Neither of those things happened. Nothing made sense right then.
I looked into her teary green eyes, and it suddenly hit me all at once. In quick succession, I cycled through all five stages of whatever the fuck this was. For so many years, I’d been joking about probably having a whole string of children out there I didn’t know about, but now that it was actually happening, the reality was too much to bear.
Every birthday I’d missed. Every scraped knee I hadn’t been there to patch up. I regretted every last minute of it now. His first words. First steps.God, what I would’ve given to have been there.
Guilt came hot on the heels of regret. All this time, I’d been living my life while she’d been raising him on her own. I thought about how scared she must’ve been when she’d found out shewas pregnant and about all those long nights she’d had no one to help her when he’d been a newborn. I thought about every opportunity she’d had to trade to raise our baby. She had given up on her Olympic dreams to dive into motherhood.
Fuck, if only I’d figured it out sooner.That was the shame talking. I couldn’t believe I’d been spending time with the kid for months, noticing the similarities between us, and I’d never done the math. Somehow, it had all gone way over my head.
The anger, however, that was what stuck for now. Hot and blinding, it turned my voice raw and my insides to ground beef. “Why didn’t you tell me? You werepregnantwithmykid and you didn’t… you didn’t say a word. Why? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. Resignation, fear, and profound sadness haunted her gaze like she’d rehearsed this moment a thousand times and still hated every second of actually having to go through it. “I’ve already told you that, Callum. Remember when we talked the other night? I told you that one of the main reasons I didn’t tell Brody’s father was because he wouldn’t have believed me. That’s still true.”
I flinched. The words stung worse than any hit I’d ever taken. “What the hell do you mean I wouldn’t have believed you? How do you know if you never even fucking tried?”
“You were Callum Westwood,” she snapped. “Campus playboy. The guy who never had the same girl twice. You have every right to be angry with me for not telling you sooner after you came back into my life, but let’s not pretend you would’ve cared back then.”
“How can you say that? How can you possibly think I wouldn’t have cared?”
“Would you have?” she shot back. “You know as well as I do how you would’ve reacted if I’d shown up at your door months later and told you I was pregnant. Assuming you evenremembered me after all the girls you’d probably had between the time we were together and when I found out, you would’ve laughed it off. Said it wasn’t yours. I’d already decided I was having Brody. My only option was to leave before you had the chance to resent me for it. I wasn’t going to beg you to care or to believe me.”
Her words sliced right through my soul, the gashes deep and brutal. She was just being honest. I could see from the protective fire in her eyes that this was her truth. That was how she had felt. I staggered back a step, trying to process while also trying to swallow the taste of bile and rage that burned at the back of my throat.
Frankly, I didn’t give a shit about her truth right now. I was seeing red. She’d made assumptions about me, and because of that, I’d missed out on the first sevenyearsof Brody’s life. Those pictures I’d seen the other night flickered through my mind like an old movie, of him as a baby, his fist curled against her collarbone.
Because of her, I’d been deprived of ever having a moment like that with him. I thought about the pictures of his face smeared with gooey baby food and realized I would never get to feed him. Never see the look on his face the first time he tasted eggs, or pumpkin, or even a damn lemon.
“Who are you to get to decide that for me?” My voice thundered around the room, louder than I’d intended for it to be, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never felt anything like this and the storm inside was taking over. “That wasn’t just your decision to make, Maisie! He’s my son, too. Mine. And you didn’t even give me a chance?—”
“You didn’t even really know me back then, Callum. I knew you, though. Or at least, the version of you that you chose to show people.” Her tears were flowing in little rivulets down her cheeks, her entire body trembling, but she stood her ground.“You were reckless, untouchable, and sleeping with half the damn campus. How was I supposed to believe you’d suddenly care about me, or, more importantly, about a baby you definitely wouldn’t have wanted back then?”
“Youdidn’tknow me,” I bit out, my chest heaving. “You knew what peoplesaid. You knew the stories, but you never gave me the chance to prove you wrong.”
Her face contorted, anguish etched into every line. “What was I supposed to do? Throw myself at your feet and let you laugh in my face? Or no, better yet, wait for you to accuse me of trying to trap you? Of trying to get money out of you?”
Somewhere deep down, her words struck a chord, but my insides were so twisted up that I couldn’t untangle any of it right then. “Okay, so instead, you lied to me. These last couple months, every time I saw Brody, you looked me right in the eye and you didn’t say a damn word. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
She hugged herself tighter, head angled back to keep her eyes on mine. Her voice became raw and pleading. “That wasn’t about you, Callum. It was about Brody. About protecting him. And sure, it was about protecting myself too. My whole life had changed overnight.”
She threw her arms out to her sides. “Look at all this. Look at what you and your family have and take for granted. Do you really blame me for being afraid of your reaction when you found out?”
My heart pounded, my being torn into two. There was fury at what she’d hidden from me, but there was also guilt because she wasn’t wrong about who I’d been. The betrayal cut too deep, though.
“You should have told me,” I ground out, every word as sharp as a shard of glass. “From the beginning, you should’ve told me.No excuses. No what-ifs. I deserved to know and he deserved a father who actually knew he existed.”
Maisie shook her head. “I was barely twenty, Callum. I was scared. Alone. I was doing the best I could. I didn’t trust you, and I didn’t trust myself to handle what would happen if I did tell you and it all went sideways.”
I stared at her, breathing hard while all those emotions fought for dominance. Anger, grief, regret, love, and a fierce, terrifying protectiveness for the boy who would soon be asleep just down the hall.
Brody. My son.
Maisie scoffed and angrily swiped her tears. “I also didn’t want to loseyou, Callum. I didn’t expect you to be who you are. I didn’t expect to l?—”
Her voice cracked, and before I could get another syllable out, she turned and bolted.
“Maisie!” I lunged after her, but she was already gone, her footsteps fleeing down the hall.
Everything in me wanted to go after her, but instead, I stopped dead, my chest still heaving. Fury and hurt boiled in my veins. My fists clenched at my sides. I could chase her down, corner her, and demand the answers I thought I deserved, but what good would it do?
