46. Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Six
Stephen
I’m heading into Owen’s house for our monthly meeting about operations when my phone chimes with a text from Ava.
The new birth certificate just arrived. I want to frame it. Would that be weird? We can order a second copy.
A grin rises to the surface at the picture that comes next. Landon Foster. Jesus. It’s real. Even once I knew he was mine, I braced myself to never see this day, to never have this kind of resolution. Before I can reply, another text comes through.
And it’s finally hit me how big of a deal this is and that I’m not sure how to tell Landon and I don’t even know where to start. Where do we start? How are we supposed to make this make sense?
Her stream-of-consciousness texting is strangely comforting, since I also don’t know how we’re supposed to do this without causing Landon some damage to his identity.
He’s young, but Raul is the only father he’s ever known.
To me, he already feels like my son, but I’ve had the truth for months now.
For Landon, this is going to shake his foundation.
We’ll figure it out together when I get home tonight. I text back. The last piece of our family puzzle.
Then I tuck my phone back into my pocket as Owen answers the door.
He looks tired, but he also just returned from an overseas trip to recruit Bellerive citizens to return home to work for us.
Ex-military, retired police, and a host of other law and security professionals who’ve been employed elsewhere in the world were his targets.
“Jet lag?” I ask as he leads us back to his office.
“Out late with Ren,” he says. “Rebecca moved out of their apartment, and he’s spinning.”
“I thought they had a house.”
“They did,” Owen says with a sigh. “Which turned into an apartment because… You know, I probably shouldn’t talk about this with you.”
“I talk to you about Ava.”
“She’s work that became personal. I don’t need to drag my personal into my work. I like those lines clean. Besides, it’s Ren’s drama, not mine.”
Except we both know those lines have never been clean—either with work or with Ren’s personal life.
For a while, Ren was working for our Bellerive office when we first opened.
Not in security but in marketing. Supposedly trying to get us clients.
Didn’t last long, and I never asked why.
I’ve heard lots of rumors about Ren, though.
He’s well known across the island for his charm and the way he spends his inherited wealth.
“Any luck recruiting?” I ask as we enter Owen’s office.
“A fair bit,” Owen says with a nod. “At least my discussions were mostly positive. May need to do another trip or two to secure some of them.”
“When are you thinking about doing that?” I ask.
“Wait for things to cool down here first.”
Right, the drama that doesn’t affect him.
He sighs and rocks back in his chair, clearly uneasy. “I may have told Ren that I’d watch out for Rebecca for a while.”
“What’s she do again?”
“Social worker. Ren says she’s threatened all the time, and he’s worried about her being on her own. She’s not originally from here.”
“Will she leave the island?” I ask.
“To go back to Canada? Doubtful. But you know what the island can be like about outsiders.”
“Ren’s a client, then?”
“In a way.”
“If you’re going to take on security clients instead of recruiting, that’ll leave us…” I let the sentence dangle, knowing that the answer is always how short-staffed we are already.
“Within a month, she’ll have moved back in, and things will be fine again. This arrangement between them is temporary. Once cooler heads prevail, all will be well again. And I’m aware that our staffing shortage is still a substantial problem on the island. You don’t need to remind me.”
“Can’t grow if we don’t have the staff, and you’ve got connections and relationships I don’t have. So I can’t do your job.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Owen snaps. “A bit of grace while I sort this personal issue out. I’ve given you lots of leeway with the Raul-and-Ava debacle that halved our client list, and then having Celia Tucker arrested, which gutted us even more.”
He’s exaggerating. We still have more protection requests than we can fill with our current staffing, but we did lose a bit of luster because of my relationship with Ava.
Apparently the elite class on the island frowns on a woman cheating, even if they’re willing to look the other way when a man does it.
Nevertheless, I hold up my hands in surrender. Owen is a good guy and a decent boss and partner, even if he’s irritable today. “Fair enough. You’ll have all the grace in the world from me.”
“Right,” Owen says, turning his computer screen in my direction. “Let’s debrief from the last month and look ahead at what we’ve got scheduled. Lots of clients flying in for special events in the next few weeks. We’ll need to use our resources wisely.”
