by S. Ann Cole
Jessica’s face suddenly went all sad and drab. “It’s true, Davi does love and adore me…probably more than I deserve. So breaking off the engagement has been a hard decision for me, you know. I mean, how do you give up on the man you’re convinced is the love of your life without shattering?”
Gildene nodded sympathetically. “So, tell me, what exactly made you put your foot down and walk away from this relationship? If there is still love, still that soul to soul connection, what could be so bad to make you give him up?”
Jessica paused for a torturously long moment, her green eyes watering. “He…he just wasn’t the man I thought he was. I gave him a chance…to be there for his son…and he refused.”
Gildene’s eyebrows met her hairline. “Hold on, did you just say his son?”
Jessica nodded, her chin wobbling, fake tears rolling down her face. She held up a finger, asking for a minute. “I’m sorry. It just…hurts…so much.”
“Oh, honey, take all the time you need,” Gildene said, reaching across the small table between them to pat her on her thigh.
I rolled my eyes.
After a few fake ass minutes of sniffling and tear drying, Jessica continued, “It was a few months ago when Xavier Xander’s girlfriend and I became close friends…”
Gildene sat up straighter. “Just to be clear for the audience: this girlfriend you speak of is our new and upcoming high-fashion model, Alina O’Hara, who everyone’s been buzzing about recently, right?”
Jessica nodded, smiling fondly. “Yes. She’s the one. Gorgeous, isn’t she? Trust me; she is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever come across. You’ll love her.”
What the what? Someone in the room snorted. I ignored it.
“And how does O’Hara play into this?” prodded Gildene.
“Well, as I said, since she moved to Los Angeles, we’ve grown extremely close. She needed a friend, you know, someone she could trust, confide in. I guess she found that in me. One day while we were out shopping, she just…broke down. She was a mess. I didn’t understand what was wrong with her. Then, she just blurted it out. Told me the truth. The real reason she came to Los Angeles.”
Gildene licked her lips, crossing her legs, and leaning forward, eager to get the gossip. “And what is the truth?”
“My fiancé and Alina…they used to be lovers.”
There was a collective gasp in the audience, and the camera moved from Gildene and Jessica for a quick second to show the shocked faces of the audience.
“And this son you speak of,” Gildene trod cautiously, “Alina is the mother?”
Jessica sniffled again. “Yes. She told me…he got her pregnant, and when she told him about it, he demanded she get rid of it, that he was too young for a kid. She was nineteen, pregnant with his child, and he left her to go on tour and become a rock star…and he didn’t look back.”
Disapproving looks from the audience aplenty. “And when you confronted him about this, what did he say?”
“He said he wasn’t interested in going backward, he wanted to go forward, with me. He asked me if I really wanted to have some kid from a meaningless past relationship in our marriage. I’m a woman, Gildene, and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t condone that. He would either be a father to his son or live without me.”
Tapping her fingers to her lips, Gildene asked, “And if he decides to take responsibility and own his child, would you take him back?”
Jessica nodded once. “Without a doubt. I love him. With all my heart, but I need him to prove to me, that he won’t do the same thing to me later on in our marriage. If he can’t accept responsibility now, he won’t be able to later on in the future.”
Xena hit pause. I just stood there staring at the television, wondering what in the hell I just watched.
“Any of that true?” Benny demanded.
I didn’t answer, and instead asked, “Where’s Davi?”
“He stormed outta here minutes before you got here,” Leo, Ninety Miles’ bassist, offered. “I think he went looking for you.”
“Is any. Of that. True?” Xena repeated Benny’s question.
I whirled on all of them. “I don’t owe any of you any kind of explanation! So do not demand anything of me!”
Xena flew up in my face. “I have to clean up this mess, so you will answer me, you conniving little bitch!”
Having no patience for this, I shouldered past her and stomped off, but she grabbed a fistful of my blouse, yanking me back, spinning me. We embroiled in a little tussle, me trying to get free, she trying to keep me put. Until Xavier’s surly voice growled, “Let her go, sis.”
