9. Lake
nine
Present Day - Six Months Later
The chair slams into the wall behind me.
I don’t remember kicking it away from me.
The sound echoes through the room, amping up the tension.
I could give a fuck.
The photograph stays in my hand, pinched hard between my fingers.
A little boy in a yellow raincoat sitting on a driftwood log stares back at me.
Green eyes looking straight at the camera with the same kind of determined stubbornness I’ve seen in every mirror throughout my life.
One tiny fist is wrapped around a rock. Dark curls are plastered damp against his forehead.
His smile is huge. Unguarded. There’s a gap between his little teeth.
My son.
The words don’t fit. They scrape around inside my skull, too sharp to swallow, too big to spit out.
Two and a half years. He already knows how to walk. He probably talks.
Somebody else taught him. Held him through fevers, cut grapes in half, clapped when he stacked blocks and carried him out of grocery stores when he melted down in the cereal aisle.
Knows whether he liked blueberries or bananas, which book he prefers at bedtime, what song settles him when he wakes up crying.
I’ve missed all of it.
I turn toward the windows because if I look at Neel—Noa, I’m going to say something I can’t take back.
Elliott Bay sprawls beneath the eighteenth floor like nothing life-altering is happening. Right. Fucking. Now. Ferries move through the gray water. Cars crawl along Alaskan Way. People cross streets with coffees in their hands, walking through the same Tuesday they had ten minutes ago.
Seattle doesn’t give a shit about me.
A laugh tears loose. Ugly. Wrong. Too close to a sob for comfort.
Linus shifts behind me, shoes quiet against the carpet, smart enough not to touch me this time. “Lake.”
“No.” I hold up my free hand. “Shut the fuck up.”
He backs off.
Good.
Out of my peripheral vision, I notice Noa sitting across from me. Poised. Quiet. Hair loose over one shoulder. A folder on the table in front of her. Her hands are clasped together, which is enough to piss me off even further.
I’m vibrating out of my skin and she’s had three years to set up this ambush.
“You knew.” I can’t bring myself to look at her directly.
“Yes.”
The answer should satisfy something. It doesn’t.
I face her. “How long?”
Her eyes hold my gaze. “From the time I found out I was pregnant.”
The room tips again. I grip the back of the bad-luck chair, woozy. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Before he was born,” I repeat. I didn’t think I could be any more shocked. “You were pregnant with my son and didn’t tell me.”
“Our son.” The correction slices through the room.
I almost laugh again.
Our son.
As if I got a vote.
“Our son,” I echo, and the words taste like blood. “That’s a hell of a thing to hear for the first time in a goddamn conference room.”
Linus steps closer to the table. “Brother—”
“When did you know about this?” I seethe.
“I spoke to her a couple of weeks ago.” His face doesn’t move, but something in his eyes darkens. “I didn’t intend to say anything until there was proof.”
“Proof.” I sit down in a different chair. I desperately hope it’s a good-news chair.
“Aye.” He leans toward me. “I took hair from your brush.”
I shake my head. “Meaning, you stole my DNA.”
“No.” Linus’s voice is firm. In charge. “I protected you from a claim I had no intention of bringing to you until I could verify it. She’s not the first woman to claim you as a baby daddy and won’t be the last.”
“My son isn’t a claim.” My fist hits the table.
The sound echoes hard enough to change the air.
Noa’s eyes close and she does everything in her power to retain her composure.
Linus doesn’t flinch. He’s seen me furious before. Never seen this. “No. He’s not.”
The fight drains from his voice. Manager gone. Father in the room. He has four kids with his famous husband and wife. He does a good job of pretending it doesn’t soften him because he prefers everybody thinking his heart’s carved from Irish granite.
“If someone had kept one of mine from me,” he pats my shoulder, “I’d be halfway through the wall by now.”
My jaw locks because none of this is right. “Don’t try to handle me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Lake. I’m staying close enough to stop you from doing something you’ll regret and far enough away to let you feel what you’re entitled to feel.” Linus flicks his eyes to Noa.
I hate him for being good at this.
Noa says nothing. She observes with shrewd eyes.
I glare at her. “You should’ve told me.”
“I know.”
“Don’t…” I bite my lip to stop myself from screaming. “Don’t sit there and agree with me like it fixes anything you’ve done.”
“I don’t think it fixes anything.” She sighs and places her palms on the table. Gone are the red talons. Now her nails are short. Manicured, but natural.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s a long story.” There’s sadness behind her eyes.
I don’t give a fuck. “Great. Start now.”
“No.”
A pulse beats in my throat. “No?”
