“So that’s why I’m here. I came to find you and, you know, see if you were a decent person. I didn’t mean to lie about being here for an interview. It was just that I wanted to get to know you before I gave you that.” Adriana pointed at the bag.
Gabe still didn’t say anything. He just reached over and picked up the bag. Slowly, he pulled out the tests. “There’s four.”
“Two mouth swabs and two hair follicles. You know, just to be safe.” When she heard herself say it aloud, it sounded a little kooky. “When I thought I was pregnant, I bought eight tests, so four isn’t that much.”
Gabe was holding the photo strip in one hand and two of the tests in the other. He sat there silently, and Adriana was trying to put herself in his shoes. How would she feel if all of this information had just been dumped on her?
She had no idea.
After a few minutes of shifting uncomfortably in her seat, she asked, “Are you okay?”
“I remember Emily. She was…wild.”
Adriana had to laugh. Emily on a regular day was high energy. She most likely had gone balls to the wall on her twenty-first birthday.
He continued, “I met her at a bar, and she said I was cute, but I looked like a baby. I was. I was barely eighteen. But, I showed her the ID that I’d used to get past the bouncer. It was my cousin Jake’s. We looked similar then. That’s why she thought my name was Jake.”
“I wondered about that.” Adriana knew there had to be a good explanation and there was. “Look, I’m sorry that I lied to you…about the interview. I just, I was scared. Jonah’s been through so much, and I just had to meet you. To find out what kind of a person you were, to protect Jonah.
“Then I walked into Sue Ann’s and there you were. You thought I was there to interview you and I don’t know…it all happened so fast. I’m sorry.”
A crease appeared in Gabe’s forehead. “You don’t have to apologize. You were protecting your family.”
Even though he wasn’t upset, Adriana still found herself compelled to explain further. “I wanted to tell you last night, that’s why I was drinking like that. I thought it would give me some courage. Then I promised myself I’d tell you this afternoon but—” She blew out a huff of air. “I didn’t know how to bring it up. Then we kissed, and I freaked out. I’m sorry.”
When he looked up at her this time, his eyes seemed clear. They no longer looked shell-shocked. “Are you apologizing for the kiss now?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks burned thinking about her juvenile behavior over the past couple of days. “For the kiss. For lying to you. For dragging this out. All of it.”
“So you’re apologizing for doing what any responsible parent would do in this situation? You wanted to make sure that you weren’t opening your life and your kids’ lives to some asshole. You could’ve just hired an attorney and had me served with papers, but no, you came here to vet me personally. To do your due diligence and find out who I was.”
“I never even thought about hiring an attorney.” Adriana was embarrassed to admit.
Gabe didn’t seem to notice. He was focused on something else. “Are you really sorry for that kiss? Because I’m not.”
“No, I’m not sorry about the kiss. I’m sorry because we kissed under false pretenses,” she explained.
“But, we didn’t,” he countered. “I knew you weren’t a blogger.”
He had a point. “Why didn’t you ask me who I was and what I was doing?”
“I just wanted to spend time with you.” His left shoulder raised in a shrug. “I knew there had to be a good explanation.”
The intensity behind his words ignited a heat between them. The energy surrounding the two of them crackled with tension, and she felt herself being sucked down the Gabe Vortex.
“Okay, well.” She snatched her purse and stood up as she wiped her damp palms on her jeans. “I’ll come by before I take off tomorrow to get the samples. I’m going to FedEx them on Monday and I should hear back within a week.”
Gabe was still seated and her legs were between his knees. He looked up at her and she had the most overwhelming impulse to reach out and run her fingers through his hair. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah. I gave you the kits. I told you everything.” She tightened her hold on her purse strap so she wouldn’t give into her urge. “Until we find out the results, what else is there to say?”
As he stood, his head was shaking back and forth. “What about us? The kiss?”
He was standing so close to her that she had to lift her chin to look into his eyes. “I don’t…I mean…you might be Jonah’s dad.”
“I know.” His voice held a gravity to it that grounded her. It was two words and he hadn’t promised her anything, but for some reason, she felt everything was going to be okay. “That’s not what I asked. I said what about us? The kiss?”
His body was barely an inch away from her, and she could feel the heat radiating off of him. His sexiness was a powerful force field drawing her in. She was doing her best to resist it.
“We can’t. It’s too…” Words weren’t easy to come by as her mind was currently using all of its brainwaves for sense memory. She was staring at Gabe’s lips and she could feel them pressing against hers. So she just repeated, “We can’t.”
“Why?” he asked as his knuckles brushed against her forearm so featherlight that all she could feel was the tingle of sensation he left in his wake, not his actual touch.
Her chest was heaving like she was a heroine in a bodice ripper and for the life of her she couldn’t come up with one reason why they couldn’t kiss. She licked her lips nervously, “It’s too…complicated.”
“Then let’s make it simple. Do you want to kiss me?”
She might be a basket case that was out of practice in all things adult-fun related. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know where this was going. It was a trick question. If she said yes, he’d lean down, and once his lips touched hers, without a lie between them to stop her, she knew it was over.
