I walked toward her and stopped in front of her desk as Kayden stepped onto the elevator. When the doors closed with a ding behind him, Olivia looked up at me like a sad puppy who’d just been kicked.
My jaw was so tight the muscles twitched. I wanted to be the comforting friend she needed right now. I wanted so badly to tell her it would all be okay but I was so angry at the situation that I wasn’t sure how I’d ever do that. She was the only one who could make it so that I wasn’t withholding something huge from Kayden but I knew her worldhad just been shaken too. I had no idea how to support these two people or when my feelings for them both had become so complex and tangled.
Her eyes started to well with tears and I instantly softened, anger quickly fading. The sight of Liv in pain was all it took for me to push down my own fears.
“You told me once that you named Kaylee after her father,” I said.
She’d never told me his name, just that all she knew about him was his first name and she’d wanted Kaylee to have a little piece of him. Whenever she’d talked about him it had been with fondness, and I’d let it go because he was just an invisible man in her past—until now.
She nodded and dropped her head in her hands, sobbing as if the last hour of keeping it inside had been unbearable. I closed my eyes slowly and took a deep breath. Olivia was one of the strongest people I knew and if there was any part of me still holding on to the hope that she would tell me I was wrong about who Kayden was, it floated away as she broke down.
I rounded her desk, squatted down in front of her and turned her chair to face me.
“Come here, sweetheart,” I said as I pulled her into my arms, letting her sob on my shoulder. I stroked her hair for several minutes as she cried, the knots in my chest tightening even further as I witnessed her pain and thought about Kayden. He had no idea he had a daughter. He’d been living his life for the last four years—fairly alone and isolated, based on what he shared with me—and the whole time he’d had a daughter. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would have been in her life if he’d known. And here was Olivia who’d been shouldering parenthood on her own and had just gotten the shock of a lifetime.
“I’m so sorry, Liv,” I said, rubbing her back as her sobs slowed down. I swallowed my own pain and tried to think of Kaylee, the littlegirl I loved who was going to get pulled into this one way or the other, and I ached for her too. I felt such an immense sadness for the life she knew being upended, even if there was a chance that the change would be for the better.
“What am I going to do?” Liv cried, lifting her head. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, and I rubbed her arms soothingly.
“You should probably take a few days to process the information and then you can start to think about how you want to tell him,” I said gently.
“No.” She shook her head, panic crossing her face. “I don’t want him to know. He’ll just hurt her.”
I stroked her hair behind her ears, trying to be patient. She didn’t know him like I did. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where Kayden would willingly hurt anyone.
“You can’t know that, Liv. You don’t know anything about who he is now. You said yourself it was one night, four years ago. If I were in his shoes, I’d want to know about my daughter.”
She choked on a sob. “I don’t want Kaylee to get hurt. Kayden doesn’t even live here, right? He told me he lived in Phoenix. Kaylee doesn’t need a father who breezes in and out of town whenever he feels like it.”
I fought back my own tears. I knew she’d be reluctant to tell him, but I hadn’t anticipated her experiences with her father would play so strongly into her reaction. I couldn’t force her to change her mind, but I couldn’t live with this secret. I already felt torn between the two of them and we were only an hour into this shitshow.
I swallowed again, trying to tell her as much as I could. “Kayden moved back to Boston a little more than a month ago. He’s establishing his own architecture business and putting down roots in his hometown.I don’t believe he has any intention of leaving again and if you tell him he has a daughter here too, that’s only going to give him more of a reason to stay.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head rapidly.
I stood up and stepped back, panic flooding me as I pleaded with her, pulling at my hair with both hands. “Olivia, I can’t keep this from him. You can’t ask me to keep this a secret,please.We’re not talking about something minor. He has adaughter! That’s a really big deal.”
“So what?” she said as her eyes narrowed, clearly surprised at the intensity of my reaction. “He’s an employee who you’ve known for three weeks. Why are you so worried about his feelings?”
“He’s not an employee, he’s an independent contractor,” I mumbled.
“Okay. All the more reason not to tell him. When this project is done, he’s gone,” she said, rationalizing away the problem.
Even without a personal relationship between us, that wasn’t true. I liked Kayden’s work a lot. I would absolutely hire him again, assuming the rest of this project went smoothly.
It wasn’t Olivia’s fault that she had no idea why being honest with Kayden mattered to me. But I couldn’t tell her because I was keeping his secret too and I wouldn’t break his trust in me anymore than I’d break hers. I felt like I was being ripped in two. These two people who I cared about were going to be completely oblivious to why it was happening and there was no end in sight.
I took another deep breath.She’s had an hour to process. She needs more time.I squatted back down in front of her and put my hands on her knees.
“Take a few days and think about it, but don’t make this decision right now. Think about Kaylee,” I said. “She could know her father, Liv. Don’t you want her to have a chance at that relationship?”
“She has you,” Olivia said quietly, searching my face as if she wanted me to acknowledge that I saw Kaylee that way. I did. SheknewI did.
For the first time, I wondered just how much Liv saw me as part of their family. How much we were already in some familial relationship, whether I’d ever admitted my feelings for her or not. I loved them both and I’d do anything for them, but hurting Kayden wasn’t an option. The only way for all of them to eventually be okay was for the truth to come out—sooner rather than later.
Who are we kidding?If Liv brought any other guy into Kaylee’s life other than her biological father I’d be devastated because Ifeltlike her father, even if I wasn’t. Even if Liv and I kept toeing that line while silently refusing to cross it.
If Kaylee’s biological father was anyone other than Kayden, I’d probably be as conflicted as Liv was right now; ready to toss him aside for eternity to protect them and my relationship with Kaylee. They didn’t need protection from Kayden though. He’d only add to their life, I was sure of that. I’d do everything I could to make it happen even if I would be risking everything I held close.
