He smiles and shakes off whatever was making him sad. “It’s fine. Honestly. I won’t say divorcing Hailey didn’t hurt, because I don’t think something like that is ever easy, but we got through it relatively unscathed. And in hindsight, it was the best decision we ever made. And actually...” He swallows and shifts position. “There’s something I have to tell you that kind of ties into all this, so I’m glad you brought it up.”
“Oh?” I have absolutely no idea what he’s about to say. He looks a little nervous suddenly, and that does nothing for my own nerves. “What is it?”
He scrunches his nose. “Well, when Hailey and Char decided they wanted a baby...” He looks up at me andooh.
The penny drops.
“You’re the father.” I’m surprised I didn’t wonder about this sooner. They obviously had to get the sperm from somewhere. Now that I think about it, asking Vic makes perfect sense.
“Technically, yes.” He’s watching me closely like he’s trying to gauge my reaction. “But it’ll be their baby.” He draws his bottom lip between his teeth. “How do you feel about that?”
“Me?” I frown. “What’s it got to do with me?”
Vic opens his mouth, then closes it. There’s a flush creeping over his cheeks, and then it dawns on me.
“You want to know if it bothers me?”
He nods.
“Because we’re together?”
He nods again, and warmth unfurls in my chest. In the back of my mind, the nagging doubt I’ve not managed to entirely silence tries to surface, but I ignore it, scooting closer to Vic instead because I just need to feel him.
“No.” I lean back and manoeuvre him until I can wrap my arm around him and his back rests against my front. I kiss the side of his neck and whisper. “It doesn’t bother me, Vic.” Another kiss. “In fact, I think it’s amazing that you’ve done that for them. That you, Hailey, and Char have the kind of relationship where something like that is possible.”
I can’t see his smile, but I hear it when he speaks.
“Me too.”
His whole body relaxes with the happy sigh he lets out, and his head falls back onto my shoulder. He strokes the back of my hand where it’s still wrapped around his. “Can I ask you something, too?”
I’m almost a hundred percent certain I know what he’s going to ask. “Of course.”
His voice drops to almost a whisper, like he wants to know the answer but feels wrong for asking. “Why did you leave London?”
Yeah, I knew this was a possibility when I started this conversation. It’s only fair after all, and I have every intention of telling him the truth, even if it’s still a tender spot after all these years.
I settle back into the sofa cushions, arms still around Vic, and close my eyes. “I got a phone call the morning I left your house. My mum and dad had been in a car accident.”
“Oh my god,” Vic murmurs, hand gripping mine.
“It was no one’s fault. Not really. Another car hit a patch of black ice and crashed into them. They hit a tree at the side of the road. My dad walked away with barely a scratch, but my mum...”Fuck, even now, I can still remember my sister’s panicked voice on the phone. The feeling of dread then guilt as she told me she’d been trying to get hold of me for hours. “My mum wasn’t so lucky. My sister called to tell me they were operating on her and it was fifty-fifty whether she’d pull through. So I packed my stuff and hopped on the first available train.” Vic has gone as still as a statue, and I realise it’s because he doesn’t know the outcome. “She pulled through,” I say quickly, feeling Vic’s exhale as he loosens up. “And they’re both still here, they’re just in sunny Lanzarote for a few weeks. But she needed a lot of help in the first few months after the accident.”
“Is that why you stayed?”
“Yep. Of course, they all told me to go back to London and finish my degree, but my dad had to return to work and my sister was in year eleven, doing her GSCE’s. I couldn’t leave them to deal with it all. They’re myfamily.”
“Of course.”
“Choosing to stay here and abandoning my life in London was fucking hard. But I don’t regret it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat because I couldn’t live with myself if I’d let them struggle, all so I could carry on as if nothing had happened.”
Vic’s quiet, but his thumb still strokes the back of my hand, the repetitive motion soothing when I feel suddenly vulnerable. “And me messaging you was just a reminder of what you’d left behind.”
“Yeah.” I sucked in a shaky breath. “I knew that you were different, that we could’ve been good together, and it was easier just to...”
“Forget about me altogether?”
“I guess.” It wasn’t pretty, but it was the truth. “I didn’t want to resent my family for anything, because it was my choice to stay, and so it was easier to cut all ties with my old life and start fresh.”
