Chapter 9 Ford
NINE
FORD
Imeet Olivia at the top of the hill once the ambulance takes the skinny-dipper away.
“How are they?” she asks when I’m close, her hands clutched together in front of her, worry creasing her forehead.
Gently, I run my fingers down her cheek. “Fine. Hit their head underwater. The group were in a no-jumping area. Signs, a fence, everything. Didn’t stop them, though.”
She presses her lips into a firm line as she leans into my tough. “That’s not great.”
“The ranch is safe considering we have all the necessary signage up. Although, I don’t think they’ll want to sue after the talking to they got.
” It wouldn’t be the first time guests got into an area they shouldn’t have, but this might be one of the unluckiest situations.
“Not as serious as it could have been, which is a blessing.”
“At least they’re alive,” she murmurs, gaze darting to the water, and the disbanded group.
I take Olivia’s hand, interlocking our fingers. “Let’s go back,” I suggest. “There was still something you needed to tell me, right?”
The colour drains from her cheeks, and I watch as she swallows hard. “Yeah,” she whispers, nodding, eyes flickering behind me. “Not here.”
“I’ll take you back to the cabin,” I offer, squeezing her hand. “We’re less likely to be interrupted there.”
The corners of her lips twitch into a smile, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “That might be a good idea.”
I don’t know whether to feel sick over what she has to tell me, or excited.
Her nerves are palpable, but it can’t be that bad.
At least she doesn’t have a husband or fiancé I need to worry about.
As much as I’m certain I love Olivia, I wouldn’t dare step into a relationship with her, not now or not with the other man out of the picture.
Knowing that isn’t the case alleviates some of my own inner turmoil, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with her.
We make our way back to the clearing silently, re-entering the trees and leaving the commotion behind. It has to be close to five in the morning, meaning I’m about to lose my chance at keeping our marriage.
The bet seems useless now, especially since Olivia has this secret hanging over us.
“Are you pregnant?” I ask, thinking back to earlier—our conversation about kids, about wanting them. “Is that what you’re scared to tell me? What you’re worried will change my mind?”
“What?” Her head snaps towards me, her eyes widening with shock. “No. I’m not pregnant. What made you think—”
I shrug as we hit the clearing. “You asked about kids,” I reply, sparing her a look. “And it’s the only other thing I can think of that might be making you so nervous. I guess it would mean you’ve had sex before or after we got married, but I won’t hold it against you if that’s the case.”
Olivia makes a sound in the back of her throat. “I haven’t been with anyone since you,” she says, stopping by the picnic blanket. I bend down to pick it up, pulling it off the ground, but it sends her purse flying.
The contents come spilling out, wallet, keys, cell phone, and a lot of polaroids. “Shit, sorry,” I stammer, dropping to my knees, picking up one of the photographs. “What are these—”
I have to blink despite the image being so clear. I’d recognise Olivia anywhere, only here, she looks tired. Happy, yet exhausted. She’s hooked up to different machines in a hospital bed, and in her arms is a blue bundle.
My mouth goes dry. “What?”
Olivia drops to her knees beside me, tears shining in her eyes as she snatches the rest up.
I grab another before she can add it to her pile, but this one is newer.
The baby is an actual baby, not a bundle in her arms. It’s a picture of it in a crib, taken from between the bars, a smiling, dimple-cheeked baby staring back at me with eyes like mine.
I smooth my thumb over the grinning face as I look at Olivia. Tears run down her cheeks, the rest of the polaroids tucked against her chest.
“I couldn’t figure out the best way to tell you,” she whispers, voice raw.
“Tell me what?” I ask, voice breaking. “Who is this?”
She sniffs. “That’s Christopher. My son. Our son.”
I sit back, breath leaving me, and stare at her. “What?”
“He’s seven months old now,” she explains, sobbing. “I didn’t know I was pregnant until a few months after we met. You-you were the only one I’d been with in months. He’s yours.”
My gaze flickers to the photo again. It has to be more recent, because he looks like a real fucking baby. “I…I have a son?”
“I wasn’t sure when I saw you if you were…
if you were the same man from the bar,” she whispers, eyes closing.
“It’s why I wanted the annulment. I’ve been looking for you for months.
What happened in Vegas felt like a huge obstacle.
I came here to deal with this so I could go back to looking for his dad. ”
“Were you even going to tell me about him?” I asked, tone harsher than I intended it to be. Hurt hits me—hard, icy, a sickening twist in my stomach—but so does regret.
I don’t know who I blame more: her for not finding me, or me for not looking harder.
That’s months of his life I’ve missed.
Worse, years I could have had with Olivia. Through the pregnancy, the birth, and the beginnings of our son’s life. All gone because we didn’t give each other our names.
“I’ve been trying to tell you all goddamn night,” she snaps, wiping her cheeks. “But every time I tried, either you or someone else interrupted. Maybe that was the universe telling me this was a mistake. I don’t know. But now you do know. You know about Christopher, and the choice is yours.”
