Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After the tense hours of waiting for news about Carson, Cresley and Ty, Griffin should’ve headed home to get some sleep before work tomorrow, but he couldn’t seem to tear himself away from the tiny bundle in his arms. His daughter.
His little girl. Hadley Jane. He hadn’t known about her until after she arrived, and now he couldn’t imagine life without her.
If you’d asked him before if he wanted kids, he would’ve said fuck no, he did not want kids or any other responsibilities that would get in the way of the rest of his life.
If he wasn’t working, he was surfing or hanging out with his friends or playing golf and living the good life, the kind that came with no obligations to anyone but himself and his clients.
That lifestyle had worked for a long time.
But now… he found himself leaving the office every night—on time—and heading directly to Santa Monica to see his daughter, annoyed by the traffic that stood between them on the way.
Hadley Jane had quickly become the center of his universe.
McKenna was probably sick of him showing up every night to hold her for as long as he possibly could before he had to part with her for another twenty-four unbearable hours.
“Thank you for all the support today while we waited to hear about Carson,” he said to McKenna when she sat next to him on the sofa.
“I’m so, so glad they’re all safe. What a terrifying situation. How’s our girl doing?”
“She’s perfect, and I’m officially obsessed,” Griffin confessed.
MK’s curly light blond hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, and she wore a T-shirt over yoga pants. He’d always thought she was beautiful, but since she’d given birth, there was an added aura of power surrounding her that he found enormously sexy.
Not that he was lusting after his baby’s mother or anything like that… He was merely noticing that she was even sexier than she’d been before, which was saying something.
“I love that you’re obsessed,” MK said with a smile. “My arms appreciate the break when you get here.”
“I hope I’m not wearing out my welcome.” After the gutless way he’d ended their relationship, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d let him see the baby once and then told him to get lost.
“You’re fine. We enjoy the company, don’t we, Hadley?”
“She says she loves when Daddy comes to visit.” He was surprised by a pang of yearning. He’d so rarely yearned for anything that the feeling was all new to him. “I wish…”
“What?”
“Nah, it’s dumb.”
“What do you wish for, Griffin?”
“I wish I could spend all day with her the way you do instead of a couple of stolen hours after work has gotten the best of me.”
“You could take a paternity leave, you know.”
“What?”
She smiled as she adjusted Hadley’s blanket to cover her sweet little toes. “It’s a common concept used by new fathers who want to take time off to spend with their new babies.”
“I know what it is, but I never thought…”
“You might need to take a paternity leave?”
“Something like that. I’m not sure how that would work for me. I’m booked three months out.”
“And there’s no one who could cover for you among that posse of brothers you work with?”
“I mean, they could, but their load is every bit as heavy as mine is. I can’t picture myself stepping away from work for longer than a day or two, and even that has to be arranged well in advance.”
“That’s a very sad state of affairs, Griff. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I’m beginning to.”
“Aren’t you a partner in the firm? Doesn’t that mean you’re one of the bosses?”
“In our firm, there’s only one boss—my dad—and being a partner means I’m basically running my own business, so walking away for even a short time feels impossible.”
“It might feel that way, but it’s actually not impossible. You know that, right?”
“Um, not really.”
“Do I need to remind a lawyer that you have a legal right to take leave when needed? There’s a thing called the Family Medical—”
“Leave Act. Yes, I’m aware. I’ve helped numerous clients exercise those rights with their employers.”
“Oh, phew. I was afraid for a minute there that you were actually unfamiliar with the concept.”
“Haha, now you’re just mocking me.”
“Am I?”
“You know you are, and I think you’re enjoying it.”
She squeezed her fingers together. “Maybe just a little. For such a smart guy, you can be rather dense sometimes.”
“Ironically, you’re not the first person to tell me that.”
“I already knew this about you, remember?”
He glanced at her. “I remember everything, including how badly I treated you at the end for no good reason other than that I was scared.”
“I knew that, even if it didn’t make anything better at the time.”
“I’m sorry I did that. You so didn’t deserve it.”
“No, I didn’t, but believe it or not, I understood where it was coming from.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Maybe not, but it is an explanation. You haven’t said much about the latest development.”
