He traces my hairline with his fingertips. “I’m fucking crazy about you.” I shiver at the genuineness in his voice.
Archie laughs in his throat. “Don’t flinch like that. I don’t expect you to say it back. I just can’t go any longer without you knowing…I love you.”
I want to say it back. I want to tell him that I feel the exact same way. But it wouldn’t be right to do that without giving him the whole truth. He needs to know about River first.
I just need a minute to get my nerve. “I…I need to go to the bathroom,” I say as I climb off of him and slide down the bed.
He rises onto his elbows and watches me. “Sophia, don’t freak out on me…Come on, baby…”
My stomach is in knots as I turn for the door. “I’m not freaking out. Promise.”
I’m totally freaking out.
But not for the reason he thinks. I’m freaking out because I’ve finally found the kind of love I’ve always wanted. And I’m afraid that he’ll change his mind once I tell him my secret. Guilt and fear batter me at once.
I need to get out of here. This room is suffocating me. But Archie’s fingers lock around my wrist with so much urgency, it's physically painful. Almost like the pain in my heart.
His voice is hoarse and his eyes are red and shiny. "Before you walk out that door, there's something you need to know. Even if you feel like we can't be together, even if you don’t feel the way I feel, you need to know the truth.” His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. “You're the reason I'm alive. In those cold, wet nights while I was a million miles from safety and I was tangled in the damp vines of the jungle, I was thinking about you. I was picturing your face. I was imagining your laugh. I was hearing your voice. Even though I was sure I’d never see you again, just knowing you were out there, that was worth fighting for."
Emotion overwhelms me. His words strike the deepest part of me. “Oh, Archie…” This man is saying all the right things and he’s saying them like he means them. Meanwhile, I can’t come up with a thing to say.
His fingers fall from my wrist and I back away through the door.
I hurry down the hallway, tiptoeing quietly past River’s closed bedroom door. I lock myself in the bathroom and turn on the light. “Okay, Sophia.” I breathe out through my mouth and stare at my reflection in the mirror. “You can do this. Just tell him the truth. He says he loves you so just tell him the truth and let the chips fall where they may.” I open the faucet on the sink and warm water spills out into my cupped hands. I splash my face. A shaky kind of confidence builds in my chest as the water drips from my chin. Grabbing the towel hanging on the back of the door, I daub my face.
Over the sound of the water, I hear crying. It’s faint and I start trying to convince myself that I’m only imagining it but the sound keeps growing closer. Panicking, I shut off the pipe and tear the door open.
My heart stops.
Archie is standing in the hallway. He has River, whimpering in his arms as she clutches the front of his T-shirt. There are question marks in his eyes. “Sophia, why is River here? What the hell is going on?”
I stand there mute with my hands clasped over my heart. Why did I let this happen? How could I let him find out this way?
The sobbing child stretches her arms out to me. “Mah-mee…”
Archie looks genuinely bewildered. He steps closer in the shadowy hallway. “Sophia, is River your child?”
Shivers fire up and down my limbs. I swallow. “Yes.”
His gaze narrows on my face and he takes a hard breath. “Am I her father?”
I close my eyes for just long enough to fill my lungs. “Yes.”
It isn’t shock on his face. He doesn’t look surprised. In fact, his expression is completely blank. He doesn’t even look at her.
He just slides my precious girl into my arms and backs away down the hallway. My heart breaks into a million pieces when he opens the door and disappears into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Archie
When I storm through the heavy steel door of Hartley Construction the next morning, the receptionist leaps to her feet. “C-can I help you, sir?”
“No, you cannot fucking help me.”
I march down the hallway toward Charlie’s office and she takes off behind me. Hearing the commotion, my friend looks up from the papers spread about on his desk.
“Archie!” He leans forward in his ratty, little swiveling chair.
I glance into the corner and see Leo sitting on the tattered sofa with his boot-covered feet propped up on a wooden chair. He flips through a magazine. “Hey man! What’s up?”
What’s up?
