Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
F ord
Yes .
A single word that hits like a fist to the chest.
I don’t move. I can’t.
Everything inside me has gone still. It feels like the ground my feet are firmly planted on has cracked wide open and I’m standing at the chasm of a truth I didn’t see coming.
Landyn has a daughter.
I turn away from her, my eyes landing on the small TV mounted in the corner of the waiting room. It’s playing muted local news coverage. A fluorescent light flickers overhead. I try to ground myself in something, but it’s useless. Inside, everything is spinning out of control.
“Ford,” Landyn says, leaning closer to me. “Please. Say something.”
“What should I say?” I ask her, my voice hoarse. “You have a kid. You’re a mother. And in all this time, you didn’t tell me.”
She flinches like I slapped her. “I wanted to, Ford, I really did. ”
“How old is she?” I ask, already knowing, already counting the years backward in my head.
“She’s six,” Landyn whispers.
“Six?” I repeat, the number catching like gravel in my throat.
Landyn nods.
I stand slowly. I don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m going. I just know I need to not be here anymore. My brain is suddenly running circles—doing the math, stitching moments together, breaking them back apart.
Jesus Christ.
I push a hand through my hair and step away from her. My pulse is thudding hard in my ears. There are too many people here. Too many eyes. Not enough oxygen.
“I need air,” I mutter.
I don’t wait for her to respond. I just walk away, pushing through the double doors and out into the parking lot. I pace the pavement, feeling like I’m coming out of my skin. The air is cold. Sharp. But it doesn’t touch the heat roaring in my chest.
I feel her behind me. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t come any closer to me. I turn to find her watching me, her arms wrapped around her stomach.
“Jesus Christ.” I shake my head, heart pounding. “She’s mine, isn’t she?”
Silence.
“Answer me, Landyn,” I shout. “She’s mine, isn’t she?”
Then a whisper. “Yes.”
I exhale like I’ve been punched. My hands drop to my sides, and I look at her again. Really look. And everything is different now. She’s not just the woman I used to love, the one I never stopped wanting. She’s the mother of my child.
My daughter. I have a six-year-old daughter .
I step back, needing distance from her, needing space to breathe… but she moves toward me.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she says, the words coming quickly now. “And once I saw you again, it just—it got harder. I—Ford, I was scared. I didn’t want to ruin it all before we had a chance to fix what we lost.”
My jaw clenches. “You had six years to tell me, Landyn.”
Tears shine in her eyes, but she doesn’t look away.
“I was 23 years old. I was terrified. I found out and I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how.
And then I kept telling myself I’d do it when the timing was right, but the right time never came.
And every year that passed, the truth got heavier and harder to say. ”
I swallow hard, torn between anger and heartbreak and a thousand unanswered questions. “Does she know?”
“No,” she whispers. “She knows I loved someone once. That he was important to me. But she doesn’t know who you are.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and let the weight of it all settle into my bones.
A daughter. I missed first steps. First words.
First everything. I can still see her in my mind, walking out of the ER with Landyn’s dad.
That little girl with her hair. With my grey eyes.
The way she looked up at him, her small hand wrapped in his.
“You kept her from me,” I say. The words feel foreign in my mouth. Like they belong to someone else. “For six years , Landyn.”
Her eyes are shiny now. “I know?—”
“No. Don’t say you know.” I shake my head, my voice sharper now. “Because if you knew, you never would’ve done it. You never would’ve looked at my face all these weeks, kissed me, slept with me, while hiding my daughter from me. ”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you—” she says, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“But you did. You have fucking wrecked me.”
“I was scared. I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t even know if I should. And then when I came back to town, everything got complicated?—”
I let out a humorless laugh. “You think this is complicated? No, Landyn. Complicated is figuring out how to co-parent. This is really pretty simple. This is betrayal.”
She flinches. And it guts me. But it’s the truth.
I take another step back, needing space from her and from all of it. From everything I’ve missed out on. From everything this means. From the fact that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.
“I missed everything,” I say, my voice breaking at the edges. “Things I can never get back. Her first laugh. Her first word. Her first fucking birthday. You’ve been there for every moment. I wasn’t even a name in her life.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, tears streaming.
“Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “Me too.”
Silence drapes over us like a weighted blanket. She’s crying, and even now part of me wants to move toward her, but I can’t. Not with my whole world cracking in two.
“I want to meet her,” I say finally, anchoring myself with the one thing I know for sure. “I have to meet her. I won’t let you keep her from me. Do you understand me?”
Landyn lifts her eyes to mine. There’s so much pain in her gaze I almost look away. “You will,” she says. “If you still want to after all this?—”
“Don’t,” I cut her off. “Don’t put that on me.”
She blinks.