“No!” Xena refused, “she can’t just—”
“They got a kid together, true. Everything else Jess spat…just payback. A lot more than you know.”
“You calling my daughter a liar?!” Benny blasted, rising from the sofa chair he’d been ensconced in and transferring his glower to Xavier.
Xena, let go of my blouse. “You and me, we’ll be talking.”
Squeezing her arm, I promised her with my eyes that I’d fill her in, before turning and sprinting down the stairs. By the time I hit the bottom, I heard Xavier call, “Chino.”
I braked, turned, and looked up. He was standing at the top of the stairs, looking hurt and vulnerable, completely unhidden. My heart cracked painfully at the sight of him. I didn’t know how to deal with both him and Davi at the same time.
“You chose me,” was all he said.
I stared up at him for several intense heartbeats, doing my best to convey with my eyes how I was in love with him.
At the end of every competition, there is a winner, and there is a runner-up. The winner gets the long-term victory, the glory, the praise. But is the runner-up just ignored or shoved out of the picture? No. They’re given words of encouragement, pats on the back, and a snapshot with the champion, cheers from their fans, but never ignored.
It hurts me that Xavier is hurting, but really, I didn’t get why he was. I was wholly his now. He was the champion. The star. He should be smiling not sulking.
All runner-ups deserve their three minutes of attention. Especially when they’ve been cheated.
Forced to choose yet again, I turned and shot out the door.
CHAPTER TWO
PAPARAZZI FLOCKED OUTSIDE MY APARTMENT BUILDING. A chaos of shutters and flashes, all attention directed through the lobby windows.
Davian had to be in there.
Powering up my windows and convertible top, I circled around to the back of the building and pulled into the underground garage. Swinging into my spot, I rushed out of the car and caught the elevator up to the lobby.
The twenty-four-hour manned securities were at the double doors with exasperated expressions as they fought to keep the paparazzi out, the concierge was manifestly irritated, and Davian…he was there. In the lobby. Pacing back and forth. Back and forth. Pulling the ends of his hair like a mental patient.
Overgrown facial hair darkened his jaw. Looking haggard in acid-washed blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt.
Stepping off the elevator, I cautiously approached him.
Seemingly oblivious to everything except the maddening thoughts in his head, he kept pacing, and it wasn’t until I gingerly whispered his name that he stopped in his tracks and his head snapped to me, as though somehow, even with all the chaos around him, my voice was the thing he needed to hear.
I remembered him telling me once that he loved the way I said his name. Like I owned it. Like it was mine.
Cocking his head like a curious bird, Davian studied me through red, bleary eyes. “Is it true?” Just above a whisper, his voice was deceptively soft.
I glanced around the lobby, then back at him. “Davi, we can’t do this here. Why don’t you come up—”
“ANSWER ME!” he bellowed, rage dripping from his voice like droplets of blood. I winced. I’d known the softness in his voice couldn’t be trusted. “Do I have a son?!”
Protectively, I
wrapped my arms around myself and stepped back two paces. I guess we were doing this here, then. Well, at least people will know Jessica lied on the interview. “Yes.”
Davian’s head jerked back with the same impact of a bullet slapping through a forehead. It was as though he’d been expecting this all to be some kind of publicity stunt. Not the truth. Not the actual truth. “I…have a son?”
Before I could suggest once again that we go up to my apartment, away from the flashing cameras and cocked ears, Mel, my driver and gopher, materialized out of nowhere, clapping Davian on the shoulder. She leaned in and whispered something in his ear, and Davian straightened his posture, did a full 360, as if finally waking up from his stupor and realizing where he was. The eyes, the ears, the cameras, and recorders trained at us.
In an abrupt move, he grabbed my upper arm and drew me off to the elevator. Once inside, he held his hand out for my key card. I handed it over. He swiped it and passed it back to me.