“You. Fucking. Assholes!” I roar as I slam the door shut in the receptionist’s face. “You didn’t tell me she has a kid!”
I hear the woman’s frantic voice from behind the door. “Charlie, should I be calling the cops? Cough twice if you want me to call the cops!”
He rolls his chair back and glares at the side of my head as he trudges by me. He sticks his head out the door. “No, Sharon. I can take this knucklehead and he knows it.”
From over in the corner, Leo snorts a laugh. “You wish.” Then he shouts in the direction of the door. “Don’t worry, Sharon. I got this situation under control.”
I roll my eyes. With the degree of rage I’m feeling now, I’m about to Hulk-out on these assholes.
Charlie walks back around his desk and sinks into his chair. “So, what’s your problem, fucker?” He smirks and I want to punch him in the throat.
“Sophia has a child and neither of you bothered to tell me.” A bitter vitriol boils in my blood.
Charlie shrugs a shoulder. “We told you to get to know her, on your own. We didn’t want you jumping to any conclusions about her just because she’s a single mom.”
Leo pipes in. “Yeah—the fact that she has a kid doesn’t take away from the fact that she’s a great girl. Hell, if Reese had refused to take a chance on me just because I was a father, I would have missed out on the great love of my fucking life.” He turns to Charlie and points a finger in my direction. “Oh, by the way, when he found out I was messing around with your sister, he totally egged me on.” He cackles to himself.
I watch Charlie’s face collapse into a scowl as he pounds a fist into his table. “You fucking sons of bitches. Ever heard of the damn bro code?!”
Okay, now we’re getting off the point. “Don’t tell me you bastards knew that River is my child. Don’t tell me you kept that from me.”
Leo’s head snaps over at me. His magazine falls from his hands. “What did you just say?”
Charlie shoves all his papers to the side of his desk. His eyes bore holes into my forehead. “What the hell are you talking about, Jones?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and suck in a breath. “River is my daughter, man.”
My friends share a skeptical look. “You’re losing it,” Leo mumbles as he scratches the side of his head. “You’re losing your fucking mind.”
The fact that my friends are in the dark about this actually makes me feel better. “Look—there's more going on between me and Sophia than you assholes realize, okay?"
Charlie's bushy brow inches up his forehead. "Meaning?"
"Meaning, we met each other before I showed up here in Copper Heights." I shove my fingers into my hair and pull on my roots.
My friends snap to look at each other before their gazes snap back to me.
Charlie leans forward on his elbows. “You’re making zero sense, bro.”
"I met her in Vegas,” I explain. “Right before I deployed."
"When you came down to Vegas to meet up with me?" Charlie asks.
"Yes, when I came down to meet you, meathead."
Leo's eyes are wide with shock. "How the fuck did that happen?"
“I had a shitload of time to kill before I was supposed to be back at the base so I called Charlie. Sort of to say goodbye. At the time, I was cruising around southern Calif
ornia and when he told me he was at a bachelor party in Vegas, it didn’t take much convincing to get me to go down there.” I say it like it’s self-explanatory. “We were supposed to meet at some bar. Just to grab a few beers before I had to head over to the base. But when I walked in, he was off in the corner, arguing with a woman.”
“That was Nova,” Charlie says. “Before she and I got together. She had some crazy theory that it was my fault Josh didn’t show up to the wedding. Because I didn’t keep him on a leash at the bachelor party the night before.”
I shrug a shoulder and continue. “All I know is that it wasn’t pretty. And I didn’t want to get involved. So, I went over to the bar to get a drink. But as I was walking up, I saw this girl there. She was wearing a wedding dress and she was crying. So, I sat down.”
Leo shakes his head and mutters under his breath. “Fucking christ, Archie.”
I glare at his face. “She needed somebody to talk to. It’s like she was invisible. Everybody around her was just pretending she wasn’t there.”
“And it had to be you,” Charlie spits out on a laugh. “You had to come to the rescue, Sergeant Good Times.”
