by Janice Lynn
Fear replaced guilt and she jumped to her feet, started pacing herself.
“What is that supposed to mean? Justice is my son.” If she’d been close enough to Ross she’d have poked her finger in his face to emphasize her point. “I wanted him when you very plainly told me that you no longer wanted anything to do with me or anything that was even slightly involved with me. You told me you didn’t want me in your life. Well, Justice has to do with me, is more than slightly involved with me. I carried him in my body, loved him from the moment I found out about him and more and more every day since. He is mine. You didn’t want him.”
“Have you not heard a word I’ve said? I didn’t know he existed.” He enunciated each word slowly, emphasizing his point.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you’d stuck around, you would have known.”
“I shouldn’t have had to stick around to know I’d fathered a child. You should have told me the moment you discovered you were pregnant.” Confusion lit his face. Sincere, real confusion. And hurt. Hurt that ran so deep he looked gutted. “Why didn’t you?”
The emotional damn she’d erected to hold in over five years worth of doubt and pain burst. Tears flowed down her face and she swatted at the hot moisture. She hated this. Hated having to admit to how she’d felt when she’d discovered she was pregnant, hated it that all those same fears and insecurities were swamping her present.
“Because I loved you.” She mumbled the words but couldn’t manage anything clearer.
“Speak up. I couldn’t understand you.”
After a deep breath, she repeated herself.
He laughed. An ironic laugh, not humorous at all, that grated along her raw nerves. “You loved me? How can you say that?” He gazed at her with contempt. “You stole something from me that I can never get back.”
“I...” She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, wishing she could find a glimmer of comfort. What could she say? He was right. He couldn’t ever get the time back with Justice that she’d denied him. “I didn’t think you wanted to be in his life.”
“A decision you made without consulting me,” he pointed out, his expression terse. “You were wrong.”
“I tried to tell you,” she retorted defensively, reminding herself that she had attempted to tell him at their apartment and again when she’d gone to Boston.
“Right. You’re a smart woman, Brielle. If you tried, I’d have known.” He paced across the room, his gaze bouncing around the room, taking in every photo, every knick-knack.
Unsure what she should do, Brielle sat down again, tucking her palms up under her legs, wishing she could just snuggle down into the cushions and forget any of this had happened.
“That’s what changed, wasn’t it? Those last few weeks when I couldn’t figure out what had happened to the amazing, wonderful woman I’d been sharing my life with? You kept acting so strange and I couldn’t figure out what was different. You knew you were pregnant that whole time and, rather than tell me, you...” He stopped walking, his eyes grew round, his face reddened so much she thought he might blow his top. “That’s what the sudden urge to get married was all about. Brielle, all you had to do was tell me you were pregnant and I’d have married you.”
Brielle cringed. Deep and all the way through her body she cringed. “I didn’t want you to marry me because I was pregnant.”
“But you were pregnant,” he pointed out, missing her point.
Bile burned her throat and she swallowed. “Pregnancy was not going to be the reason I got married. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”
Ross regarded her snidely. “How’d that work out for you? You are still single? Or perhaps there’s something else you need to tell me?”
His harsh question had her head jerking towards him again. “What is that supposed to mean? You know exactly how it worked out for me. You left me. And, no, I am not married.”
“I didn’t leave,” he corrected in a treacherous tone. “You drove me away.”
She gasped, jumped back up from the sofa and glared at him. He was going to blame her for his decision to leave? Hardly. She had made mistakes, lots of them, but she hadn’t wanted him to leave, far far from it. “I did no such thing.”
“Sure you did. With the sudden constant tolling of wedding bells and the bridal magazines left on every flat surface in our apartment, you wouldn’t stop going on about marriage and weddings. You stopped talking to me about anything but marriage and weddings and then you stopped talking to me altogether, Brielle. You were too busy being angry at me to talk to me. Say what you will, but you drove me away.”
She shook her head, not willing to accept the blame. “I was trying to give you a hint.”
“If you’d wanted to get married perhaps you should have been leaving baby rattles and packs of diapers around instead of bridal magazines. I might have picked up on what you were really trying to tell me.”
Acid hit the back of her throat. “I told you that I didn’t want to get married because I was pregnant.” She knew first hand what those marriages usually led to. An unhappy life together and eventual divorce. “I wanted to get married because I was loved.”
“I did love you!”
Brielle’s legs gave way and she flopped onto the sofa. She’d never heard him say those words. He never had.
She’d believed he’d loved her but never had he said them.
Until just now. In the past tense. Perhaps it would have been better to have never heard them than to feel the aching sense of loss that now swamped her. She dropped her head into her hands, feeling lost and overwhelmed.
“You never told me that,” she reminded him. “Not ever.”
