8. Skye
— ? —
Skye
I get the call mid-meeting, my phone buzzing insistently in my pocket while Jaime presents quarterly projections to a room full of investors. A room full of men in expensive suits, nodding along to charts and graphs, completely unaware that my world is falling apart three inches from my hip.
The screen flashes TINY TOTS DAYCARE.
My heart stops.
I silence the call. Shove the phone deeper into my pocket. Try to focus on the presentation, on the numbers, on anything except the cold dread spreading through my chest.
It buzzes again.
“Excuse me,” I whisper to the analyst next to me. “I need to step out.”
She gives me a look. The kind of look that says this meeting is mandatory and you’re committing career suicide. I ignore her and slip out the door, phone already pressed to my ear.
“Ms. Warren? This is Miss Patricia.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Josh has a fever. A hundred and four. He’s been asking for you for the last twenty minutes.” Her voice is gentle but firm. “We need you to pick him up as soon as possible.”
A hundred and four. My three-year-old baby, burning up in a daycare while I sit in a conference room pretending to care about quarterly projections.
“I’m on my way.”
I hang up and stare at the conference room door. Through the glass, I can see Jaime at the head of the table, gesturing at a slide, his voice muffled but confident.
I can’t leave. The meeting is mandatory.
The investors flew in from three different time zones.
My job hangs by a thread I’ve been carefully maintaining for four weeks, and walking out now might be the thing that finally snaps it.
Jaime loves his deals and I won’t risk finding out if he loves me more.
I can’t stay. My son needs his mother, and I’m standing in a hallway doing math on whether I can afford to lose my job.
The door opens. Jaime steps out, his face tight with concern.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go back to your meeting.”
“You’re shaking.”
I look down at my hands. He’s right. They’re trembling so badly I can barely hold my phone.
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I said you’re lying.” He steps closer, lowering his voice. “What happened?”
Something snaps under the weight of four years of solitary rage and exhaustion, a time filled with unassisted midnight feedings, expensive emergency room trips for ear infections, and birthdays where I play both parents to a toddler who still has no idea his father exists.
I survive on nothing for four years while Jaime spends billions tracking me down as if I am merely a misplaced possession waiting to be reclaimed.
And now he wants to know what’s wrong.
“My son is sick.” The words tear out of me, louder than I intended.
“My three-year-old son. He has a hundred-and-four fever and he’s asking for me, and I’m stuck here because I can’t afford to lose this job, and you made sure I can’t quit, so congratulations, Jaime. You win. You always win. You always-”
“You have a son.”
The words hit completely different when they come out of his mouth like that, almost as if he is tasting them, testing them, and turning them over to examine them from every single angle.
“Yes.”
“A three-year-old son.”
“Yes.”
“Is it mine?”
My blood runs cold in the empty hallway because it feels as though the entire world is watching us, with every fluorescent light turning into a spotlight and every security camera acting as a witness.
“He’s mine.” Jaime does not say it like a question. It lands as a flat, certain statement, raw and utterly devastating. “He’s my son too.”
“You don’t know that.”
A junior analyst rounds the corner, coffee cups in hand. She sees us, freezes, and immediately reverses direction. Smart woman.
“We’re not having this conversation right now,” I say. “My son is sick. I need to go.”
“Then let me take you.”
“No.”
“Your car has been making that sound for two weeks. The one you think I haven’t noticed. The one that means your transmission is about to fail.” He’s not gloating. He’s stating facts. “If you take the bus, it’s forty minutes. If you drive, there’s a chance you won’t make it there at all.”
“And if I get in a car with you?”
“Then you’ll be with your son in twenty minutes.”
I want to refuse. I want to throw his offer back in his face, tell him he has no right, no claim, no part of this life I’ve built without him.
But Josh is sick. Josh is scared, and Jaime has a car that works.
“Fine.”
The word tastes like defeat.
His car is parked in the executive garage. Some ridiculous sports thing, all leather and chrome. The doors open upward like wings. I climb in and try not to think about the last time I was in a car with him.
Neither of us speaks during the drive. I stare out the window, counting traffic lights, willing my heart to stop racing. The city blurs past. Red light. Green light. Red again.
“What’s his name?”
I don’t answer.
“Skye. What’s his name?”
“Josh.”
I can feel him turning it over. Examining it. Wondering if there’s meaning in the choice, or if I just liked how it sounded.