In all the time they’d spent together, he’d never spoken to her about his parents’ divorce or the fallout for him and his siblings.
However, she knew the story because everyone did.
“What’s there to say? They dragged us through hell for an entire decade of our lives that we’ll never get back, and now they’re back together?
Like… what? All I want to do is tell them to eff off with that crap. ”
“That must be so hard for you and your siblings.”
“It’s insanity. They want to ‘talk’ to us.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah, we’re avoiding them, which is harder than you might think since we all work for them.”
“And why is that exactly?”
“Because.”
She laughed and then covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, it’s not funny.”
“It kind of is when you look at the big picture. Our firm is well known, highly respected, the go-to for anyone in need of a successful divorce or custody case or any number of other family-related issues. Going somewhere else in LA with our last name would’ve been stupid and counterproductive, so we joined one of the family firms, and it’s really been fine until recently. ”
“The internet is having a free-for-all with their reconciliation.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Lots of memes from the TV show.”
Griffin groaned. “Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, they put it on TV. What a freaking nightmare that was.”
“It had to be awful.”
“I was in eighth grade… I wanted to quit school.”
“I’m sorry you had to endure that. I wish they’d thought more of their children than they did about themselves.”
“Yeah, me, too, but the paradox is that they were actually good parents the rest of the time. They supported us in everything we wanted to do and pulled my brother Carson back from the brink of certain death when he was fully addicted to heroin. They’ve always been there for us when we needed them. ”
“Maybe that was their way of making amends for what they put you through.”
“I don’t know. I think they would’ve been those parents even without the divorce.”
“What broke them up?”
“We have no idea. They’ve shared every detail except that one.”
“What do you think it was?”
“One of them cheated or accused the other one of cheating or something like that.”
“Have you ever come right out and asked them?”
“Hell no. None of us wants to know that badly.”
“I’m sorry they hurt you this way.”
“It’s fine. I’m okay.”
“Are you, though?”
He glanced at her. “What do you mean?”
“You probably don’t want to talk about this.”
“About what?”
“What happened between us and why.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yeah, that.”
“You can say whatever you want to me, MK. Whatever it is, I certainly have it coming.”
“The only thing I want to say is this… When we were together, it seemed like we had a nice thing going and that you were enjoying it as much as I was.”
“I was. I did. Enjoy it.” As she looked into his eyes, Griffin’s heart began to race, and a bead of sweat rolled down his back.
More than once, he’d felt as if she could see right through him, which had often made him uncomfortable.
The worst thing in the world to a commitment-phobe like him was being truly seen by someone.
“I was so confused when you went silent on me. But when I thought about it, really thought about it… I began to understand why you did that.”
He so did not want to ask… “What did you understand?”
“That someone who’d been dragged through the mess with your parents, who sees every day how something like this can end so horribly…
Of course you’d run when it started getting real.
Once I put those pieces together, I found some closure that I truly needed, especially after I realized I was pregnant. ”
Listening to her explain how she’d made sense of his cowardly actions filled him with the kind of shame he’d rarely experienced in his gilded life.
“I’ll always be sorry that I hurt you that way.
If it’s any consolation, I was a mess for months after the last time I saw you.
That was the only time in my career that my father got in my face about getting my shit together at work or finding another job. ”
“It never occurred to me that you might’ve suffered over it, too.”
“I did. I really, really did.”
“Good,” she said with a wicked smile.
Griffin laughed so hard that the baby startled. “Oh, sorry, sweetheart. Your mommy is being funny.”
The baby made a perturbed face in her sleep that was the cutest thing he’d ever seen. Just when he thought he’d seen all her expressions, she dazzled him with more.
“When you told me about her, I didn’t want to come here.”
“I’m sure she came as a massive shock to you, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. It was hard to know how best to inform you.”
“It wasn’t because of her that I didn’t want to come.”
“Oh.”
“I was ashamed to face you after the gutless way I left.”
“Well, I’m glad you came, because Hadley needs her daddy, and I think maybe you need her, too.”
“I do. I didn’t know I needed her until she arrived, and now that she’s here…”
“I get it. Trust me.”
“She’s everything.” He noticed McKenna wiping away a tear. “What’s wrong?” he asked, alarmed.