12. Reid
Chapter twelve
Reid
Eugene swung his feet beside me, sneakers thudding against the metal frame as I glanced around the pediatric waiting room that smelled of disinfectant and the faintest hint of room spray.
I tried to busy myself by going over Alexander’s notes for me for the week, but I couldn’t.
Every few seconds, my eyes slid sideways to the boy and the concentration in his eyes as he toyed with the waiting room Rubik’s cube.
His hands were furiously moving the pieces, pure self-assurance and confidence in his ability to solve it.
It was a quiet defiance, one that showed even at this age, he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge… Exactly the way I was.
The nurse finally called his name. Eugene hopped up, grabbing my hand without hesitation. The small fingers curled around mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.
For a second, I didn’t move. It almost felt like I couldn’t.
The pressure of his grip shouldn’t have meant anything, but it lingered. All warm and trusting… it made my heart clench just slightly. I closed my hand around his and followed the nurse down the corridor.
She guided him to the scale, clipboard in hand. “Shoes off, sweetheart,” she said. “Let’s see how tall you’ve gotten.”
Eugene hopped up, back straight, head tilted proudly.
The nurse grinned. “Right on target, Dad. He’s growing like a weed.”
For a second, I didn’t even think about it as I nodded in agreement. Then it hit me... Dad.
“Uncle,” I corrected without thinking.
She froze mid-note, blinking up at me. “Oh… sorry. I just—” Her eyes flicked between us, and a faint blush crept up her neck. “You two… look so alike.”
I forced a polite smile, not responding as Eugene slipped his shoes back on. It was a simple coincidence.
“The doctor will be in soon. He’ll just be getting his routine shots today, but we will be drawing blood just to check his low white blood count. It’s nothing major; he’s been doing much better since his infant days, but just to be cautious, Dr. Drake wanted to run those tests.”
The nurse slipped out, the door clicking shut, and we were brought back to silence.
Eugene kept kicking his heels against the chair, his attention still elsewhere.
But my mind clung to that single word still hanging in the air. Dad.
It wouldn’t stop echoing.
I reached for the folder she’d left behind. My hands shook just slightly, the paper crinkling under my thumb as I flipped through it.
Numbers, charts, lines… every measurement documented since birth, written in someone else’s neat handwriting.
Name printed clean across the top: EUGENE NEWMAN. The surname made my jaw tighten as I flipped the page. Height, weight, percentiles. Exactly where he should be.
Right on target, Dad.
The words burned through my mind.
Monitoring for low white blood count. Blood type: O positive.
Just another coincidence: it was the same as mine.
But this wasn’t proof of anything. This didn’t mean anything.
I exhaled slowly, knuckles whitening around the folder.
My eyes found his date of birth. A random date in the spring.
One my family didn’t even bother to inform me of.
I counted back nine months. That brought me to the last month before she walked away.
The last day I had her to myself and before everything burned down…
her whisper against my chest, the tremor in her hands when she told me it was over.
I can’t do this anymore, Reid.
Another coincidence, maybe.
I could still feel how her voice cracked when she said it, how she’d pressed her palm against my chest like she wanted to memorize the heartbeat she was about to erase.
How she made the decision to leave me for the blanket of safety the Newman family gave her, turning her shoulder to choose Gregory over me.
When they started to push me away, when they cast me out of their precious family… were you already fucking him?
She’d gone still at the question before she wriggled aimlessly in my grip.
Her pulse had jumped beneath my hand, throat working around a silence that told me more than any lie could have.
When you were still with me… when I thought I still had you… were you already with him? Letting him touch you so you could forget about me? So it would be easier to let me leave?
That was only recent. And she hadn’t answered.
Because she fucking couldn’t.
Even now, the silence from that night pressed against the inside of my skull. She had just stared at me, throat working, eyes too wide, the truth sitting there between us.
No denial or lies. Her response to me alone made me understand that everything I’d believed about her was already gone.
“How long have you been seeing Gregory?” I asked when I found out the news.
And instead of an answer? She responded with, “Does it matter?”
At the time, when I was cast away, when nothing mattered anymore, it didn’t… but now? Now it mattered more than anything.
I shut the folder halfway, then opened it again. I couldn’t stop looking at the data. The more I read, the more it started to look like evidence, more like a reason to do what I was about to do.
My Vieve, mon amour…
She was precise. Smart, resourceful, deliberate. She knew how to hide.
How to pretend. How to fucking lie.
The requisition slip for Eugene’s bloodwork sat on top, waiting to be sent off. It was for a routine panel. Nothing unusual.
It would’ve been easy. One more barcode… one more destination to send the blood off to. One call to a private lab that still owed me favors. It would just be a small adjustment. No one would notice.
I closed the folder, the weight of it heavy in my hands.
Because that would be insane. This was me being paranoid… But there would be no confrontation, no need to say a word until I had evidence in my hand.
My gaze shifted to the boy beside me. This would change everything.
If I went through with this… there was no going back. No undoing it or pretending it hadn’t mattered.
I couldn’t look her in the eye and pretend my coming back was still about ruining the Newman name. About my fractured ego or payback, revenge, vengeance…
Because it wasn’t about any of that anymore. It was about her. Taking back what was fucking mine.
And the second I had those results in hand, the answers she’d never given me… there’d be no more lying. No more hiding behind the family name or a husband she never really chose. She could no longer pretend I didn’t belong in this picture.
If this boy beside me… this small, bright thing with my eyes and my fucking blood type… if he was mine? If he had been mine all along? Then she didn’t deserve the life that she fabricated. This role she played behind her lies, the safety she claimed she had? She deserved none of it.
She wouldn’t deserve the peace she wanted so desperately to have. Not when she had already ruined me. Stolen from me. Made me suffer…
Once I had the truth, she wouldn’t be able to hide behind her lies… and she definitely wouldn’t be able to hide from me.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I filled in the private lab’s details, mimicked the doctor’s initials beside them, before setting the folder back onto the desk.
Eugene leaned over, his head resting on my arm as he toyed with the cube again, drowsiness softening the edges of his face. My chest filled with an indistinguishable warmth, one that made my mind short-circuit only for a split second.
I’d know the answer for certain in two weeks, but something in my gut told me what I already knew years ago, what I refused to say out loud.
That I was robbed of a family that should have been mine.
A son that could have been mine… all because of a woman who was still mine.
A woman who fucking belonged to me.
And that same woman needed a reminder. Whether she was ready for it or not.