There’s meaning. Joshua was his grandfather’s name. The one who taught him to fish. The one whose funeral I held his hand through, three months before the wedding that never happened.
I don’t tell him that. Let him wonder.
We pull up to the daycare in twenty minutes and forty-three seconds. I burst through the doors before the car fully stops. Sign the release form with a hand that won’t stop shaking. Gather my son into my arms.
He’s burning hot. His cheeks are flushed, bright red against his pale skin. His dark curls are plastered to his forehead, damp with sweat. He smells like the lavender soap Miss Patricia uses and something sour underneath, the smell of a sick child, the smell of my worst nightmares.
“Mama.” His voice is small and scared and it breaks me in half. “I don’t feel good.”
“I know, baby. I know.” I press my lips to his forehead, feeling the heat radiating off him. “Mama’s here. Mama’s got you.”
“My head hurts.”
“I know. We’re going to make it better, okay? We’re going to go home and get you some medicine and put you in your favorite pajamas.”
“The dinosaur ones?”
“The dinosaur ones.”
He nods against my shoulder, too tired to argue, too tired to do anything but cling. I carry him toward the door, his weight familiar and grounding, the one thing in my life that makes sense.
And then I step outside.
Jaime stands next to his car, waiting. His hands are in his pockets, his shoulders tense, his whole body angled toward the door like he’s been holding his breath since I walked in.
Josh lifts his head to see who else is there.
This moment just stretches out forever right now, feeling completely elastic and totally infinite, almost like we are suspended in amber while the whole universe holds its breath.
I watch Jaime’s face the exact second he really looks at Josh for the first time, seeing him not just as a name or a suspicion, but as a real, living child with dark curly hair, flushed cheeks, and eyes that look just like his.
Jaime lets out this raw sound that isn’t even a word or a cry, just something completely animal torn straight from his chest. His knees actually buckle right there, and he has to catch himself on the hood of his car with his palm flat against the metal while his whole body starts shaking.
“Oh my God.” The words come out strangled. Wrecked. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Josh stares at him with the guileless curiosity of a three-year-old. “Mama, why is that man crying?”
Because Jaime is crying. Tears streaming down his face, shoulders heaving, completely undone in a daycare parking lot. He pushes off the car and takes a step toward us, then another, his hands reaching out like he’s approaching something sacred.
“He has my face.” His voice breaks on every word. “Skye, he has my face. He has my mother’s nose. He has my grandfather’s chin. He’s... he’s...”
“Jaime, don’t-”
But he’s absolutely not listening to a word I’m saying right now. He is just staring straight at Josh with this expression I’ve seriously never seen on his face before, with wonder, grief, rage, and love all completely tangled together into something that looks like it might actually kill him.
“Three years.” He’s not talking to me anymore. He’s talking to himself, or to God, or to the universe that let this happen. “Three years. He’s been alive for three years and I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
“Mama?” Josh’s voice is worried now. “Why is he sad?”
“I don’t know, baby.”
“Should we give him a hug? Hugs help when you’re sad.”
Jaime makes that sound again. That broken, animal sound. He drops to his knees on the pavement, like his legs have given out completely. Like the weight of what he’s seeing is too much for his body to hold upright.
“Can I...” His voice is barely a whisper. “Can I see him? Please. Just let me see him.”
“Jaime-”
“I’m not going to take him. I’m not going to do anything. I just...” He’s sobbing now. Full, wracking sobs that shake his entire frame. “I just want to see my son. Please. Please, Skye. I’m begging you.”
People are starting to stare. Parents picking up their kids, pausing to watch the scene unfolding. A well-dressed man on his knees, crying in a parking lot. A woman holding a sick child, frozen in place.
“Josh, baby, can you say hi to Mama’s friend?”
Josh studies Jaime with serious eyes. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Jaime’s voice cracks in half. “Hi, Josh. I’m... I’m...”
“He’s sick,” I say quickly. “He has a fever. We need to get him home.”
Jaime nods, wiping his face with the back of his hand, trying to pull himself together. He fails. Fresh tears keep coming, faster than he can catch them.
“Let me drive you. Please.” He stumbles to his feet. “I won’t... I won’t try anything. I just need to know he gets home safe. I need to see where he lives. I need to know he’s real.”
I should say no because every instinct screams at me to refuse, to call an Uber, and to do absolutely anything except get in a car with this man who is looking at my son like he just discovered the meaning of life.