“I just…can’t,” she blurted out and then walked to the door as fast as her feet would carry her.
Gabe didn’t stop her.
She wasn’t sure why she thought he would, but he didn’t.
He was always doing what she least expected. Usually, she liked that about him. This time…she wasn’t sure.
Chapter 11
‡
As Gabe held the picture strip of himself and Emily, his mind was transported back to the weekend that could turn out to be the biggest of his life. He only remembered flashes of that weekend, but she was seared into every one he had.
What stood out to Gabe was that Emily was bold and fearless. She’d convinced him to break into a restricted area of a casino which might have been where Jonah was conceived and she’d also been the one to dare him to go into the hotel fountain. Naked. If he hadn’t been there with his brother who was headlining the fight, he would’ve probably gotten in some pretty serious trouble.
Emily was a force to be reckoned with. She’d made an impression on him and he’d only spent ten hours with her. From the brief interaction they’d had, he’d seen that she was so full of life.
He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Jonah to lose that woman as a mom or Adriana to lose her as “her person.”
And she could be the mother of his child. He could have a son. Jonah could be his.
Gabe was struggling to process that information but he wasn’t sure it would truly sink in until the test results came back. This week was going to be the longest of his life and he was no stranger to playing the waiting game. He’d thought that waiting for blood count test results were torture, but he had a feeling this was going to blow that out of the water. Just like then, there was nothing he could do about the results. They would be what they would be. There was nothing he could do to change the outcome to be what he wanted.
And he wanted Jonah to be his.
His phone dinged and he saw a text from Adria
na. He’d messaged her thirty minutes ago to let her know that the samples were ready and she could pick them up anytime. He’d also asked her if she could send him pictures of Jonah.
Her response read:
Of course, here you go.
And it had a link.
His hand trembled as he held the phone. He knew that being Jonah’s father wasn’t a done deal. He’d slept with Emily, but he remembered wearing protection. Still, protection wasn’t one hundred percent. He’d also been inebriated when he’d put it on, so there may have been some user error involved.
Since they’d met in Vegas, he’d say the odds were fifty-fifty. He might not know if he was, but he knew that he wanted to be.
Now, as his finger hovered over the blue highlighted link he took in a deep breath. This could be the first time he ever saw a picture of his son. The significance of the moment weighed on him. He felt it in his chest and on his shoulders.
He took one more deep breath, tapped the screen and a picture of a scrawny boy with big brown eyes and a toothy grin filled his screen. Gabe’s heart slammed into his chest. If someone would’ve shown him this picture and said that it was a picture of himself at nine years old, he wouldn’t have questioned it. Jonah was the spitting image of Gabe at that age.
As he scrolled through the rest of the photos that ranged from his baby years until now two things struck him. One, from these pictures it looked like this kid had lived a happy life. There were posed pics from Disneyland, holidays, soccer games, pool parties. And candid pics when Jonah fell asleep while eating spaghetti, when he was riding his bike, tying his shoe, and playing at the park.
Two, though Jonah was still very young, in a way he was also so old. If he were Gabe’s son, Gabe had missed out on a huge chunk of the kid’s life. Not just the good times either. He’d also missed out on the sleepless nights, fevers from teething, tantrums in grocery stores, scraped knees that needed Band-Aids, and all the other messiness that comes with raising a child.
But, Gabe reminded himself, there is still a lot more life ahead of this kid. And if he turned out to be his father, he’d be there for all of it.
Gabe felt moisture beneath his eyes and he realized he was starting to cry. The last time he’d cried was at his mom’s funeral. But these weren’t the same tears. These were tears of hope, not grief. They were tears of a beginning, not an end.
He sniffed them back, though, because he didn’t want to get ahead of himself. His self-preservation kicked in and he reminded himself that Jonah might not be his. Even as that thought filled his head, he knew it wasn’t true. One look at this kid and Gabe knew, knew Jonah was his.
When Gabe had been diagnosed, he’d retreated like a turtle into his shell. He hadn’t shared what he was going through emotionally, with anyone. He believed that’s why he’d had that empty, lonely void. Adriana showed him that it was possible to feel again without that dark cloud hanging around. Now that he knew what he was capable of, he was going to do everything he could to heal.
So, instead of keeping all of his feelings about his situation to himself, he clicked on his contacts to call Glenn. Then he stopped himself. He decided to try something first. He opened his texts and he texted his brother a couple pictures of Jonah. The first one he’d seen and one when he looked about Aubrey’s age.
All he wrote was:
Do these look familiar?
A few minutes later, his phone rang. He picked it up, “Hey, man.”
“No, they don’t.” His brother skipped the greeting and went straight to the point. “Did you go through some boxes of mom’s or something?”
“No.” Gabe’s chest tightened again.
Glenn thought they were of him. It wasn’t DNA proof, but it was something. Gabe could barely inhale a full breath.
“I’ve never seen them before. Where’d you get them?”
“Adriana.”
“The men get drunk on your beauty girl?” his brother asked, “Where did she get pictures of you?”
“They’re not me.”