I lean forward and listen in as he gives me the rundown on everything we have coming up. By the end, he’s back to himself, and I almost believe that this Ren-and-Rebecca situation won’t be a serious problem.
I hold the birth certificate in my hands, and I can’t believe how light it is. The paper itself has some sort of plastic coating, and I’m relieved it won’t easily rip or tear.
“I don’t think we need to frame it,” I murmur, almost more to myself than Ava. “But I don’t even know where to start with explaining this.”
Ava sits outside the open bathroom door. Landon is in my oversized bathtub, playing with bath toys at a high enough volume that I’m sure he’s not paying attention to anything being said out here.
“My parents already treat him like he’s their grandson, but I wonder if we tell them first. A trial run?”
“They’re adults, so of course they’ll understand. They also know my mother. We have to figure out a good way to tell Landon.”
“What’s the simplest explanation that we could give right now?”
“A mistake at the hospital,” Ava says. “Not really looking to get into the whole ‘how babies are made’ discussion.” She lets out a deep sigh.
“And I should probably be the one talking, even though it makes me want to vomit with anxiety. He’s never been super attached to Raul, but it’s still a huge flip of his reality. ”
I go over and sit beside her on the floor. She rests her head against me, and I kiss her crown. “You’re a good mom. And in the end, he’ll know he’s loved by me, by you, by your family, and by my family.”
Ava invites me into Landon’s room for their nighttime routine, and I realize that I might get to do this now. I haven’t tried to infringe on their time together because part of me was still holding back a little, afraid something terrible would go wrong and the two of them would be snatched away.
“Stephen and I wanted to talk to you about something,” Ava says, perched on the edge of Landon’s bed, while I’m in the chair I used to use to chat to my dad when they lived here.
“Are we going back to our house?” Landon asks, and there’s a hint of panic in his voice. “I like it here.”
“No,” Ava says with a breathless little laugh. “No. Um…” She shoots me a glance. “When I first found out I was going to have a baby, I actually wasn’t sure who your dad was.”
Landon frowns, and he sits up in bed. “How come?”
“You know how I told you that Stephen and I used to know each other before you were born? We were dating, and then Stephen left the country, and I started dating Raul. And all of that happened very close together, so I wasn’t sure who might be your dad.”
“But then you figured it out?”
“I thought I did. I had the hospital run a special test, but it turns out they made a mistake.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, the hospital told me that Raul was your biological dad, but that’s not true.” She swallows and glances at me. “Stephen is your biological dad.”
Landon’s eyes widen. “Stephen is my dad?”
“I am,” I say from my chair, “and I know this is probably confusing. Raul has been in your life…”
Landon clambers out of bed, and he rushes toward me, flinging himself into my chest, wrapping his arms around my neck. “I always, always wished for a dad like you.”
Tears spring to my eyes, and I have to fight to hold them back. “Oh, buddy. I always wished for a son like you too.”
He squeezes me extra tight for a beat before drawing back to examine my face. “I can call you Dad?”
“If that’s weird for you, you can just call me Stephen.”
“Sometimes I’ve almost called you Dad before. Did you know that? By accident. It kinda felt like you already were my dad. How a dad was supposed to be on TV.”
“If you want to call me Dad, I would be honored.” My voice is thick.
“And your mom and dad are Lorraine and Walter?”
“Yes.”
“And your sister is Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
“They’re my family too?”
“Yes. My sister is your aunt. My parents are your grandparents.”
“I have grandparents!” He turns to look at his mom. “I have grandparents who want to hang out with me, just like some of my friends have.”
There are tears streaking down Ava’s face, and she nods and lets out a little laugh. “You’re pretty lucky.”
He climbs off my lap and goes to his mom. He wipes one of the tears off her cheek. “You’re not happy?”
“I am happy,” Ava says. “I’m just sad that it took so long for the truth to come out. But I just want you to know that you are so loved. So, so loved. We all love you so much.”
He wraps an arm around his mom’s shoulders and then turns to look at me. “Are we a family now? Like are you and my mom going to be my parents for real?”
“For real real,” I agree. “Forever.”
His brow furrows. “Some of my friends who have parents who live in different houses have to go to both houses. Do I have to do that? What about my other dad?”
“You don’t have to do that,” Ava says. “It’s just the three of us. You, me, and Stephen.”
