Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Knox
I should have known better than to get comfortable with her.
Should have known there was more to everyone loving her than an earth-shattering smile.
Passing by the room where the band is hanging out before the show starts an hour from now, I decide to keep on walking until I’m in an empty locker room.
When she said she was sorry I didn’t enjoy performing, I wanted to tell her I didn’t deserve to enjoy it anymore. Didn’t deserve the fans’ adoration. They’d cancel me in a heartbeat if the world found out I was a deadbeat dad. I wanted to tell her fucking everything.
And now the person we’ve hired to live with us for two months is not only from our hometown, but she knows Daisy and Mia.
Mia must have had a baby shower. Ryan could have been there.
Has she met my son? I know she’s lived in New York for years, but she said she and Mia were friends. My mind is all over the place.
Flashes of Angus asking me to hold Sawyer at Cal and Charlotte’s wedding plague me.
He was sleeping in my brother’s arms when he handed him to me.
I played it up with Angus, holding him out in front of me, like I didn’t want to get toddler germs on me.
I’ve thought of that moment over and over.
Sawyer was in my arms, and I had no idea he was mine.
I was home for a week and a half and saw him almost every day.
I was in the same room as my child and didn’t know it.
When it occurs to me I was with him for Christmas, and he was in my brothers lap the entire time the swirling in my gut intensifies.
How fucked up is that. I was with my son on Christmas and didn’t know it.
I wasn’t given the opportunity to spend real time with him after missing the first two years of his life.
“Fuuuuuck!” I scream into the empty room. The sound of my disappointment, anger, and frustration ricochets off the shower walls.
Disappointment with myself for putting Mia, Angus, and Sawyer in their current situation. Anger at Mia for not telling me she was pregnant. That I was a father. Frustration that I can’t control my emotions around Ryan.
Rationally, I can see that having someone from back home write the end of our story is pretty damn cool.
But when she said she not only knew where my cabin was, but she’d been there with my sister.
Red clouded my vision and all I could think was how she was here to do a job, and she’d go to any length for her story .
If I hadn’t walked away, I would have exploded. She didn’t deserve that. It wasn’t her fault I’ve stopped my bandmates from talking about her. Or that I didn’t catch all the times they said she was ‘one of us.’ Or that I’m such a dick I never asked her where she was from.
She’s not the problem. The real problem is me. I’m not the man I want to be. I’m certainly not the man I want Sawyer or Ryan to know.
That changes tonight.