“It wasn’t just sex.” I snarl in my friend’s direction. “Some fucking magic happened that night.”
The words sound crazy as I say them. My friends know that I’ve never passed up an opportunity to start some trouble. It’s a reputation I’ve never shied away from.
But a girl in a wedding dress crosses the line. Even for me. I didn’t approach Sophia just to have a good time. From the minute I saw her, I knew there was something more beneath the surface, something I felt compelled to explore.
She was hurt. I was scared. We needed each other.
Leo straightens in his seat. “Wait—so the girl you wrote all those postcards about, the girl you wouldn’t stop talking about while you were overseas? That was Sophia?”
I nod my head slowly. I know how insane this sounds.
He scrubs a hand down his face. "Well, that's some romantic shit if I ever heard it."
“Fuck, I never read the postcards,” Charlie mumbles to himself and I shoot him a deadly glare.
“This is wild.” Leo scratches his chin.
Charlie brings the conversation full-circle. “So basically, she got pregnant that night. And she had River. And you’re the father.”
I shove Leo’s feet off of the wooden chair and drop down in it. “I’m the father.” The words sound surreal to me.
Charlie leans forward, his elbows on the table. “So, tell me—what do you want to do? And you’d better not say you plan on leaving her alone with that baby because I swear I will kick your ass all over this office.”
“First off, you can’t even beat me in your dreams.” I snarl.
Charlie looks to Leo for back-up. Leo shrugs. “You know he’s right, man.”
I bury my face in my hands. “She didn’t even tell me.” I want to scream right now. “I was in her house, helping her with those kids and she didn’t tell me the truth about my child. And I think the worst part is, I just felt a connection to River. I couldn’t figure out why she was my favorite, why I was drawn to her…It turns out, I’m her father.”
Leo pushes a hard exhale. “Sophia has been through a lot over the past few years,” he tells me in his wise, knowing, fatherly way. “I don't blame her for having her guard up. She was just trying to protect her kid.”
“But this isn’t some little, inconsequential secret,” I argue. “This is huge.”
The office door pops open so fast it shoots my heart into my throat. The receptionist’s attention goes to Charlie. “That brickwork contractor you’re meeting with, he’s in the waiting room.”
“Gimme five minutes,” he tells her. She nods.
When the door closes, Leo’s attention comes back to me. “She fucked up, Archie. Let’s all agree on that. But she’s a good woman. A good woman who’s taken an emotional beating. You weren’t here for all of it. You didn’t see her lying on my couch for months while Reese and Nova took care of her. You didn’t see her struggling with a newborn. She went through a lot of shit. And she’s still standing. She deserves credit for that.”
Charlie pushes away from his desk and stands. “I get it—you’re pissed at her for keeping this secret.” He comes around the table and puts a hand on my shoulder. “But beyond all that, what are you going to do about it? Are you gonna sit in here and whine about how unfair it is or are you gonna step up and be a man?" He heads for the door without waiting for my answer. “Let me know. I’ve got a meeting to get to.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sophia
I absolutely hate myself right now.
And I’m convinced that I deserve every ounce of self-loathing that I feel. My shoulders slump under the weight of my guilt and I spend the whole day feeling like my heart will crack wide open and all my sticky, black pain will come gushing out.
But I can’t wallow. It’s just me and Ramona and a house full of crazy kids today. If I don’t pay attention, I can almost guarantee that one of them will somehow end up chopping off a finger in my NutriBullet by the end of the day.
I keep trying to remind myself that Archie reacted just as I feared he would. He found out the truth about River and he bailed on us. Sergeant Good Times is probably halfway to Mexico by now in that cherry red drop top Chevy of his. And I’m alone in the rubble of the dream I adjusted to make room for him.
I knew that I was better off on my own. Just me and River. I shouldn’t have allowed him in.
I was right all along. I knew he wouldn't want to be a father. I knew I was right to keep River from him. I was protecting her. And now, I've let her down.