“They’re not?” Glenn didn’t sound convinced. Muffled noises came over the line and Gabe knew that his brother was most likely checking the pictures again. “Are you sure, man? I think they are.”
Gabe told Glenn everything, except he did Tarantino-it. He started with Adriana’s first appearance this weekend and finished with her Vegas bombshell.
“Holy shit,” His brother said in awe when he was finished.
“Yep. That’s what I said.”
After about a minute of silence, Glenn sighed. “What are you going to do?”
“Take the tests and hope for the best.” Gabe didn’t know what else he could do.
“And what is the best?” Glenn hedged.
Gabe hadn’t told Glenn about his lazy swimmers, or that he wished he had his own family. He’d stayed in his turtle shell, thinking that it was his cross to bear. He also didn’t want to put one more thing on his brother. He had enough on his plate.
“The best is that I’m little man’s dad.” Saying “dad” out loud just felt right.
“Thank God, man.” His brother let out an audible sigh of relief. “If you were hoping for a different outcome, you’d be screwed. That kid is your mini-me.”
Gabe let out his own relieved laugh. “Right?!”
They stayed on the phone for another half hour talking about how much the kid looked like him and discussing what this might mean going forward. They agreed Gabe should keep this between the two of them until the test results came in. He wasn’t even going to tell his family here in Hope Falls.
He didn’t want people feeling sorry for him however it turned out. Plus, Aunt Rosalie was amazing but she did tend to get ahead of herself. He imagined she’d immediately track Adriana down and send her a “Welcome to the Family” care package that could turn out to be incredibly awkward in either scenario.
When they hung up, Gabe wasn’t ready to stop talking about it. And there was only one other person in this world that he could discuss it with.
*
Adriana paced the small apartment. Everything with Gabe couldn’t have gone better. She couldn’t have asked for him to be more understanding, cooperative, and open to the possibility that he might be a father.
There was nothing else for her to do.
She had come clean.
She was one step closer to keeping her promise to Emily.
Her mom had just called at the girls’ bedtime and Adriana had read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Harold and the Purple Crayon to them. She’d also talked to Jonah, who’d been promoted in his karate class today.
Tomorrow morning she’d collect the kits from Gabe and drive home to her beautiful family.
Monday she’d send off the tests and she’d get the results within a week.
This weekend was gift wrapped with a bow.
So why did she feel like she was coming out of her skin?
Why did she still feel like there was unfinished business?
Because you need to get laid, Em’s voice piped up in the back of her head.
She closed her eyes and saw Gabe standing in front of her, asking her if she wanted to kiss him.
No. Her eyes shot back open.
Gabe might not be Jonah’s father, but he was a man that Emily had slept with. That fact wasn’t up for debate. So she felt guilty for even thinking about wanting to break her “no-nookie streak,” as Em had so aptly named it, with him.
It was one night, ten years ago, Em chimed in. I didn’t even know his real name.
Adriana was hearing voices. She had to consider that she might legitimately be having a nervous breakdown. She made another lap around the apartment. If she kept this up, she was going to have to reimburse Sue Ann for wearing a path in the carpet.
When her phone dinged it startled her. She grabbed it and saw that Gabe was inviting her over for dinner.
Dinner.
Was it really just dinner?
Did she want it
to be just dinner?
Feeling like it was too much either way, she quickly responded, Already in my PJs.
Even better. Pajama party, he responded.
She smiled but quickly reminded herself that it was a bad idea. This wasn’t a guy that she could have one wild night of fun with and walk away from.
Gabe might be Jonah’s father.
But…he also might be the best lover she’d ever had.
She was so torn.
Blowing out a breath, she let her head fall back. A clock was ticking in her head. She had one more night before her magical coach turned back into a pumpkin. She wanted to dance with Prince Charming. And by dance she meant the horizontal mambo.
The circumstances weren’t ideal, but when would they be? Her life wasn’t at a place where she could date. But this wasn’t dating. This was one night. Two adults enjoying each other. Then tomorrow it was back to reality.
It wasn’t as if she had to worry about Gabe catching real feelings for her. He was attracted to her. That much was clear. However, he had women falling, sometimes literally at his feet. He could be with anyone. She doubted a single mom was high on his list of potential girlfriends.
They were adults.
They were attracted to each other.
It didn’t have to be more than that.
She felt as if she had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, but, plot twist, they were both saying the same thing. One was saying to go, have fun, and see what happens. The other was saying to go, have fun, and see what happens. It looked like it was unanimous.
It was settled. Her fingers flew over her screen and she pressed the send icon.
Be there in five.
She grabbed her purse and was halfway out the door when she remembered that she was actually wearing pajamas. There was no way she was going to go over there in old sweats with holes in them and her lucky University of Michigan shirt, which thankfully, was sans spaghetti sauce today.
The tick, tick, tick of time slipping away was still playing in her head as she made herself presentable. In record time, she brushed her teeth, put on deodorant, brushed out her hair, changed into jean shorts and was out the door. She kept the shirt though, because it was her lucky shirt and if everything went as planned, she might just get lucky tonight.
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