She sets the pictures down on the grass between us, riffles through her purse, and pulls out papers.
“These are the annulment forms,” she says as she climbs to her feet.
“My address is listed, so if you want to see Christopher, you can. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to move.
My sister is in Willow Ridge, and she’s the only real family I have left.
I need help. This isn’t me asking you for a handout or anything. ”
“Wait.” I grab her hand, confusion swirling within me. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’m giving you time to choose,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“He is my son. I made the choice to have him, Ford. I could have decided differently. But I didn’t.
I made the choice to bring him into this world, knowing damn well you weren’t around, so you didn’t have a choice.
Well, I’m giving you that choice. You get to decide if you want to be involved.
But I can’t—I can’t sit here and watch you while you do. It would break my heart.”
Olivia tries to take her hand back, but I hold her tighter and stand. “We have a son.” My thoughts are racing, my heart shredded.
A son. We have a son.
God, I feel like a fool. It all makes sense now.
But doubt also trickles in, like Tucker is in the background warning me to be careful.
“Yes,” she hisses, stepping away from me. “We do.”
My heart leaps into my throat, still hammering hard. I keep the picture of him clutched in my other hand as I suck in a deep breath. “I have a kid.”
Something softens in her features as she watches me. “The polaroids are from my pregnancy and after the birth,” she says. “Maybe you should have a look at them. I wrote on the back of some. Detailing different milestones. Just things I thought you might want to know.”
My hand trembles as I flip the photo around to look at the back.
All it reads is Christopher’s first full night of sleep - thank you cousin Cleo!
I swallow hard. “These are for me?”
She nods once, finally pulling her hand from mine. “Yeah. I also have a journal I kept, but it’s at home.”
“Home…” I look at her, blinking hard, tears forming in my eyes. “Where he is?”
“Yeah, he’s with a friend right now. This is the longest I’ve been away from him.” She looks at the photo in my hand with a soft smile, then clears her throat. “I wouldn’t blame you, you know. If this is too much.”
“It’s not,” I murmur, scrubbing a hand down my face. “It’s just—of all the things you could tell me, this was the one I least expected.”
What were the chances the one night we spent together gave us something so…
perfect? Kids have always been one of those things that felt like a future-me kind of option.
For so long, I’ve worked across ranches, floating between jobs, never staying long enough to find stability. Now, though, I have a reason.
A reason to stick around. To lay roots. To do something other than drift. And I’ve been terrified of that, too, I can admit that to myself now. With my past hanging over me, a past that broke me so badly I refuse to touch it now.
“Olivia—”
“Think about it, before you do or say anything else,” she says, stepping back. “This isn’t something you should decide in a few minutes, Ford.”
The doubt implanted by Tucker disappears as I watch the dread form in her eyes. This woman isn’t here because she wants a cut of the blood money that is the Greyson dynasty. She wasn’t put here to test me or my resolve in touching a fortune I want no part of.
If she did, she would have slapped me with a paternity test the moment she got here, established I’m his dad, then taken me for my family wealth.
I shake my head. “I already know what I want. And that’s you. Both of you.”
Sadness softens her eyes as she cocks her head. “You can’t be sure of that after ten minutes of knowing about Christopher, Ford. He’s not a snap decision. He’s our kid. And he deserves consideration.”
A lump forms in my throat, stopping me from answering. She’s not wrong, and yet I know this is exactly what I want.
I want her.
I want our son.
But why won’t the words pass my lips?
Is it because I don’t know how to feel about her keeping this from me? She could have told me the moment she found me. Not that she thought he was mine, but that she had a kid in general. It would have explained her insistence.
But then I wouldn’t have pushed so hard to convince her to keep the marriage. Even though I knew she had to be the same woman, she didn’t have that same reassurance. She hadn’t been sure it was me.
I scrub a hand down my face again, fingers still trembling, my heart still racing. Blood thrums in my ears, making me feel lightheaded.
I groan, dropping to the ground and wrapping my arms around my knees. “Fuck.”
“Are you alright?” Olivia asks, stepping towards me. She reaches towards me like she intends to offer me comfort, but fists her hand at her side instead.
Slowly, I shake my head. “Why didn’t you tell me from the start that you had a kid?”
Olivia crosses her arms with a snort. “You know what the number one thing women are told not to do when it comes to men?” she replies.
“It’s telling them you’re a single mother.
I don’t have my sister’s luck in finding a great guy who’ll accept her and her kids right away, who isn’t a total creep.
I didn’t know anything about you. I had to make a choice, and I chose to protect my kid from the man I didn’t know, the one I didn’t want to be married to. ”
I nod slowly. “I get it. Okay? I understand.” The thought of her introducing our kid to anyone else has a pit yawning in my stomach. “You did the right thing.”
“I know I did,” she says, dropping her arms. “I guess the question now is: are you?”
I look up, taking in the way the morning sun makes her hair shine, how her features harden as she waits for my answer.
There’s only one thing I care to ask.
“Can I meet him?”