“Calliope?” Her silence is unnerving, and the longer it goes on, the worse it gets.
She suddenly stops and turns to face me, placing her hands on the counter in front of her. Her dark hair spills nearly over one shoulder like a curtain and then she looks up at me with those gorgeous, intense blue eyes.
“Elijah…” Her head shakes briefly and she bites hard on her lower lip. “Nick is your son.”
You could knock me over with a feather. My entire body goes numb as those words reach me and then worm around my mind on constant repeat. The more I repeat them, the more numb my body grows until I feel nothing but the sluggish thump of my heart and those words echoing in my thoughts.
Nick is your son.
Nick is my son.
Calliope’s Nick.
Her son.
He’s my son?
“I—” She starts to speak and then chokes, quickly lifting one hand to her throat, and she tears her gaze away from me. “Oh, myGod. I… I didn’t mean—I mean, I do mean it. I just didn’t mean to blurt it out like that.”
Nick is my son.
What the fuck?
“That summer we were together? At the conference where we slept together. It’ll be seven years ago this June. Nick was born a little premature, nothing serious, but… I got pregnant. That’s why I was trying to call you. Not that I didn’t want to call you for you, because I did, but I was so shy, and then time passed and I couldn’t, so I gave up on ever seeing you again. But then I thought I had a kidney infection and found out I was pregnant, so I called and I got yourwife.” Her voice quavers on that last word. “I was horrified. I thought you were some kind of scumbag who had used me to cheat on your wife, and in that moment, I decided I wanted nothing to do with you. You didn’t get to be in my life or his life.”
I can’t blame her. She’s already made it clear how she spent these past years thinking I was married, and I have no one to blame but myself. If I’d gotten her number or been firmer with my mother, then there’s a chance this never would have happened.
My head spins and I have to reach for the counter to keep my balance. The wobble amplifies the concern in Calliope’s eyes, but she’s speaking like she’s in a rush and can’t catch her breath.
“I didn’t keep it a secret to be an asshole. I thought you were the asshole. I was so sure you were this terrible man, and then you turned up here again and saved me from the pipe and I didn’t know what to do. For all I knew, it was a fleeting visit and I wasn’t going to disrupt mine or Nick’s life for a man who was only passing through. But then everything started to get real. Last night you said you were falling for me, and I know what that means because I’m feeling it too, but that’s not important. What’s important is that he’s your son and I’m begging you, please don’t take him away from me.”
There’s panic in her voice, real panic that spears right to my heart and gives me something to hold on to. As the world stops spinning and Calliope becomes a steady figure in my eyes, confusion eats away at the shock in my heart.
“Take him… away?” That kid is brilliant. What little time I’ve spent with him felt natural and easy, and I’d quietly pat myself on the back, thinking I was just good with kids, but was it because part of me knew? Was some part of me, on a physical level, recognizing my own son without my knowing?
“Yes,” Calliope gasps and her hand flies to her mouth. “I know you’re probably angry. Furious, even, but I’m begging you, don’t take him away. I’m a good mother and he’s happy, and if you want to, we can work something out but if you—” She changes suddenly and a lick of anger replaces her panic. “If you think you can take him without a fight, then you’re so mistaken because I will fight tooth and nail for my boy!”
She’s fighting a battle I haven’t even ignited yet, ten steps ahead while I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have a son.
A real flesh-and-blood son.
Mom would be over the moon.
“Calliope—” Her name escapes me just as the kitchen door flies open and her mother storms in.
“Calliope, are you getting the cake or not? There are fifteen hungry kids out there waiting for Nick to blow out his candles and—” She stops abruptly when she sees me and her eyes immediately narrow, deepening the crow’s feet around her eyes. “You.”
The venom in her voice catches me off guard and I step back and Calliope rushes forward.
“Mom, don’t.”
“It’s you, isn’t it? The good-for-nothing man who has been messing my daughter around!”
“Mom, not now!”
“Don’t you dare defend him. You think I don’t know that you didn’t come home last night? That you’ve been reckless and distracted ever since you’ve started seeing him? I know you, Calliope, and I know the mistakes you make. He is one of them!”
“Mom, it’s nothing. Can you go back to the party? Elijah and I were just?—”
