10. Eric
CHAPTER TEN
ERIC
Back in the waiting room, I take a seat as close as I can get to the small table where a child and her mom are doing puzzles together.
That heartbeat was wild. Hands down, the most beautiful moment of my life.
Amanda could have turned me away. Asked me to step out.
Instead, she wanted me there for it. For all of it.
She let me hold her hand. Kiss her. I wasn’t thinking about it, not second-guessing myself.
I was letting myself have those tiny moments, whatever she was willing to give me. And she did, not once pulling away.
The child laughs as her mother tickles her sides when jabs a piece into the wrong spot. They’re both blonde. In my mind, though, Amanda’s green eyes and purple strands peek through, laughing with a little girl who looks just like her. Fuck, I want that.
A light pressure on my shoulder tears my gaze away from the family. When I meet Amanda’s gaze, she’s smiling as wide as she did when our eyes met over the sonogram. Over the baby’s heartbeat.
And that heartbeat… I felt it in my chest like it was tethered to my own.
My own pulse stuttered, traitorous, almost in sync with the rapid thump-thump coming from the machine.
With Amanda’s lips parted, breath caught somewhere between her chest and mine, her eyes bore into mine until a tremor passed through her shoulders.
Whatever was on my expression, she wasn’t ready to face it.
As we leave the office and get in my car, I ask Amanda what she’d like to eat.
The steering wheel feels clammy under my sweaty hands, small particles coming off and sticking in the creases of my hands.
I am more than my failures. I am more than this body of mine that keeps malfunctioning.
I am not my father, and once, I was enough for her.
I use my signal to turn left so we can choose a restaurant in Greektown. I won’t ever fuck it up again.
I glance at Amanda’s belly. I’m claiming that baby as mine.
I tighten my hands on the wheel. Not to change the way she looks at me, but because I know what it’s like to feel unwanted, and the thought of Amanda’s kid ever feeling what I felt, ever wondering if they’re enough…
I swallow hard, turning the signal to the right this time.
I risk looking at Amanda. She’s staring out her window at the city lights smearing across the window.
I’ve lived that question, worn it into my skin.
I know the scars it leaves, and I’ll be damned if I let that happen to her child.
I haven’t exactly earned the right to ask, but I want her to stay. I want her. The thought comes without pretense in the restaurant’s back parking lot. I shut off the engine, a soft ticking drowning the car as it cools. She’s looking at the restaurant sign, her reflection soft in the glass.
“I didn’t think you’d pick Greek,” I murmur.
The lighting flickers against her tight smile. “Why bother with Italian when I’m your favorite Italian cook, right?”
The sight’s enough to make my chest ache.
I’ve loved her longer than I’ve known what to do with it.
I fell for her because she saw me when not even my own father did.
Stayed in love because she’s never once flinched away from my brokenness.
When she left, I got the message loud and clear: I can be broken, but she won’t let me break her.
And yes, Amanda left, but she also returned, showing me I’m worth the trouble.
I drum my fingers once on the gearshift. “Let’s go in,” I say, keeping what I really mean locked somewhere behind my teeth. She isn’t ready for it.
We fall into step together, close enough for her sleeve to brush my arm.
The scent of oregano and grilled lamb drifts in the air.
As we turn the corner, the thought hits again.
Even if she ever accepts me, the child won’t be mine by blood.
I picture a face that might have Daray’s eyes, his laugh, his gestures, and it stings.
But not because of that. Because I made sure it couldn’t be mine.
Because it was easier to walk away than to stay and fail.
Inside, the place hums with conversation and the metallic clatter of dishes. I pull out her chair, and she gives me a small, puzzled smile before sitting. Her hand brushes mine by accident—or maybe not—and I feel the heat of it long after she lets go.
I sit across from her, forcing a slow breath. I’m not the same man I was then. I can make better choices now. And that starts here. Raising someone else’s child—Amanda’s child—isn’t a fear. It’s an honor.
That kid is mine. My privilege.
For the first time in years, the noise in my head goes quiet. And I believe that maybe I am more than my failures. Maybe that’s what it means to be enough. Maybe I can deserve her.
Amanda is halfway through her moussaka, and I’ve cut my lamb into little pieces, but have eaten two bites. I still haven’t said a damn word that matters. It’s my fault.
