. But you will not keep me away from them. And if you insist they’re not mine, I will get a paternity test to prove they are my daughters because I know, I fucking know they are my blood.”
I had signed up for this fight, a fight I was sure I could win and yet as his tight grip surrounded my arm, I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing. Any fight against him was futile...I would always lose.
My stupid heart always gave up.
It always gave in.
I let my selfishness take the wheel, though, hoping it could get me through the conversation. “You expect me to accept you being here for no other reason than because you came back. Do you think you didn’t hurt me? What a fucking joke. I tried to tell you and—”
“Once.” His hand gripped my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his. I swallowed thickly, holding my breath. “You tried once. You didn’t think to tell Lisa or have Evie tell me. I know I was an ass. I know I was drunk and I take full responsibility for that, but if you would have cared about them having a father instead of dwelling on your anger...instead of focusing on your pain, you would have thought about their future.”
His gaze roamed my face, searching, perhaps...for the woman he knew. For the woman he knew I was shielding.
“You know the person who turned you away wasn’t me. I didn’t even know what fucking day it was, Hannah. So no...you don’t get to put that blame on me, not when you didn’t bother trying. I won’t carry the blame of you not giving me, or for the record, them, a chance to have me in their lives.”
He let me go and I stumbled back, the coldness in his words sending a chill through my veins. I wasn’t innocent, no.
Far from it.
I made mistakes, I hurt others, plenty of people.
This was my karma, I had to believe it.
But was I really turning into my mother? Was I allowing my pain, my anger, to cloud my judgment? My girls cooed in the playpen, and I bit down on my lip, everything in front of me turning blurry. I turned around, running my hands over my face, keeping the tears at bay because I wasn’t going to cry in front him.
He didn’t get to see me falling apart for him, for us again.
“I wish you hadn’t come back.” My quiet words left a deafening silence behind.
His eyes were on me, intense, suffocating. Every second that passed made it harder to breathe, because he was looking right through me. He looked at me like he knew exactly what I felt, like he could feel it, too.
“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know that from now on, every day, every time you see me I will be causing you pain?”
Little by little, my resolve began to crumble. Derek took all the fucking pieces of the wall built around my heart and tossed them to the side, leaving my heart utterly exposed. I wanted nothing more than for him to take me into his arms, protect me from it all.
But he was the one that caused the pain.
I refused to trust him.
“I would leave, Hannah. If I could, I would walk out that door and never turn back because being around you wears me down. We were always a fucking time bomb, waiting for the second it would all blow up in our faces and it has, several times. We never should have had that dinner together so many years ago. Never should have fucked. We should have kept it professional, but we were damned from the start.”
I’d spent months putting myself together, only to be destroyed in the process of giving my girls a better life.
Self-destruct.
That was what it was.
That’s what I would do.
For my girls, I would do anything.
Even tolerate the agony of being around their father.
Neither of us would win.
What a fucking mess.
“What are their names?”
Reality set in.
Giving something a name makes it yours to keep.
My Nana’s words echoed in my head as he waited, waited for their names and if I told him, they would be his, too. I fought it with all my might, hoped I could keep them to myself but as I found their eyes looking up at Derek with curiosity...with love...I realized I couldn’t hurt them. I couldn’t hurt him.
“Annabella and Isabelle.”
A flicker of realization set in; his shoulders relaxed.
It was like breathing air into his lungs.
“Annabella after my grandmother and Isabelle after...after...”
“My mother. You named one of them after my mother.”
If he had any doubts left, I”d just erased every single one of them. I”d opened the door to their lives and in the process to mine, signing up for a lifetime of heartache. My knees went weak at the thought of seeing him every day, but his resolve was there.
Derek wasn”t going anywhere.
”I”m going to leave, Hannah.” He leaned down, touching each girl”s face with a tender caress. ”But I”ll be back tomorrow, and the next day and the next until you let me be a part of their lives. And I hope...for your sanity and mine, that you can eventually forgive me for hurting you.”
He walked away then and I stood like an idiot, staring at my daughters, their innocent eyes adjusting to my face as I gazed at them. An arm surrounded my shoulders and pulled me into a soft embrace.
”It”s going to be okay.”
Usually when Evie said it, she believed it.
This time...I could tell even she wasn”t sure.