“And I can call Lorraine and Walter Grandma and Grandpa?”
“They’d love that,” I say.
“Wow,” Landon says, flopping back onto the bed. “What a day!”
Moonlight streams into my apartment after I turn out the lights, and I consider closing the drapes, but I like being greeted by the morning sun.
“Do you think he’ll miss Raul?” I can’t help asking as I climb into bed beside Ava.
It seems inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t, and it’s been weighing on me all evening.
If I’d lost my father figure at his age, I’d have been devastated.
My dad and I were tight when I was a kid, whereas Vanessa was always closer with our mom.
Ava snuggles close, and she traces circles on my chest. “You want the truth?”
“Always.”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t yet, but he might.”
“We need to make it safe for him to tell us that,” I say. “I don’t want him to think he can’t say that. There was a relationship there, even if it wasn’t a perfect one.”
“Or even a good one,” Ava murmurs. “There’s a reason he was so overjoyed to have a dad like you.
Raul did almost nothing with him unless I made him participate in an activity or acknowledge Landon’s needs.
I always thought we got married because of Landon, but…
” Her shoulders lift. “He wanted access to the Tucker name. Landon was why I agreed to marry him, but I’m not sure he was even in the equation for Raul.
We were just pawns in a bigger financial game that I didn’t even know we were playing. ”
Silence sits around us as I struggle to figure out what to say. “I’m really sorry. That’s not at all what I would have wanted for either of you.”
“You’re right, though. Landon doesn’t know or understand any of that. I’ll talk to him tomorrow—alone, if that’s okay—to make sure he knows I can figure something out if he does want to see Raul. I don’t want him to, but I can’t make those decisions for him, or else I’m no better than my mother.”
“I just want the two of you to come out of this okay. Whatever you need to do to make sure that happens, I’ll stand behind you.”
“I fucking love you, you know that.” She rises up on her elbow to stare down at me. “Like really love you.”
I loop my fingers around a loose strand of her hair before tucking it gently behind her ear. My chest is full of emotion, and my throat tightens. “There is nothing more precious to me than what we’ve built in this house the last few months. Nothing.”
She traces my cheekbone with her index finger, clearly lost in thought. “When you texted me earlier, you said that Landon’s birth certificate was the last piece of our family puzzle. Is that what you really want?”
“What do you mean?”
“For Landon to be the last and only piece of our family puzzle.”
I search her expression in the faint light streaming in from the window, and I try to decide if she’s serious. “You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Ava. I don’t want to assume here.”
“A.N.O.T.H.E.R. B.A.B.Y.” A hint of a smile tips the corners of her mouth. “If you want.”
“It’s not if I want,” I say. “You’re an amazing mother, Ava. But it’s your body, and last time we talked about this—granted, that was years ago—you weren’t keen on being a mother. I’m not asking for more from you unless that’s what you want too.”
“We haven’t exactly been careful, have we?”
“Well, no,” I admit, and now I’m a little ashamed I didn’t raise the issue earlier.
“So I just thought I should say it out loud.”
“Say it, then,” I challenge.
“I want to have your baby.”
I groan and roll her over so I’m cradled between her thighs, my face buried in her neck. She giggles. The sweetest sound.
“Did you like that?” she asks.
“I think I just came in my pants.”
“You’re not wearing pants,” she says.
“Ava, are you sure? Yeah, I should have asked earlier. A lot earlier. But I need you to be completely sure.” When I draw back to look at her, her smile is gone.
“I’m choosing this life with you, Stephen. Without hesitation. I’m going to be your wife, and I’m going to have your baby. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. You are the love of my life. Those are just facts.”
“Facts, huh?” I say, nuzzling her nose with mine. “Just facts?”
“And so much love,” she says. “Now give me that baby.” She pushes her hips up toward me. “And an orgasm or two.”
“Sounds like an order I’ll happily fulfill,” I say.
“I can’t wait to be your wife,” Ava says, kissing me.
As I slide into her a little while later, she whispers in my ear, “I love it when you come home to me.”
I can’t believe that I somehow ended up back here with everything I’ve ever wanted, no longer a dream but the greatest reality. “Home is my favorite place to be,” I whisper back.