But Josh is burning up against my chest. And Jaime is shattered in a way I’ve never seen anyone shattered before. And somewhere underneath four years of rage, there’s a voice that whispers he deserved to know.
I climb into the back seat with Josh in my lap.
Jaime gets in the driver’s seat. His hands are shaking so badly he can barely grip the wheel. He adjusts the rearview mirror, and I realize it’s not to see the road.
It’s to see Josh.
“He has curls,” Jaime whispers. “I had curls like that when I was little. My mother has pictures.”
“I saw that.”
“And his eyes. The way they tilt up at the corners. That’s my grandmother. That’s exactly my grandmother.”
“Jaime, drive.”
He drives, barely. The car drifts between lanes. He keeps looking in the mirror, drinking in every detail of the child he never knew existed.
“What’s his favorite color?”
“Blue.”
“Does he like animals?”
“Dinosaurs. He’s obsessed with dinosaurs.”
“I loved dinosaurs when I was his age.” A broken laugh escapes him. “My room was covered in them. I had a T-Rex bedspread that I refused to let my mother wash.”
Josh perks up slightly against my shoulder. “You like dinosaurs?”
Jaime’s breath catches. “Yeah, buddy. I love dinosaurs.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“Triceratops.”
“That’s my second favorite!” Josh’s fever-bright eyes light up. “My first favorite is T-Rex. T-Rex is the best because he has big teeth and tiny arms and that’s funny.”
Jaime laughs. It turns into a sob halfway through. “That is funny. You’re right.”
“I have a T-Rex at home. His name is Chompy.”
“That’s a great name.”
“Mama named him. She’s good at names.”
Jaime’s eyes meet mine in the mirror. The look in them nearly stops my heart. Gratitude and grief and something that might be love, all wrapped around a core of pure devastation.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “She is.”
We pull up to my building, taking in the broken gate, the faded parking lines, and the entire apartment complex that seems held together by nothing but hope and duct tape.
Jaime stares at it like he’s seeing a crime scene.
“This is where you live?”
“This is where we live. With Shelby just down the hall, we have each other’s keys.”
“Skye, this neighborhood isn’t safe. The lock on that gate is broken. The streetlight on the corner is out. If someone wanted to-”
“This is where we live,” I repeat, harder. “Because this is what I can afford. Because I’ve been raising your son alone on a salary that can’t cover a decent one.”
I open the door and climb out, Josh heavy in my arms.
“Skye, wait.”
“No.”
“We need to talk about this.”
“My son is sick. I’m taking him inside. This conversation is not happening today.”
“Then when?” He’s out of the car now, following me across the parking lot, his voice rising. “When, Skye? Tomorrow? Next week? Another four years?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s my son!” The words echo off the buildings. Utterly unhinged. “He’s my son and you kept him from me. You let me search for you for four years. You let me think I’d lost everything. And the whole time, you were hiding him from me. My own child. My own blood.”
I stop walking and turn to face him.
“You want to know why I hid him?”
“Yes!”
“Because three weeks after I left, you were in every tabloid with her. Her hand on your face. Her walking out of your building at dawn. Inseparable, day and night.” My voice shakes with four years of rage.
“I was pregnant with your child and you were moving on with the woman you swore meant nothing.”
“That’s not what happened! That was staged, I sued the company who released that article after-”
“I don’t care what happened! I care what I saw! I care that I was terrified and carrying your baby, and you were being photographed with your mistress!”
Josh starts to cry. The shouting is scaring him. His fever-hot face presses into my neck, and his small body trembles.
“Mama, stop yelling.”
The sound of his voice cuts through everything. I take a breath, then another. Force my voice back to something resembling calm.
“We’re done here.”
“Skye-”
“I said we’re done.” I start walking again. “You know where I live now. You know his name. That’s more than you had an hour ago. Be grateful for it.”
“I want to be in his life.”
I stop at the door. My hand on the handle. My son in my arms. My whole life balanced on the edge of a knife.
“You want a lot of things, Jaime. You’ve always wanted a lot of things.” I turn just enough for him to hear me. “But what you want stopped mattering to me four years ago. This is my son. I decide who’s in his life. Me. Not you.”
“He’s my son too.”
I go inside and close the door behind me.
Through the window, I watch him standing in the parking lot. His hands hanging limp at his sides, his face turned up toward my building like he’s memorizing which window is mine.
He stands there for twenty minutes before going back to his car.