“Were you even going to tell me about him?” I asked, tone harsher than I intended it to be. Hurt hits me—hard, icy, a sickening twist in my stomach—but so does regret.
I don’t know who I blame more: her for not finding me, or me for not looking harder.
That’s months of his life I’ve missed.
Worse, years I could have had with Olivia. Through the pregnancy, the birth, and the beginnings of our son’s life. All gone because we didn’t give each other our names.
“I’ve been trying to tell you all goddamn night,” she snaps, wiping her cheeks. “But every time I tried, either you or someone else interrupted. Maybe that was the universe telling me this was a mistake. I don’t know. But now you do know. You know about Christopher, and the choice is yours.”
She sets the pictures down on the grass between us, riffles through her purse, and pulls out papers. “These are the annulment forms,” she says as she climbs to her feet. “My address is listed, so if you want to see Christopher, you can. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to move. My sister is in Willow Ridge, and she’s the only real family I have left. I need help. This isn’t me asking you for a handout or anything.”
“Wait.” I grab her hand, confusion swirling within me. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’m giving you time to choose,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “He is my son. I made the choice to have him, Ford. I could have decided differently. But I didn’t.Imade the choice to bring him into this world, knowing damn well you weren’t around, so you didn’t have a choice. Well, I’m giving you that choice. You get to decide if you want to be involved. But I can’t—I can’t sit here and watch you while you do. It would break my heart.”
Olivia tries to take her hand back, but I hold her tighter and stand. “We have a son.” My thoughts are racing, my heart shredded.
A son. We have a son.
God, I feel like a fool. It all makes sense now.
But doubt also trickles in, like Tucker is in the background warning me to be careful.
“Yes,” she hisses, stepping away from me. “We do.”
My heart leaps into my throat, still hammering hard. I keep the picture of him clutched in my other hand as I suck in a deep breath. “I have a kid.”
Something softens in her features as she watches me. “The polaroids are from my pregnancy and after the birth,” she says. “Maybe you should have a look at them. I wrote on the back of some. Detailing different milestones. Just things I thought you might want to know.”
My hand trembles as I flip the photo around to look at the back.
All it reads isChristopher’s first full night of sleep - thank you cousin Cleo!
I swallow hard. “These are for me?”
She nods once, finally pulling her hand from mine. “Yeah. I also have a journal I kept, but it’s at home.”
“Home…” I look at her, blinking hard, tears forming in my eyes. “Where he is?”
“Yeah, he’s with a friend right now. This is the longest I’ve been away from him.” She looks at the photo in my hand with a soft smile, then clears her throat. “I wouldn’t blame you, you know. If this is too much.”
“It’s not,” I murmur, scrubbing a hand down my face. “It’s just—of all the things you could tell me, this was the one I least expected.”
What were the chances the one night we spent together gave us something so…perfect? Kids have always been one of those things that felt like a future-me kind of option. For so long, I’ve worked across ranches, floating between jobs, never staying long enough to find stability. Now, though, I have a reason.
A reason to stick around. To lay roots. To do something other than drift. And I’ve been terrified of that, too, I can admit that to myself now. With my past hanging over me, a past that broke me so badly I refuse to touch it now.
“Olivia—”
“Think about it, before you do or say anything else,” she says, stepping back. “This isn’t something you should decide in a few minutes, Ford.”
The doubt implanted by Tucker disappears as I watch the dread form in her eyes. This woman isn’t here because she wants a cut of the blood money that is the Greyson dynasty. She wasn’t put here to test me or my resolve in touching a fortune I want no part of.
If she did, she would have slapped me with a paternity test the moment she got here, established I’m his dad, then taken me for my family wealth.
I shake my head. “I already know what I want. And that’s you.Bothof you.”
Sadness softens her eyes as she cocks her head. “You can’t be sure of that after ten minutes of knowing about Christopher, Ford. He’s not a snap decision. He’s our kid. And he deserves consideration.”