“At some point, you’ll know everything,” she clasps her hands together, “but not before I tell you about Levi.”
The sound of my son’s name in her mouth does something to me.
Levi.
The boy in the picture. My boy.
A child I don’t know.
“You don’t get to decide the order.” I cross my arms in front of myself.
Her eyes search mine. “Yes, I do, if it protects him.”
I stare at her, waiting for guilt. Defensiveness. Some excuse I can tear apart and shove back across the table.
She gives me none of it.
“I came here for him.” Her eyes flick to Linus and back to me. “Not to make you forgive me. I don’t expect you to understand everything in one day. I’m not going to explain every choice I made until I’m certain we can integrate you into his life.”
“You think I care more about blaming you than knowing him?” I spit out.
“I don’t know.”
Three words stop me in my tracks. It’s her truth.
She swallows. “Let’s not forget, I only knew you for one night.”
I flinch, because there it is. The night. My bed. Her voice purring about me embracing the silence. Wanting to crawl inside her body. Orgasms so intense, I still get hard imagining fucking her.
Then, the empty pillow in the morning. The stupid scrap of paper with her fake name on it in my goddamn pocket, that I’m sure as hell not going to tell her about.
“No.” My voice is rough. “You can’t drop a bomb on me like this and try to diminish what happened.”
“I’m not.”
“You make it sound like it was nothing.” I can’t believe how saying this out loud hurts my soul. “I have a kid.”
“It wasn’t nothing.” Noa’s cheeks flush. Barely. The first crack in the serenity. “It was never nothing.”
Silence presses down the air around us. Linus discreetly gets up and moves over to his desk where he can hear us but allows us some space.
Good. I’m not happy with him. Words will be had later.
“You walked out,” I mutter almost to myself. “Left a fake name.”
“Neeley was a name I used in college.” She holds my gaze. “It wasn’t exactly fake, but it also wasn’t very honest either.”
“I have no idea what game you’re playing. Will you stop speaking in riddles?” I look at the photograph again because Levi is easier and harder at the same time.
She looks down at the table. Takes a deep breath.
Truth be told, I can be angry at Noa and Linus, and I am. Very.
I can’t be angry at him. The most adorable little boy I’ve ever seen is sitting on a log, smiling at the camera, holding a rock like it’s the most precious gem in the world.
“Do you know what my whole goddamn childhood was?” I shove the picture at her.
Noa goes still.
“Waiting.” My voice drops, and somehow the quiet sucks all the air out of the room.
“I waited for people who never came back.
My mother. Father. Multiple sets of foster parents.
Social workers. Every goddamn birthday, I thought maybe this is the year somebody who loved me remembered I existed.
I prayed during every placement, “maybe this house will stick.
“ Then I made it my fault and tried to be perfect. Thought if I was quiet enough or useful enough or talented enough, nobody would send me away.”
The words keep coming. I can’t stop them. Not now.
Not when I have a son in this world.
“I swore if I ever had a kid, he or she would never spend one day wondering where I was.” My voice cracks. “Not one. I vowed if I had to sleep in my car or work five jobs and play six sets a night, I’d still crawl across broken glass to get to him.”
My hands curl into fists. “Did you think I would’ve let him grow up without me?”
“No. I never believed that.” Noa’s eyes shine.
My chest heaves once. “Then why?”
“There are many reasons.” She looks down at the folder. “You deserve to hear all of them. Not all today. I’ll have to decide how to tell you. I know none of this changes what you lost.”
The answer frustrates me because it doesn’t give me anywhere to put my hands. “More fucking riddles. What the hell do you mean?”
“Lake, I’m not going to turn your first hour as Levi’s father into a trial about me.” She squeezes her eyes shut.
“Except, this is about you,” I seethe.
Noa shakes her head. “No. Right now, it’s about him. Let me start with Levi.”
I hate how steady she sounds and despise my lack of control over this situation. It’s infuriating.
Noa opens the folder and pulls out another photograph. She places it on the table between us tentatively. Like she’s putting food near a wild animal and hoping it won’t bite her fingers.
It’s Levi, asleep in a car seat, cheeks flushed, mouth open, one fist wrapped around a little blue truck.
“He always sleeps with things in his hand.” She taps the picture. “Rocks. Toys. His blanket. I think it soothes him.”
I don’t move.
She lays down another picture. Levi in a highchair, face smeared with goo.
“He loves strawberries and blackberries. Hates blueberries unless they’re frozen. If you give him apples, he looks at you like you’ve betrayed the republic.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Linus’s mouth twitch.
I turn to glare at him. It disappears.