“I lost six years,” I say. “I’m not losing another moment.”
Every second that ticks by feels like another second that’s been stolen away from the little girl I didn’t even know existed until five minutes ago.
My daughter.
I freeze suddenly, heartache rooting itself deeper inside of me. “What’s her name?” I ask, my voice barely audible.
Landyn hesitates, like even this will undo me. “Poppy,” she finally whispers.
My knees nearly give out. Poppy… after my mom.
I stare at her. I can’t even blink. “Poppy,” I repeat, like the word itself is a punch to the gut.
Landyn nods. Her chin trembles. “Even when you weren’t beside me, I couldn’t bring myself to cut you out of her story. I gave her your mom’s name as a piece of you she’d always carry.”
I run both hands over my face, dragging them through my hair before bracing them on my hips. “Jesus Christ, Landyn.”
I walk away from her. I can’t stand still. I can’t breathe.
“What am I supposed to say to that?” I say, turning back. My voice breaks. “You still kept her from me. You lied.”
“I didn’t lie?—”
“Don’t,” I cut in, sharper than I mean to. “Don’t stand there and try to soften it. You kept my kid from me.”
“I was scared.”
“You’ve said that,” I snap. “But being scared isn’t a good enough reason. Because this? This is the kind of thing that shatters people.”
Her face crumples.
“I would’ve shown up,” I say, swallowing hard. “I would’ve been at the hospital. I would’ve held her first. Stayed up with her at night. I would’ve been there. For all of it. I would have been her dad. ”
Tears spill from her eyes, and I want to catch them. I want to yell. I want to disappear.
I lean against a random car, trying not to slide down it. My voice drops to a whisper. “I missed her whole life.”
Landyn crosses her arms over her chest like she’s holding herself together. “I was young and terrified, and I thought I was doing what was right. You were building a company, and I had no idea if you’d want her or if you’d resent me?—”
“So you decided for both of us?” My voice is hoarse, wrecked. “You didn’t even give me a chance to try.”
She’s crying now. Sobbing quiet tears. Controlled. She always was composed. Even in chaos.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’ve been sorry for years.”
Silence opens between us, vast and unbridgeable. A pain in my chest makes it hard to breathe. I press a fist to my ribs. “You named her. Raised her. Loved her. And I never got to touch a single second of it.”
“I know,” she chokes out.
I look at her, eyes burning. “You didn’t just keep her from me. You kept me from her.”
She starts to step forward, but I back away, shaking my head.
“I need…I need time, Landyn. I need to wrap my head around this without losing my goddamn mind.”
“I understand.”
I look at her. The woman I’ve never stopped loving. And right now, I don’t know what the hell to do with her. For the first time, I feel like I don’t understand her at all.
There is only one thing I know for certain.
“I want to meet her,” I say again.
Landyn nods, voice trembling. “You will.”
Then I walk away because if I don’t, I’ll break .
The drive home is a blur. I don’t remember backing out of the hospital parking lot. Don’t remember the highway turns or the lights I must’ve sat through. I just remember the sound of Landyn’s voice in my head when she told me we have a daughter.
I pull into the driveway and park the truck in the same spot I always do.
The house looks the same. Stella greets me as soon as I open the front door, running circles around my feet.
Everything is the same as it always is, but at the same time, something in me knows that nothing will ever be the same again.
I flick on a light. Toss my keys on the counter. Toe off my boots. I’m halfway to the kitchen before I stop, suddenly breathless. I make it to the counter, bracing both my hands on it like I might lose my footing.
She didn’t tell me.
She knew where I was. She could have picked up the phone.
Hell, she could have sent me an email. For six years, she watched our daughter grow up without me.
The thought of it guts me, but the worst part is knowing that every time we were together over these past few weeks—every smile, every touch, every kiss, every late-night text goodnight—she didn’t say a word.
She was keeping this huge fucking secret the whole time.
And I knew something was off. I knew she was holding something back. But not this. Never this.
I grab a glass from the cabinet and shakily pour a few inches of whiskey into it, no ice.
Her name is Poppy.
That little girl in the hospital with wide eyes and blonde hair like her mom’s.
She’s mine. I didn’t need Landyn to say it.
Somehow, I could see it. In the shape of her chin.
The color of her eyes. She’s my daughter.
And she doesn’t even know me. My gut twists so hard it feels like something rips open inside me.
I sink into the couch, whiskey in one hand, phone in the other. I stare at the screen. I want to call her. Demand answers. I want to scream. Fall apart. But I don’t move. I just sit in the dark, glass clenched tight, staring out the window into nothing.
Because I don’t know who I am right now—ex, betrayed lover, man still in love, father—and I’m scared as hell I’m all of them.