“You haven’t been there for either of them,” Sebastian carried on mercilessly, picking up where his husband left off. “You’ve missed every birthday. Every school run. Every wobbly tooth. Every holiday. You’ve missed everything.”
“I know,” Tom replied tightly. “And I hate that, almost as much as I hate knowing I can’t change it. But you should both know this.” He leaned towards them, using his height and strength to tower over the pair. They might be a unit, but they were fucking with the wrong soldier. “I intend to be there for the rest of them. Every birthday. Every holiday. Every wobbly tooth. You better get used to my face, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of it.”
“Don’t you think you should talk to me before you start planning Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties and decking me out in a tutu to play the tooth fairy?” Sasha asked, louder now, stepping towards Tom and pulling him towards her. “Aren’t you forgetting that I’m yourbride, Tom? How are you even this kid’s father? How are you even—”
Tom ran a hand over his face. “Can we please talk later?” he begged Sasha. “I can only deal with one problem at a time, and I—”
“Oh,” Sasha interjected, stepping back and crossing her arms over her chest. She glared at him. “Oh, I’m aproblemnow, am I? Well, Tom, that’s fine. I’m going to go upstairs, lock the door, and when you come to find me later, you’ll see just how much of aproblemI can be.”
“Sasha, I just think that Tom—” Marnie began, but Sasha spun on her heels to face her.
“Oh, can it, Marnie. No one cares what you think.”
Tom watched as Marnie frowned. Luis, his stern expression fading momentarily, leaned towards his mother.
“I care what you think, doña,” he said kindly.
Sasha bristled. “I’m going upstairs. I’m putting on a face mask and don’t want to be bothered for at least the next hour. And Tom,” she turned back to him viciously, “don’t you dare make any more cute little family plans until you’ve spoken to me, understand?”
Tom said nothing, watching as his fiancée stomped away.
Sebastian watched her go too. “Good luck with that,” he told Tom bluntly, nodding after Sasha’s retreating form. “And good luck with your grand plans to play Dad to Reine. Right now, you can’t even bring yourself to go upstairs and talk to Ari. You think you’re going to be playing happy families with Reine in the near future? Think again.”
Tom inhaled sharply.
“You’re one to talk about happy families,” he said quietly. “Neither of you are Reine’s father. And no amount of playing happy families with her is going to change that.”
“Tom—” his mother warned sharply, but Tom cut her off.
“No, Reine ismydaughter,” he carried on, “and that’s how I’ll be treating her from this moment on.”
Luis and Sebastian both gaped at him, while somewhere in the background Tom heard Stella let out an impressed breath.
“This is solid fucking gold,” she murmured. “Brandon, make sure you have my extra rolls of film ready. I don’t want to miss a moment of this.”
Tom cleared his throat as an uneasy silence fell across the hall.
“Well,” Sebastian’s sharp tone cut through the frosty atmosphere like a knife, “we’ll see about that. We’re going to go upstairs now and check on Ari and Reine. You take all the time you need, Somerset... Miller... whoever you are. But just think about this. Tomorrow, two of us in this room will be leaving with Ari and your daughter. And let me tell you now, it won’t be you or your mother.”
“Hey,” Marnie said, obviously affronted.
“Sorry,” Sebastian nodded to her. “In case I didn’t say it earlier, the salmon today really was divine.”
“The chef marinated it in coconut milk,” Marnie replied quietly.
“Coconut milk? How delightful.”
“I’ll send you the recipe.”
“Please do. You have my email.”
“Tom—” Marnie said, turning to him, but Tom shook his head at her. He watched as Sebastian and Luis went up the stairs, before turning and leaving as well.
He needed silence. He needed to think. He needed a plan.
* * *
Sometimes in New York, when feeling troubled, Tom liked to sit under Ari’s paintings. He would lock himself in his study, taking comfort from the layers of paint he knew she’d studiously applied, feeling close to her even from a distance of years. He would stare up at her work, remembering her hands as they held a brush, remembering the splodges of paint on her fingertips, recalling the light in her eyes as she worked at the thing she loved best. He would remember Ari, and his mind would clear.