As soon as the doors closed, he attacked me. I had no time to prepare. He slammed me up against the wall, both his hands tightening around my throat.
I wasn’t scared, just taken by surprise. Davian wasn’t stupid. He knew it would be the end of him—literally, the end of his life—if he even dared try to harm me.
His expression was a mixture of fury, confusion, and hurt, as though he couldn’t decide whether he should be mad at me or weep at the news. “I have a son?”
“You keep asking that,” I croaked. “The answer… won’t change.”
At my struggle to speak, his wild eyes dropped to his hands around my throat. Horror pirouetted across his face, and in a flash, his hands were gone.
Jamming his fists into his pockets, he backed up all the way to the opposite side of the elevator, as though he didn’t trust what he would do if he was too near to me.
“Everything Jess said on that interview is a lie,” I told him through a cough, rubbing my throat.
“So I don’t have a son?”
“No… I mean yes, we have a son,l but the way Jess told it, not true. I never said any of those things to her. She found out through some anonymous text, and she agreed to keep it a secret. She’s only using it against you now because you left her.”
“Considering how she ruthlessly dragged me through the mud,” he said with a reluctant sigh, “I believe you.”
The elevator doors opened, and we both stood on either side, watching each other, neither wanting to make the first move.
After a long, long moment, Davian whispered, so soft I wouldn’t have heard it had we not been in an enclosed space. “Why? Why’d do this to me? To us?”
My tongue felt like lead, my chest tightening at the despondent pain in his voice. I decided to be the first to move.
He followed me. “Ally, I—I don’t understand you, or your reasoning. How you’re acting right now like this doesn’t change everything.” He grabbed my elbow and whirled me around. “We have a child together! A goddamn child!”
“I’m sorry, okay?!” I yelled back. “That’s all I have. I’m sorry. At the time, I thought I was making the right decision. I wanted you to chase your dreams. I wanted you to be the famous rock star you always wanted to be. I was thinking of you. Not me. Not Jacob. But you. I never expected things would turn into such a clusterf—”
“Jacob?” he cut in. “That’s his name?”
Nodding, I wiped away a lone tear that snuck out from the corner of my eye. “Your son’s name is Jacob Davian II Hamilton.”
An emotion, one I couldn’t quite read—absolute sadness, maybe?—washed over his face. “Can I…can I see a pic of him?”
With another nod, I left him and went to my bedroom to get my tablet, feeling both worn down and giddy at the same time. Worn down from this whole drama, and giddy that Davian would finally get a look at his son. See how much he resembled him. There was so much I wanted to tell him; fill him in on about our son and the time he missed. I couldn’t get to my tablet fast enough.
Back out in the living room, Davian was sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands, pulling at his hair again.
Hearing my approach, he raised his head, apprehension lingering on his face as he eyed the tablet in my hand.
I lowered down beside him on the couch, my hand shaking as I navigated to “Gallery” and pulled up the first image of our son. “This is five hours after he came into the word. Nine pounds. He was stubborn, didn’t wanna come into the light. I was in labor for over thirty-six hours.”
Davian held on to one side of the tablet, angling it so he could get a better view, and I struggled not to look at him, for fear of the pain and wistful forlornness I might find there. Minutes ticked by and he just sat there, still as a statue, staring at the image of a sleeping Jacob swaddled in a baby-blue blanket.
Swiping my finger across the screen, I moved on to the next image, snapping Davian out of his daze.
“He’s three weeks old here.” The pic was of an extra chubby Jacob in a white monkey suit, gazing in wonder up at the camera from his crib. “About the time we started accepting that he wasn’t a ‘weird baby’ just because he only cried when he was hungry. Thanks to that, I don’t have any new mom middle-of-the-night-shrieking stories. He’s an ‘angel baby’.”
Still nothing.
I moved on to the next, and the next, showing him picture after picture of Jacob’s progression, laughing at some, ‘aw-ing’ at the super cute ones, sighing at the adorable ones, all the while Davian remained still, uttering not a word.