Barely managing to keep from bursting into tears, I bumble my way through the day. I’m feeling extra anti-social so when the parents start showing up around 4:45, I leave Ramona in charge and head into the kitchen to finish washing up the dishes from lunch.
I’m elbow-deep in soap suds when Ramona comes sauntering into the kitchen as she loops her scarf around her neck. She leans into the fridge and grabs a juice box. “Hey, Sophia—all of the other kids are gone now.” She stabs the straw into the opening of the juice box, “but that hot Archie-guy is out there getting River dressed. He says he’s her dad and that he’s taking her to the park?” There’s a questioning lilt to her voice.
The soapy plastic bowl in my hand slips from my fingers and lands in the sink with a splash. Tearing past Ramona in the open doorway, I stiffen my spine and march into the play room, ready to ask this man what the hell he thinks he’s doing. But the sight that greets me turns my spine to mush.
Archie is sitting in one of the tiny little chairs with River seated on the art table in front of him. The child gnaws on a teething toy as her father slowly and carefully wiggles her little pink rain boot onto her foot. She's already dressed in her coat and hat and a colorful scarf that's not hers. She's overdressed for the weather, zipped all the way to the top.
Even when my ballet flats scuff to a stop on the linoleum floor, Archie's eyes don’t shift to my face. Instead, he picks up the brand-new pink umbrella stroller sitting at his feet.
"You ready?" he asks as he scoops his daughter off of the table.
Am I ready?
Ready for what exactly, I'm not sure. But I grab my sweater and nod, anyway.
He turns away from me, marching straight for the front door. I can see that he's struggling to leash all the anger that's pent up toward me. He’s a mountain of a man with his huge shoulders and his long frame. He’s slinking through the doorway, holding a pink backpack on his shoulder and a drooling toddler hitched to his side. My primal instincts kick into gear, arrowing reproduction signals to my fluttery lady parts like a distress call.
Silently following after them, I grab my keys. While I'm locking the door, he sets River down in the yard and figures out how to open the stroller for the first time. He pulls on a lever and the seat pops into place. I watch him pick up our
daughter and tenderly place her in the seat. He straps her in and roughly wiggles the metal frame. He circles around the stroller, analyzing it from every angle then wiggles it again. When he’s finally sure that it’s safe, he kicks up the brake and throws a cutting glance my way. “Let’s go.”
The walk to the park is silent aside from River’s babbling. Archie stops at every yellow light. He checks and double-checks before crossing the street. His eyes dart around vigilantly for even the smallest threat.
Just seeing the amount of care he’s putting into something as simple as taking his child to the park is making my heart bleed. I was so wrong to keep him from River. I should have told him about her the minute he came to town. I’m so mad at myself that I waited for him to figure it out on his own.
With tender, careful movements, he pulls River from her new stroller and places her in a swing. I stand off to the side with my arms folded across my chest, trying to hold myself together.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Archie.” The words seem inadequate but they’re all I’ve got. “River is the center of my world. I love her with every inch of my heart and I would die if anyone tried to hurt her.” I sniff as the tears come pouring down.
Ignoring me completely, he watches the little girl as she flies through the air, giggling and kicking her feet up in front of her.
“You said you wouldn’t be in town for long, that you didn’t know how to settle down. I didn’t want her to become attached to you only for you to turn around and leave.” My chest shakes as I sob. “You can hate me all you want but—”
He spins around and grabs me by the shoulders. “That’s the fucking problem, Sophia. I don’t hate you. I love you so much I don’t know how to.”
When he releases me, I feel cold without his hands on me. “I was trying to protect her,” I justify weakly.
“Protect her? From me? This is my daughter we’re talking about here.” His eyes go red. They swim in tears. “I can’t even allow myself to think about all the important moments and once-in-a-lifetime milestones I missed. Your big, round pregnant belly and your crazy food cravings. Holding your hand as you gave birth. Driving my family home from the hospital. River’s first smile. Her first step.”
The Blue Collar Bachelors Box Set: The Complete Blue Collar Bachelors Series Page 119