“Like I told you earlier, I shouldn’t have had to say the words.” He sounded annoyed, but at least he had lowered his voice again. “Words weren’t necessary. Not between us. I showed you every day how I felt about you.”
“You did. You left me.”
“Because you drove me away.”
“Because you wanted to go to Boston. Tell me, Ross, how long before another woman was warming your bed? Because we both know it wasn’t long.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
When she didn’t answer he walked over to the sofa and sat down beside her, not touching her but close enough that she felt his body heat, felt the anger emanating from his every pore.
“Explain that comment, Brielle.”
Hadn’t she already said too much? But realistically she might as well tell him everything at this point. “I came there.”
That took the wind out of his sails. “What?”
“I bought a ticket and I flew to Boston. I came to tell you about our baby, that I missed you more than I knew how to say.” Her voice broke and she hated her weakness, hated how much he affected her, especially hated how much her next words hurt. “I was almost seven months pregnant and I came to tell you everything, but I saw you with another woman.”
She couldn’t keep the pain from her voice. She tried, but failed miserably.
“And then what? You judged me unworthy and left without telling me because I’d moved on? I dated other women, Brielle. That didn’t give you the right to leave without telling me I was going to be a father.”
His words hurt. Hurt deep. Deep down she’d wanted a movie moment, one of those where he cleared up what had really been happening that night, that the woman had been a long-lost cousin, that what she’d thought had looked like a romantic embrace hadn’t really been anything of the sort.
“I left because when I saw you with her, I knew I’d been foolish to come there, that you’d meant what you’d said. I left because you put to rest any doubt I had about us and I had to move on with my life, too, without you.”
His gaze narrowed. “I didn’t have all the facts when I said what I said. You know
that.”
“You had enough facts that you made the decision to leave.”
“I came back, Brielle. For you. I’m here right now. We’ve been working together this week and you’ve said nothing. Not a word about the fact that we have a son together.” He drove his point home. “Why haven’t you told me?”
“Over five years have passed since you left. I didn’t know why you were here.”
“You knew I didn’t randomly decide to work in your hometown. I was here for you, but why I was here doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was here and you didn’t tell me that you’d given birth to my son. My son!” His anger rolled across the room, shaking her to her very core. “You continued to deceive me.”
“I wasn’t deceiving you,” she said. “I never lied to you.”
“Same difference. You didn’t tell me the truth.”
“Fine. Now you know.”
“Now I know,” he replied, suddenly seeming dazed. “I have a son. Justice is my son.”
“We have a son,” she corrected him, not liking his possessive tone.
His blue gaze shifted to hers, bored into her, dared her to defy him in any way. “I plan to see him, to spend time with my son.”
She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or just thinking out loud, but she nodded. After how he’d reacted to learning about his connection to Justice, she’d figured that. “I have no problem with you seeing him. You can visit him here some evenings.”
He shook his head. “Not good enough. I want to get to know my son. A few hours in the evenings here and there aren’t going to allow me to do that. I want more. Lots more.”
More? Her ribcage tightened around her lungs. “What are you saying?”
He considered her question for a few seconds then made one of those quick, confident decisions that made him the excellent emergency room doctor he was. “I’m moving in.”
“Pardon?” Brielle shook her head, sure she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“You heard me, and it’s not up for debate.”
“You’re not moving in here.”
“Yes, I am.” He looked quite pleased with his plan, quite the arrogant, self-assured man, quite the man whose brain was making plans faster than she could thwart them. “If you don’t have a spare bedroom, yours will do just fine.”
“I am not having sex with you!”
His eyes were cold when they turned to her. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that any more, Brielle. Something about knowing that you kept my son from me has completely put out any flame that still burned for you.”
His words stabbed deep into her chest and twisted the blade of regret painfully back and forth.
“If I stayed in your room, you could sleep on the bed, the floor, the living-room sofa.” He patted the cushion for emphasis. “Or with Justice.” He shrugged as if he didn’t want to waste another moment even considering her. “Makes no difference because, regardless, I won’t be touching you.”
When she started to argue, he stopped her. “I’d suggest I sleep with Justice, but I figure it might traumatize the boy for a stranger to move into his room. Even if that stranger is his father that his mother failed to inform him of.”
He meant the last to make her feel guilty again but she refused to allow him to pull that stunt with her. She’d worked hard, taken good care of her son. Ross had left on his own. He had no one to blame but himself.
“You can’t just move into my house, Ross. I don’t want you living here.”
“This isn’t about what you want. This is about what is right for Justice.”
He had a point, but...
“You moving in here is right for him how?”
“He will get to know me, really know me, and I will get to know him—that is what’s right. Perhaps you missed the memo, but boys need their fathers every bit as much as they need their mothers.”
She couldn’t argue with him. Not on that. Boys did need their fathers. Didn’t Justice latch onto every second with Vann?