Her gaze flicks to my plate, and she steals a piece of my lamb before I can stop her. The fork clinks against my plate. It’s bizarre. She isn’t heartbroken. She doesn’t seem particularly sad that Daray blew up their life together. She’s in work mode.
“Did you know,” she says, chewing, “there’s a new study claiming that early maternal separation doesn’t significantly affect emotional development unless it lasts longer than three weeks?”
I raise a brow. “Three weeks?”
She nods, swallowing. “For a newborn.” She goes for another bite—my plate again—and doesn’t look up this time. “That’s what they’re calling ‘prolonged separation.’ Three weeks.”
I can hear the strain disguised under an academic register, tight around the edges.
“Sounds… grim,” I say, eating some of my own food just to give myself something to do.
She huffs a small laugh. “It’s bullshit. You can’t quantify attachment like that. But they’ll publish it anyway. Academics still love numbers. They make pain tidy.”
She’s looking at her glass now, the candlelight catching the curve of her jaw. For a second, the noise of the restaurant fades, and it’s just the soft clatter of her fork, the tension winding tighter down her throat and onto her shoulders.
“You okay?” I ask quietly.
She blinks slowly and offers a practiced half-smile. “I’m fine. It’s just work.”
She takes another piece of food—her plate this time. Comfort over unraveling.
I watch Amanda chew, her eyes darting anywhere but me. She’s doing that thing again—analyzing instead of feeling. I don’t interrupt her. Abandonment is a trigger for me. It’s one for her now, too, I suppose. She steals another bite, so I push my plate closer to her.
Sharing a horror story out of my latest meeting with my clueless undergrad student of the month, I manage to make her laugh twice.
It buys me enough courage to square my shoulders and shift the conversation.
Otherwise, she’s running out of food, and while we both work with high-pressure deadlines, this one feels like the one that’ll break me.
I clear my throat. “So… have you managed to tell him?” His name sticks in my throat. Say it, Eric. He’s not Sauron.
She stiffens. Swallows. Shakes her head. “I told Val.”
“What did she say?”
She shrugs. “Not much about the baby, surprisingly.” She takes the glass to her lips and swallows. “Val had more of an issue with me running to stay with you.”
I keep my face blank, even as something raw opens behind my ribs. Val hates my guts. To her, it’s nothing personal, just concern over my dynamic with Amanda.
“Her issue with me is the same as always?”
Amanda’s mouth is full, so she lifts both hands and tips them back and forth like scales weighing a decision.
“A bit worse now that I’m hijacking your futon.” She takes another sip. “She isn’t wrong, you know. This thing we have”—she waves her hand between us, both dismissing and emphasizing it at the same time—“is weird.” She won’t meet my eyes.
“She doesn’t trust me with you.”
She snaps her gaze up, bracing for the memory that haunts us to rear up and bite.
“Val thinks you have unsolved issues,” Amanda says, diplomatic as hell. No venom. Just facts.
“Unresolved issues is the understatement of the century,” I say, making light of the wound widening in my chest. “I’m fucked in the head.”
Amanda doesn’t smile as she tilts her head. “I’m not mediating between you two.” She points at me angrily. “Or entertaining your pity party.”
“Did she tell you to talk to Daray?”
She doesn’t answer, her eyes flickering down, left, like she’s guarding something.
“Val doesn’t tell you to do shit,” she adds without responding to the question.
“She asks questions until you wonder if you’ve ever done anything right in your life.
I just—he cheated, Eric.” Her voice doesn’t shake.
Her eyes don’t tear up. There’s an edge of something more dangerous than pain; disbelief, mingled with resentment, calcified into numbness.
“He fucked someone else. For months. In our bed.” She breathes deeply, but it doesn’t help.
“He didn’t even give me the ‘It was an accident’ excuse.
He just… did it. And she’s pregnant. This mess is going to be so…
public. And that’s the choice he’s making.
And everyone will see.” Amanda’s fingers scrub down her face like she’s trying to drag the thought off her skin. “Why should he get to have this baby?”
I want to say that he shouldn’t. I want to say that he doesn’t deserve anything. Instead, I say, “Because it’s his.”
There’s no mistaking the pain in her eyes. Perhaps I’m projecting, or we’re both hurting over possibilities she doesn’t realize aren’t all lost now.
Amanda’s posture softens, but her eyes stay far away. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Exactly. It’s fucked up to not tell him. And I hate that.”