After showing him the last in the gallery, he blinked, his head snapping to me. “Aren’t there more?”
“Backed up in Dropbox. This tablet isn’t linked to it.”
He nodded, rubbing his palms up and down his denim-clad thighs. “He looks like Dad.”
I laughed. “He looks like you.”
Suddenly his eyes narrowed in on me. “On the interview, Jess said Dad knew. She said he threatened you to stay away from me with your burden. I don’t have to ask if that last part is a lie…but…does he really know? I’ve been calling him and he won’t pick up.”
“I didn’t see that part of the interview but…yes. He knows. I threatened him not to tell you or I’d do the same thing Jess did. He said he needed time with Jacob, so I gave him Saturdays.”
“And sis?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. We don’t talk anymore.”
He leaned forward, dropping his elbows to his knees as he massaged his temples. I knew this was a lot for him to take in all at once. The thoughts that must be racing through his mind and the one million questions he probably wanted to ask but didn’t know where to begin.
“I wanna see him. When can I see him?”
“Whenever you want,” I said quickly, thanking God he was digesting it easy instead of flipping out more. “Xavi suggested I move Jacob here with—”
Head whipping to me, his blue eyes glowered. I guess I thanked God too soon. “Xavi? So he knew about my son, too, and I didn’t?”
“It’s like you guessed,” I tried to explain. “He knew all about me before he came after me.”
“Sonuvabitch,” he swore. “He admitted it?”
“Yes, but not as some kind of revenge like you initially thought. He was trying to protect Jess. He said he knew you’d never love her like…you love me. So luring me here was some kind of scheme to get us back together.”
He arched an eyebrow. “And how did that work out?”
I averted my gaze and muttered under my breath, “He ended up wanting me for real.”
Davian frowned, eyes once again zoning in on me. “Hang on, what do you mean ‘Xavi suggested’?”
I shifted on the couch, putting some space between us. “He’s concerned about me spending so much time away from Jacob while—”
“Wait, are you staying with him?”
I blinked, confused. “I thought you knew I chose…” Then it dawned on me that he couldn’t have known my decision because I hadn’t spoke
n to him since before I left for France. Of course, he was still in limbo with his hopes up, because I hadn’t held any kind of formal conversation with anyone. I just went to Xavier and that’s where it ended. I never picked up any of Davian’s calls or replied to his text messages. No wonder everyone looked so thrown when I walked in at Beach Rock. I’d been so high in my Xavier bubble that it completely slipped me that the people around us would need an explanation on what the heck was going on.
I suddenly felt seriously uncomfortable. Anxious. Unable to meet Davian’s eyes. It was unforgivably cruel to break a man’s heart twice in one night. I wasn’t this much of a bitch.
“You chose…him?”
One heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats, four. I nodded.
I almost jumped out of my skin when he sharply shot up and kicked over the coffee table. “You have got to be shitting me!!” he exploded. “After all I gave up for you?!”
“You can have it all back,” I said in the eye of the tiger. “Did you not hear her? She’ll take you back.”
“After what she did tonight, she doesn’t stand a chance,” he spat. “And I’m talking about us here. Me and you. Not Jess.”
“I’m in love with him.”
“And I don’t give a shit!” he barked. “I love Jess, but I gave her up for you.”
“You made me fall in love with him,” I snapped, standing up and facing him head-on. “You kept hesitating and I kept falling. You could’ve prevented this, but you didn’t. I gave you many chances and you still chose her. You took too long to choose me, Davi. And now I’m his and I won’t apologize.”
He began pacing, and now he really looked like a mental patient. I watched him. He stopped, looked at the coffee table he’d kicked over, then proceeded to kick it again and again and again until a crack formed down the middle. “I can’t… I can’t believe this is happening. Any of this.”
Lowering back down to the couch, I sat in silence and watched him pace. I’ve never seen him like this before. Crazed. Out of it. Lost. But how else would a man be after having a truckload of shit dumped on him without warning?