“Get the fuck out of here, Thomas,” I warn him, holding the knife, making sure it catches the light. “Or I’ll call the cops, and make sure that your mother doesn’t protect you this time.”
He glowers at me, but finally seems to get the message, and scrabbles to his feet to take off down the stairs and leave us alone. I stand there for a moment, breathing hard as I try to ground myself, and then turn to head back to the apartment.
Because there’s a whole hell of a lot of explaining that has to be done. On both sides.
Lila is already there, her arms wrapped around herself, the babies settled on their playmat.
“Is he…is he gone?” she whispers.
I nod, closing the knife and slipping it into my pocket. “He’s gone.”
Silence hangs in the air between us. Where the hell do we even start with this? It feels impossible to even get the words out, let alone contend with the enormity of what has just happened.
“Is he really your son?” she asks finally.
I nod.
“I thought you said you didn’t have children.”
“I didn’t want to stress you out about him,” I admit. “I should have been straight-up, but I—I never thought it would come up.”
She presses her lips together, nods.
“And is he really your ex?” I ask.
“Yeah, he is.”
I close my eyes. I should have put the pieces together. A man who terrorized a woman like that for years on end, how many other men are there like that in this city? Maybe I had been in denial, trying to pretend that my son couldn’t have done something so cruel, but I was stupid to think for a second that I could duck responsibility for it.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
There’s nothing else to say. I can’t even begin to untangle the mess of this inside my head, the enormity of this chaos that’s closing in around me right now. I feel like I’m going to throw up, and she’s not looking too well either. She reaches out for my hand, and I pull it away, feeling as though I’ve been scorched.
“That night, the night we met…”
“I was running away from him,” she confirms, and she looks down at the twins, her face a twisted painting of distress. “But I…I had no idea who you were, Martin. And I would never have done any of this if I had known. You have to believe me?—”
“I believe you.”
She gazes at me, and her face is written with so much hope it makes my heart hurt. But I can’t do this. I can’t. I’ve been lying to myself all this time, letting myself believe for an instant that I could make things work with her when I know that I’m just—I’mjust some dirty old man twice her age who slept with her when she was vulnerable, and I can’t undo that, no matter how hard I try.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, and she tries to touch me again. I don’t pull back this time, knowing it will likely be the last time I allow myself to feel her touch.
“I can’t do this, Lila,” I tell her gruffly.
I don’t even want to say it out loud, but what choice do I have? I can’t pretend any longer. I can’t make like I don’t see the mess that we’re in. I’m the father of her children—and the father of the man who harmed her in ways that she’s still trying to recover from, the man who won’t give her the peace she so dearly needs.
I hate that I’ve let it go on as long as it has. I should have nipped this in the bud a long time ago, after that dinner, when I offered her all the money and support she could have wanted. That could have been it.
“What do you mean?” she asks, her voice catching at the back of her throat, the pain evident in every word.
“I mean…I shouldn’t have let any of this happen,” I tell her. “I was living in a fantasy world. Thinking I could make something work between us, when we’re so different. I should never?—”
I look down at the twins, and my heart clenches. I will still support them, of course, but I can’t risk being this close to them. Look at what happened the last time I raised a child—he brandishes a knife on the woman he claims to care for, like some sort of psychopath.
“I should have told you about Thomas a long time ago,” I concede. “Because he’s the reason I wasn’t sure about having the twins in the first place.”
“What are you talking about?”
