“Yeah.” Like abandoning him when he was just a child. “Plenty of them.”
Aidan’s brow furrowed, but then he blinked the strange look away. “I should probably start at the beginning. I met your mother at a gala in Washington, D.C. It was a damn good evening, but we never married. Hell, we never even dated.”
Brock scrubbed both of his hands over his face, not quite sure he’d heard his father correctly. “Are you telling me my mom was just a one-night stand?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Aidan lips pressed into a thin line, and he gave a small nod. “But in my defense, I didn’t know your mother was pregnant with you until after you were born.”
It was like a bomb went off inside Brock’s head. There was noise and chaos, and the cacophony of it left him rattled, so nothing made sense. And then there was a sudden quiet.
“What?” he croaked.
“I found out about you when you were about three months old.” Aidan’s mouth twisted into a scowl. “She needed money.”
Brock swallowed. He rolled his lips, not entirely sure if he wanted to hear any more of this story that was beginning to sound more and more like an absolute train wreck.
“There was no denying you were mine.” Aidan mimed a circle around his face, and the half-smile that was there faded a bit. “I paid her child support regularly, off the record. She let me see you on weekends but never at her place. She always brought you to me. That probably should’ve been my first sign that something was wrong. It was a couple months before your first birthday, and I wanted to surprise her with a new swing I bought for you.”
Aidan’s expression shifted. There was pain behind his eyes. Pain and anger and fear.
“And?” Brock urged, caught between curiosity and apprehension.
“And so I showed up to her apartment unannounced.” He focused on his half-empty cup of coffee then, his gaze distant. A place where Brock had obviously existed, but was not invited. “You were screaming your head off. You were alone in one of those pack-and-play things. Your diaper was soiled. Your bottle was empty. And you were so cold.”
Uncertainty clamored through Brock. He’d never heard this story before. He wasn’t even sure how he’d ended up being raised by his grandparents, but then again, he never thought to ask. He always just assumed his dad had taken over custody and paid off his mother with some hush money, because what kind of woman would so easily give up her child? But apparently he was gravely mistaken.
The words were out before he could stop them. “Where was my mom?”
“Passed out on the couch with an empty bottle of vodka on the floor beside her.”
Aidan finally looked up to meet Brock’s eyes. Shadows shifted within the amber of his irises. “She didn’t fight me in custody. Hardly matters though, because I knew there was no way I was going to let her have you after that. I couldn’t trust herto protect you and keep you safe. So, I was able to pay her off with ten grand.”
Ten grand.
Ten thousand dollars.
That was all he was worth to his mother.
It wasn’t that his father had taken him from her, or that she’d needed help raising him. She simply hadn’t wanted him.
“I didn’t know how to be a father.” Aidan smoothed back his thickly gelled pieces of his hair. “But I knew I had to save you, so I did the only thing I could think of to make sure you were raised properly. I brought you here.”
“Not knowing how to be a father isn’t a good excuse for never being around,” Brock countered, not willing to let him slide out from being a deadbeat dad too quickly.
“I know.” Aidan squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, they were filled with regret. “At least, I know that now. I was trying to build my empire, trying to build a life for you. But I didn’t know how?—”
“Didn’t know how a kid fit into the equation?” Brock interrupted, his resentment growing.
“No! I didn’t know how to find the balance.” He leaned across the table, intent. “But I was there, Brockton.”
“You were never there.” Brock rolled his eyes, and his voice dropped like the temperature outside, dripping with ice. “Never when I needed you, never when it mattered.”
“I was always there when it mattered, you just didn’t want to see me.” Aidan stared at him, his gaze unwavering. “When you hit a home run at your Little League championship game, you ran around the bases and pumped your fist just like Kirk Gibson did in the World Series.”
“How did you?—”
“When you took Juliette to senior prom, you bought her a corsage from a flower shop in Virginia Beach so she would besurprised. At your high school graduation, you walked across the stage with honors, even though you swore you hated studying, and decorated your cap with camouflage. At your boot camp graduation…” Aidan’s voice wavered as tears sprang to his eyes. “At your boot camp graduation, I’d never been prouder of you in my entire life.”
A kind of numbness stole over Brock, it felt like his throat was closing. “How?”
