I bite back the pride, “Yeah, I guess we do.”
Chapter 24
Jules
“Mommy, when are we going to Dawson’s?” Gus asks, appearing in the hallway outside my bedroom. I blink at him, realizing I’ve been lost in my thoughts.
“Soon,” I promise, returning to the hairbrush and blow dryer on the vanity in front of me. “I just have to finish getting ready.”
I’mnot going—after Ettie saw what happened on theToday, Tomorrowshow, she’d offered to watch Gus for me so I could have a day off. I guess I didn’t keep it together as much as I thought I had on camera.
I thought the entireson being on TV and announcing to the world that he wants a dad for Christmasmight have been enough to distract me from Russell’s birthmark, but it hasn’t been. Even though I followed that guy’s suggestion and made an Instagram for Gus, and it’s been getting tens of thousands of views, I still can’t stop thinking about Russell and my mystery man. And, more specifically, how they might be the same person.
Especially not when, breaking down on the side of the set, Russell was right there with his arms around me, comforting me through it. And all I could think about, while pressed against his chest, was Gus’s father.
The man from the masquerade party.
It was the best fuck of my life, and more than that, he’dreadme so well, and so instantly, that it scared me. I’d run off, thinking that would be the end of it. After the break-up with Dax—finding out he had a wholewife and family—the last thing I needed was to get involved with a guy who could look right past my defenses.
Only later, when I found out I was pregnant, did I realize how impossible and embarrassing it would be to try and figure out his identity.
Sure, I could have gone to the gala organizers and asked around, described him—but to what end?Hey, guy in a fit suit, black mask—we fucked on the balcony and now I’m pregnant with his kid.
Not possible. I didn’t even have a name, and I wasn’t about to put an ad in the newspaper, or on one of those missed connection sites.
I thought I would never see him again.
I thought I would never see that birthmark again. But it was identical—it’s been seared into my memory, its shape and location. What’s the likelihood that two men both roughly the same age and height would have that mark behind their ear?
Russell’s dad was there. And I still remember the quick read I’d made on my mystery man, what I’d said to him that night, before we went to the balcony together.
Surgeon. You’ve got the ego for it. And you grew up wealthy, if not just like, completely loaded. You expect everyone to like you automatically.
Because you’re handsome, and you know you are. Not just handsome, but so conventionally attractive. But none of this is the real you. You’re putting on an act. Hiding something that makes you feel like you’re not enough.
I’m good at reading people. And if I got it right back then, and that man really was Russell, it was a spot-on read. He is a surgeon. And that thing he was hiding was the infertility, his history with the ex-fiancée.
“Mommy?” Gus prompts again, and I turn off the blow dryer, realizing my hair has passed dry and is not a frizz-fest. Sighing, I run my hands over it and nod at him, grabbing my bag from the bed. I’m just walking him down the hall to Ettie’s, then maybe grabbing something from the deli downstairs and burrowing into the couch for the rest of the night.
“Okay, okay, let’s go,” I laugh, following him out of the apartment and down the hall. He laughs and swings his bag, and I can’t stop myself from searching him for pieces of someone else.
Pieces of Russell.
But itcan’tbe. It’s impossible. Russell told me himself—his last engagement ended over it.
I’m infertile.
Russell can’t have biological children. He made it clear, said he looked over the tests himself. I have no idea what a test like that would look like, but it hits me now that he’s never worried about a condom for contraceptive. Never commented about my birth control or even asked if I was making sure to take it.
Nothing about him contradicts the truth of what he told me.
“Jules.”
“Shit sorry,” I laugh, blinking and realizing Gus has already run inside Ettie’s, and she’s standing at the door, waving a hand in my face.
“Take the night off, seriously,” she says, shooing me away. “Please, try and sleep it off, girl.”
“I will,” I laugh, waving to her as I turn and head for the stairs, planning to go to the deli and get something for dinner. If I’m being honest, it will probably end up being chicken noodlesoup, because Russell has me hooked on it. Now, that soup makes me think of him.