“There’s a spare room where Vann stays sometimes. I’ll clean it for you.”
His haughty expression said he’d never doubted that he’d get his way, that he planned to get his way on a lot of other things too. He’d taken control of this situation and felt it within his rights to correct what he saw as major wrongs.
“Are you working tomorrow?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll be by in the morning with my things.” He headed to the front door. “And, Brielle?”
She met his gaze.
“Don’t even think of running with my son,” he warned, his voice icy. “Now that I know about Justice, I’d spend every breath I have left tracking you down, and when I found you, there would be hell to pay.”
* * *
Ross paced back and forth across the living room of his leased apartment.
Nervous energy burned through him, singeing every nerve ending.
A son. He had a son. He and Brielle had a son.
An almost five-year-old son.
He’d missed nearly five years of his child’s life.
He thought back to the end of their relationship, searching for some hint that she had been pregnant. Some hint that she had been trying to tell him more was going on than met the eye.
The truth was, with her erratic behavior he’d been in a claustrophobic frame of mind and he’d probably have even missed her clues if she had set baby rattles and diapers throughout their apartment.
All he’d known had been that he’d been offered that great opportunity in Boston and he’d been torn about accepting it. Right up until he’d had enough of the bridal magazines, Brielle shutting him out, the awkwardness that had developed between them, her being mad at him more often than not, them arguing over nothing at all, and he’d called it quits.
Had he been looking for an out?
Tonight, in the heat of the moment, he’d told her he’d loved her. Words he’d never said out loud to any woman. He had cared more for Brielle than any other woman he’d ever known, but had he loved her?
He must have because the words had come from deep within him.
He had loved Brielle.
She’d deceived him in the worst way.
She’d given birth to his child and kept knowledge of that child from him.
He had an almost five-year-old son he knew nothing about.
Except that he looked like his mother and liked caped superheros.
And that the boy loved his mother.
Regardless of what he considered her wrongs, Brielle had obviously done a good job of raising their son. She was a good, loving mother, and their son adored her.
Which made things complicated.
Because Ross’s gut instinct was to pursue custody, as much custody as a judge would grant him, and if that wasn’t enough he’d take the case to a higher level, even if it cost him every dime he had. He would be in his son’s life. But the logic that saw him through medical school and beyond warned that he had to proceed cautiously or he’d alienate his son before they ever had a chance to bond. Or traumatize him in ways therapists would warn would take him a lifetime to get over.
Ross had enough medical training to know the psychological impact his coming into his son’s life could have, especially if he pulled the boy away from his mother in any shape, form, or fashion.
So he’d move in with them and Brielle would foster his relationship with Justice. Whether she wanted to or not. She owed him that much.
She owed him much more.
Once he had developed a relationship with his son, once he had all this sorted in his head about what was best for his son, then he’d decide what he was going to do about custody of his child.
Because he was going to be a part of
his son’s life.
An active, see-him-every-day part.
If Brielle didn’t like that, it was too bad.
She’d had their son for five years, now was his turn.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING, Brielle felt sick.
How in the world was she going to explain to Justice that Ross was moving into their house with them? Could she just say that Uncle Vann’s friend was going to sleep over for a few nights and Justice not question why?
Worse, how was she going to explain to him that Ross was his father?
That one Justice would question, and big time.
Rightly so.
Her son was as sharp as a tack and was going to question everything. If not immediately then very quickly as his brain started adding up the facts and coming up without answers.
She leaned forward, banged her head against the refrigerator door. Justice had woken her as usual on her days off work by climbing into bed with her and snuggling up next to her with a bright “Time to wake up!”
She’d lain there, holding him, chatting with him about whatever popped into his brain, which was a plethora of topics ranging from dinosaurs to where rain came from to where Vann’s friend was. That last one she’d dodged by starting a tickle-fest because she had no idea how to tell Justice about Ross’s role in their lives.
When they’d gotten out of bed, she’d been intent on maintaining her normal routine with her son, was currently in the kitchen to make breakfast for them both, but she wasn’t getting much done. She kept getting distracted.
Because Ross would be there at some point.
To move in with them.
Or would he?
Why did her belly quicken at the thought that perhaps, instead of carrying through his threats of the night before, he’d high-tail it, just as he had five years ago?
To be fair, he hadn’t known about their son.
As nervous as she was about the ramifications of Ross knowing about their son, she also admitted that she was glad he knew. She had never meant to keep Justice a secret from him.
She’d not told him immediately but had started hinting at marriage because in her mind she’d believed that’s where they’d been heading anyway and, call her old-fashioned, but she’d wanted a proposal, a real one, not a shotgun wedding because she was “knocked up”. In the end, she’d gotten neither and the longer she’d gone without telling him, the harder the thought of contacting him and telling him had become.