“I have to go,” she said, standing up. “I have class in a few minutes.”
“Another lie,” Thomas drawled, shaking his head. “Good parents shouldn’t lie; you need to set a good example for the little one. What’s his name? Did you name him after Walker? That might soften the blow when he finds out, and he’s definitely going to find out. You’d better hope that you find him first, after all, this news is too good not to share.”
She watched him walk away happily whistling. Her heart pounding, and the thought of Thomas beating her to Walker made her blood run cold. Pulling out her phone, she scrolled through her contacts, then hit the call button, hoping that he would pick up. When he answered, she was so relieved that it took her a few seconds to find her voice; then she froze, unsure what to say to him.
“I need you to meet me over by the daycare,” she said. “There’s a bench right outside the playground. I’ll be waiting there.”
“Maddie, I have class,” Walker said. “Can this wait?”
“No, I’m sorry, it can’t, I’ve waited too long already,” she said, feeling close to tears. “Please come, I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.”
“I’ll be right there,” Walker said without hesitation. “Don’t move. It will only take me a few minutes to get across campus.”
She paced restlessly while she waited for him, trying to figure out what she was going to say without thinking about what she would do if he rejected them both when he found out about Justin. By the time Walker came jogging up to her, she’d worked herself into a state of near panic, sure that everything between them was about to fall apart and she only had herself to blame.
Walker took one look at her and pulled her into his arms. “Take a deep breath, it can’t be that bad,” he said, stroking herback until her breathing slowed down. Then he pulled back and looked down at her, “Is that better?”
She nodded, then pointed over at the bench. “Can we sit down? This isn’t going to be easy,” she said. “I know that no matter what you think when I tell you you’re going to be angry with me, and I want you to know that I understand. I just hope you can try to see things from my perspective.”
“You’re starting to scare me,” Walker said, taking her hand. “Just tell me, you’ll feel better after you do.”
“There’s no easy way to say this. I wish it could have been different,” she said, but she realized she was just stalling and took a deep breath so she could spit it out all at once. “You have a s…”
She didn’t get the rest of it out. Just at that moment, Justin spotted her and came running over to the fence. “Momma, Momma, Momma,” he called, waving at her and jumping up and down. “Come play with me.”
CHAPTER 18
***WALKER***
At first, Walker was annoyed by the interruption. Maddie was just about to tell him what she’d been hiding from him for weeks, but then the little boy’s words sank in. He looked over at her and watched as the color drain from her face, her eyes widened, and fear blossomed in their green depths. He looked back over at the playground and the dark-haired little boy with the same green eyes, but everything else was him, the shape of his face, the curl in his hair, even the happy smile on his face.
Stunned, he collapsed against the back of the bench, his mind whirling as he watched Maddie jump to her feet and run over to the fence. “I’m sorry sweetheart, I can’t come play right now. I just stopped by for a few minutes between classes,” she said, giving him a kiss through the fence. “Besides, I think it’s time for you to go back in now.”
A teacher came and collected the little boy, but Maddie didn’t move until the door to the school had closed and silence fell over the playground. There were tears running down her cheeks when she finally turned around, and he couldn’t stop himself from getting to his feet, walking over, and pulling her into his arms. Numb to anything but her pain right then, he held her ashe tried to process the fact that he had a son, not a baby, but a full-blown toddler.
“How old is he?” he finally asked.
“He’ll be three in July,” Maddie said, pulling away from him. “He was born the summer after freshman year.”
“I’ve been a father all this time and I didn’t know it,” he said, looking over at the door to the school wishing the child would come out again. “I want to see him.”
“Any time you want,” she said, her voice barely a whisper as if she was afraid of him. “He’s a sweet little boy, smart and funny, you’re going to love him.”
He wasn’t sure why, but that’s what finally hit him, the words that penetrated through the fog of his emotions and anger rose to the surface. “You mean now that I get to meet him?” he spat at her. “Real nice Maddie, I’ve been a father for two and a half years and didn’t know anything about it. When I think about everything that I missed, first words, first steps, first just about everything… How could you do this to me?”
Maddie looked sick with guilt, but he didn’t care, he was devastated. “I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t talk to me,” she pleaded. “Don’t you remember for three days straight I waited for you after basketball practice, you pretended like you didn’t see me, even when I talked directly to you. It was humiliating Walker, you and your friends just walked away laughing…it was brutal…I couldn’t keep putting myself through that.”
“Fine, maybe I was a jerk, but you’ve had years since then to say something,” he shot back, unwilling to take any responsibility for what happened. “You could have sent me a letter, you could have kept trying, instead you just pretended that I didn’t exist. What did you tell our son about me? What horrible things have you filled his head with?”
“Nothing, he’s two years old, Walker, we don’t talk about you,” she said, a spark of anger in her eyes. “Look, you can bemad at me, I deserve it, but I’m not the only one to blame, or have you forgotten that? You blew me off, you embarrassed me and broke my heart. I was alone and pregnant, trying to deal with my parents disowning me, the last thing I was going to do was spend all my time chasing you down. You made your feelings quite clear, I decided Justin and I would be better off without you. Maybe that was a mistake, but it was the choice I made.”
Hearing his son’s name for the first time sent a wave of warmth flowing through him, and some of the anger faded away. He looked over at Maddie. “You named him Justin?” he asked, remembering a late-night conversation they’d had just before he’d walked away from her.
They’d been planning their lives together. It had started as a bit of a joke, but had turned serious quickly, and before he’d taken her home that night they’d named all their kids. “Justin Walker Price,” she whispered, staring at the ground. “For your grandfather and father. I knew that’s what you would have wanted if you’d been there.”
“You gave him my last name?” he asked, the anger fading a little more. “If you were going to keep him a secret, why would you do that?”
“He’s your son,” she said, looking up and meeting his eyes, a single tear slipping down her cheek. “I wanted to give him a connection to you, I thought…well…that even if you weren’t a part of his life, he would always carry that part of you.”
