“Connor really looks up to you,” she says finally, voice soft, carefully measured. “He talks about you nonstop.”
How long has she been in California?
In Anaheim?
What is she doing here?
Did she move here?
Is she here for work?
What does she even do now?
How do I not know any of this?
“Smart kid,” I say, but the humor doesn’t land. My throat’s too tight and there are more emotions crashing through my mind than I can process at the moment. “Look, Harper, I?—”
She cuts me off with a quick shake of her head. “Well, we should probably let Harrison meet the other families waiting, right Connor?”
Wait, they’re leaving?
Fuck.
Of course they are.
This isn’t the time or place to ask a woman I haven’t spoken to in ten years if the kid holding her hand is my son.
We can’t have any kind of worthwhile conversation here. So, I nod slowly and remind myself to unclench my jaw. “Yeah. I should—” I hitch my thumb back over my shoulder.
“Right.” She gives me a small, polite smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and turns to Connor. “You ready?”
“Yeah let’s go meet Barrett Cunningham so I can remind him how he couldn’t catch me on the ice!” He waves as he pulls his mother in the opposite direction from me. “Bye Harrison. See you on Monday.”
“See ya, Connor.” I watch them walk away, the ten-year-old boy who, now that the idea has been planted in my mind, looks a whole lot like me, and the woman who once held my entire heart.
When they’re gone from view I immediately excuse myself from the meet and greet, apologizing to the remaining families and saying a quick hello before booking it to the elevator so I can get downstairs to the safety of the locker room. My chest hollows and I’m finding it very hard to breathe. I’m hot as fuck and my body breaks out into a sweat as I push through the locker room door, tearing off my clothes and pads one piece at a time until I’ve left a trail to the showers.
I turn the nozzle to hot and step inside and that’s when I sink to the floor and dry heave.
My son.
Jesus Christ, he might be my fucking son.
I’ve literally spent time with him in this arena.
The sound that rips out of me is somewhere between a groan and a choke, echoing off the tile. I brace my forearms against the wall and hang my head, the spray beating down on the back of my neck until my skin goes numb.
Ten years.
Ten goddamn years.
And she never told me.
How did I not fucking see it?
My chest tightens and I swear something cracks inside me. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to pull air into my lungs, but every breath feels too heavy, too sharp. The math won’t stop running through my head; when she broke things off, when Connor was born, how far along she might’ve been when I left, what I was doing while she was raisinghim.
While she was alone.
