Even if the hairs at the back of my neck won’t stop telling me that there’s more to this than I can see right now.
5
CARA
“Alright, sweetheart, you sleep well,”I murmur to Nina, as I press a kiss against her head. She turns over in bed, pulling the downy covers around her. Her eyes are already shut, and, even as I kneel there next to the bed, I know that she is going to sleep like a baby tonight.
Which is exactly what I’m hoping for, to be quite honest, because I desperately need to talk to someone right now.Anyone.
Truthfully, I don’t know how I’ve managed to make it through the door without the truth creeping up on me once more. Taking care of Max and Nina has been enough of a distraction, but every now and then it hits me like a ton of bricks, knocking the air out of my lungs.
My new employer, the man I’m working for and living with to take care of his son…
He’s the father of my own child.
Even thinking it now makes my head swim, and I’ve to press my hand against the wall to keep my legs from giving out entirely underneath me. It still doesn’t feel real. I mean, how could itpossibly be? It’s been five years since I’ve seen him,five yearssince I laid eyes on the man in the mask who got me pregnant.
And I never thought I would see him again. I’d come to terms with that a long time ago. Sounds crazy now, given that the universe seems so insistent on putting me back in the same room with him.
The moment he stepped into the kitchen, I knew there was something about him. I could have just convinced myself it was his presence and nothing more than that. He has plenty of it, after all; that cropped gray hair, those piercing gray eyes, that sharp jawline and the suit that looks more expensive than everything I own.
But then, when I bent down to greet his son, I saw it. The spiderweb tattoo on his hand. It’s one of the details of that night I’ve never forgotten, turning it over in my mind late at night when I allow myself to remember what happened. And I’ve done that, many times, because...
Well, because I’ven’t been with anyone else since I was with him.
And now he is back in my life. But I don’t think he has a damn clue who the fuck I’m. I mean, why wouldn’t he have said anything about it if he did? He would have been crazy if he thought we could get away with just ignoring the great big fucking elephant in the room, and the only reason he wouldn’t have asked about it was if he really thought there was no reason to.
Which means he must have forgotten me. Maybe even forgotten that night.
My stomach twists painfully at the thought. I don’t know why, but I hate the idea of him just being able to brush that off asthough it was nothing, when it’s lived rent-free in my mind ever since...
I pull out my phone and step into my bedroom, making sure the door is shut behind me. The last thing I want is for Nina to overhear this conversation. I’ve always figured that I’ll have to explain the lack of father figure in her life to her at some point, but I had hoped it might come in less fraught circumstances, that’s for damn sure.
She has no idea that the little boy she was playing with today, the one who she seems to have already grown so attached to, is actually her half-brother.
I dial Sophie’s number and lift my phone to my ear as I begin to pace, trying to work off some of the excess energy that is rushing around my system. She picks up after a few rings, and I can hear something sizzling on the other end of the line—no doubt she’s cooking, as she often does to unwind. She works as a journalist now, and, judging by some of the articles she puts out, I’d say that her days can’t always be easy.
“Hey, Cara,” she greets me. “What’s up? How are you settling in at the new job?—”
“Sophie, I need to talk to you about something,” I tell her urgently. The tone of her voice shifts at once.
“What’s going on?” she asks. “It’s nothing to do with mom or dad, right...?”
“God, no, nothing to do with them,” I assure her, and she breathes a sigh of relief, a rush of static down the line.
“Thank God,” she mutters. I know she is terrified of that, of one of them reaching out to either of us. No matter how much timeand distance we put between ourselves and our old life, it’s not like it doesn’t linger there in the background for us, threatening to cause trouble at any moment.
“So what’s happening?” she asks, and I can hear her return to her cooking. I hesitate before I continue.
Do I want to dump all of this on her?I mean, she probably has enough on her plate as it is, without having to hear about my crap, too...
But I can’t do this alone. Sophie is pretty much the only person I can turn to.
“Uh, so,” I begin, swallowing hard before I continue. “I met the guy that I’m going to be working for today.”
“Oh, yeah?” she replies. “And what’s he like?”
My mind flashes an image of him, unbidden, into my mind. His eyes are stuck in my head, the way he looked at me, the strength of his handshake when he took mine. But that’s not what I need to tell her, not by a long shot.
