Page 16 of Freefall

She takes a step toward me, and I immediately back up. “Don’t,” I warn.

“I’m Daisy,” the little girl says as she inches closer to the me, and suddenly the world is spinning, the ground about to fall apart beneath my feet.

What’s your favorite flower?

“Nate,” Harper says for a third time, and it takes me a second to realize she’s not talking to me. She’s introducing me.

“Hi, Nate,” the girl—Daisy—says casually.

That’s when Harper turns back to me, her worry having morphed into a glare that could only come from a mother.

“Hi,” I say softly. “I’m Nate.”

“Yeah, I know. We just went over that.”

I can’t help the small smile that tugs at my lips because while she may resemble me physically, she clearly has her mother’s personality in spades.

“You’re right. We did,” I tell her as she eyes me skeptically before turning back to Harper.

“I’m going to go back to writing my story now.”

With that, she scampers off down the hallway before either of us can respond. Now it’s just us. No audience. No little girl looking up at me with my eyes and her sandy blonde hair.

Without her there, the anger rushes back in, scaling up my spine and curling in my gut. The incessant need to control pushes through any lingering softness I felt a moment ago. Now all I can think about is lawyers, paternity tests, custody hearings.

Would she even agree to a test?

“We should talk.” Her voice breaks through my spiraling thoughts, but it does nothing to calm me like it used to. If anything, it sounds like betrayal.

I look down at her, those big, hazel eyes swirling with concern, and all I want is to make her hurt, and not in the mutually beneficial way. Not in the way she used to beg for. No, I want to make her regret what she’s done.

“I don’t have anything to say.”

She nods. “Okay.”

That pisses me off even more. How can she be so casual about all of this? How can she surrender so easily? From the moment I met her, she fought me on everything. Now she’s going to give up? Maybe motherhood has softened her, or maybe it’s because she’s never spent a day unaware of that little girl's existence.

She didn’t fight for us, I remind myself.

It doesn’t matter. If she’s not going to fight now, we’ll see how she feels when she gets a call from my lawyer.

I turn to leave, the weight of what I came here to do in the first place flaking off me like shed skin.

I slowly make my way to my car, almost stumbling as I wait for her to stop me with my name, a huff of annoyance, a sob—fucking anything—but it doesn’t come.

The ride home does nothing to calm my erratic heartbeat or ease the pulse pounding in my neck. I usually enjoy driving. Like running, it helps me relax. I keep replaying the last half hour over and over until it feels so surreal that I wonder if I made most of it up.

There’s no other explanation for why Harper would keep a kid—my fucking kid—secret from me for more than eight years.

She wouldn’t.

That’s all I can come up with.

It’s true she left me. She didn’t stay and fight to make it work, and maybe that was partially my fault, but she wouldn’t hide my kid from me.

Which can only mean one thing. Daisy isn’t mine.

Just thinking that brings up another whole host of issues, but none of them are nearly as bad as hiding my child.