Daisy’s jaw dropped almost as far as mine had. “What?”
“I closed the door—left them. And that’s when you found me, and all I wanted to do was forget what I’d just seen.” He paused and drew a steadying breath.
Daisy sat forward. “You never said anything.”
“Honestly, I was a mess. I wanted to forget everything about that night, but I couldn’t,” Todd said, rocking back on his heels.“I confronted my dad the next morning, and he…acted like it was nothing. Told me it was nothing. That this was how his life—my mom’s life—had been from the start. That it was how our life went. That legacy came first.”
“Oh, Todd.” Her voice carried every emotion with it that I’d felt the night he’d told me this.
“I was in a fog. Spiraling. I hate to say it, but I wasn’t even thinking of you, Daisy. I was just thinking of how blind I’d been. I had this pit in my gut, so I took a DNA test.” Even the memory looked like it was a fist to his gut. “I’m not his son. Not biologically, anyway. Which was ironic because that night I caught him, my first thought wasn’t ‘holy shit, my dad is fucking another guy,’ it was ‘holy shit, maybe this is why I feel…why I like…’” He shook his head. “I know that’s not how it works, obviously, since we’re not related.”
“Oh, Todd…”
“I got the results right after you told me you were pregnant,” he went on like he hadn’t even heard her. Maybe that was the only way he could keep going. “I know I was a mess after that, Daisy, and I’m sorry. All I can say is…it wasn’t you.” His shoulders fell with a sigh. “I’d just learned my dad was basically in the closet. And then that you were pregnant, and I was going to be a dad. And then that my dad wasn’t my dad. And I just…I did what they told me to do because I was too lost to do anything else.”
I glanced at Daisy then and saw tears streaking down her face. Only my incredible wife would be able to feel pity for the man who’d left her at the altar.
“Anyway, I tried to convince myself it was going to be okay. That I cared about you—loved you in a different way. That I wanted to do the right thing for our baby.” His chin dipped. “But the weight of…hiding who I was, I couldn’t…”
“The drinking,” I filled in the blank he’d left open.
Looking at me, he nodded. “I thought I could drown it out. I mean, we’d been together for four years, and I’d mostly buried that part of me for longer. I thought I could do it again.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“Can’t stop a seed from searching out sunlight.” His expression was sad but without regret. “Maybe I could’ve buried it deeper if I hadn’t…if he hadn’t…” Todd’s face reddened, and he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“You met someone,” Daisy breathed, and Todd’s head snapped up.
“Not met. We already…knew each other.”
“Scott.” I hadn’t realized I’d been seeing my friend through a fog all these years, but as soon as he started to clear it, I began to recognize all the signs. How close they’d been in college. Why Scott reappeared when he did…after Todd’s wedding was announced.
“We were close in college, but especially back then, I ignored the way I’d catch him looking at me…and the way it made me feel. And after we graduated, I think that’s why we lost touch. Anyway, when my parents announced our engagement, he showed up at the country club.” Todd lowered his head. “I thought I could ignore how I felt.” His words echoed my mindset about Daisy.I thought I could ignore how I felt about her.And like him, I’d done everything I could to hide it, and like him, it had wrecked me. “But he kept showing up—wouldn’t give up—and with everything that happened, he was the only place that felt safe.”
“You could’ve told me,” Daisy said, her tone both sad for him and hurt that after everything, he hadn’t trusted her with this.
I felt the same.
“I know.” He pared me a guilty glance. “I could’ve told both of you.” He sighed. “It wasn’t you. It was me. I was drowningin everything I was trying to figure out. I wouldn’t have known what to say or how to say it.”
“You could’ve called off the wedding or at least postponed it…”
“I tried,” he said, and I felt Daisy’s ripple of shock. “Before the rehearsal dinner, Scott and I argued. He said he couldn’t be with someone who was fine with hiding who I really was—who I really loved. He told me…” His voice choked. “He asked if that was the example I wanted to set for my daughter.
“I went to my dad after dinner and told him I was going to call off the wedding. I thought of all people, or at least out of the two of them, he’d understand. I told him how I felt—that I was gay. He responded…” He let out a strained laugh. “He wasn’t unsupportive. I guess I can give him that. But I guess I was hoping for a little more understanding than ‘I don’t give a shit who you fuck behind closed doors, but in public, you’re a McCormick, so you’re going to marry the girl you knocked up, and you’re going to continue this legacy, just like I have.’”
“Did you tell him that you knew the truth?” I asked, a not-so-small part of me wishing I was crueler to the man I’d threatened earlier.
“No.” The sound he made then was the ragged groan of hope being buried alive. “Even if I thought it would make any kind of difference, he didn’t give me the chance. He said if I called off the wedding, he’d disown me, and without anything, Daisy…with the pregnancy and the baby…I wouldn’t have been able to support you.” He speared a hand through his hair. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to hurt you. You have to believe me. You deserved better than this…than me. You deserved…the man who’d always wanted you.”
There wasn’t even a shadow of malice in his gaze as it steadied on me. He knew how I’d felt about her…just like he knew I’d never do anything to betray him.
“So you disappeared.” I wanted to blame him, be angry, but it was hard to.
“Maybe there were other options, Max, but at that moment, I was drowning in alcohol and fear that I was about to trap myself into a life of being someone I wasn’t, and I was going to take Daisy and the baby down with me. So I disappeared.” His expression shuttered. “I knew my parents would want to avoid a scandal, so they’d make up some excuse for me—for what happened. In the meantime, you would’ve still had the house to move into and access to my credit card.”
“Did you really think I’d use them after you left?” Daisy demanded, and Todd had the decency to flinch.
