by Marni Mann
Jack had placed my beer on the counter, and I grabbed it, guzzling the cold liquid, trying to keep my throat wet so that the tightness wouldn’t completely dry it out.
“I had no intentions of falling for you during those three days we hung out. We lived on opposite sides of the country. You were several years older than me, out of school, in a professional career. We were in two different places in our lives.” I rolled the bottle around, watching the condensation leave a mark on the stone. “But, after we spent that time together, I really fell for you. I thought the feelings were mutual. So, when I left New York, I honestly thought we had a chance. At least, I wanted to try to make things work. That’s why I texted you about me coming to LA. I had no idea that it would scare you off and cause you to shut down. I just knew I wanted to see more of you, and that was the only way to make it happen.”
The words were getting harder to speak as the weeks following our trip to Manhattan became much fresher in my mind. All of that silence I had endured, all of those questions that had eaten at me, all of the unknown.
“It had taken you a while to text me back, and then I didn’t hear from you again until you cut things off.” I stopped moving the beer and looked at him. “I didn’t expect to lose you completely.”
“We’ve talked about this.”
The sound of his voice startled me. “I know. I’m not punishing you, Jack. I’m just telling you again that I tried and tried to contact you. I sent emails. I left voice mails. And there was a reason for that.” I swallowed and almost choked. “Three weeks after I saw you in New York, my period was late.”
His eyes widened, and I knew he was making the connection. “I wore a condom.”
“When I was late, the same thought ran through my head. There was no way I could be pregnant. We used protection. But, after days went by and I still hadn’t started my period, I bought some tests, and they came up positive. All ten of them. I still didn’t believe it, so I went to the doctor. Sure enough, he confirmed what I feared.” I dropped my hands into my lap and squeezed them together. “Thirty-seven weeks later, Lucy was born.”
“What are you saying to me?”
I’d thought about this moment since the day I heard her first cry.
At the time, I had been scared, young, and alone. I never felt like there was another option. But, as I looked into Jack’s eyes, the same eyes that looked at me every day from the face of my daughter, I knew I hadn’t made the right choice. I should have been stronger, more determined, more truthful, but I hadn’t been. Now, I would pay for it for the rest of my life.
A knot was lodged so far into my throat, I could almost feel it with the back of my tongue. My eyes were starting to fill. My mouth was dry, and I couldn’t swallow.
“What I’m saying is”—I tried to breathe—“Lucy is your daughter.”
23
Jack
“There’s no fucking way.”
My head was spinning. I couldn’t even think straight.
I’m Lucy’s father?
The little girl of hers that she finally told me about last night?
The one I assumed was a hell of a lot younger than seven years old?
“She’s yours, Jack.”
“Impossible.”
I didn’t know what the fuck to do, so I walked to the fridge, grabbed two more beers, and set them on the counter. Screwing off the caps, I tossed the metal in the sink and wrapped my lips around the top of one of the bottles.
I didn’t give a fuck that she was crying. I needed clarity. I needed someone to start explaining this to me before I lost my shit. “How in the hell did I get you pregnant?”
“You don’t remember what happened before you put the condom on?”
The night began to unravel in my head. When we had been at the bar, I remembered taking the condom out of my wallet and putting it in my pocket. I couldn’t recall when I’d grabbed it from there, but I knew I’d put it on because I remembered throwing it away.
“No,” I told her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t immediately put the condom on. You weren’t in me long without it, but it must have been enough.”
“I did what—”
And then it came back to me. The tightness I’d felt. The warmth. The way her wetness had spread over my skin. It had felt so fucking good, but I knew I had to wrap it up, so I gave her three pumps—four tops. Then, I’d rolled the rubber on.
I pulled out the stool and sat my ass on top of it, both hands running through my hair as I thought about what this meant. “I want a paternity test.”
“No problem,” she whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
I still couldn’t believe this.
That I had a child.
That I’d had one with Samantha.
That she was just telling me about her now.
“You’re positive she’s mine?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’d only been with one guy that year, and it happened months before you.”
How the hell am I supposed to process this?
Especially while she sat in front of me with tears running down her face like she had a reason to be sad. Like she wasn’t the fucking cause of this.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“I tried.”
“You tried?” Anger was exploding in my voice, and I didn’t stop it. I didn’t give a shit about her feelings or if I was upsetting her more. Because this wasn’t about her; this was about me. “You didn’t try hard enough.”
She sucked in a breath, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip. “I left you six voice mails. Six, Jack. I sent you emails. And all of that came after you told me you didn’t want to talk to me again.”
“I can’t believe you just fed me that line of bullshit.” I gripped the bottle, and my teeth ground together.
“I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t reach you. You wouldn’t respond. You didn’t want my brother to know anything had happened between us. Should I have told him his brand-new agent was my baby daddy? Would you have called Shawn back?”
“Fuck you. You’re unbelievable, you know that?” I squeezed the bottle so goddamn hard, I was waiting for it to break. “You had my child inside you. I don’t give a shit if I was his agent or not.” I got off the stool and backed up until my ass hit the sink. “You should have told me. All you said was you needed to talk to me in those messages, but you know damn well what you could have said that would have gotten me to return your calls—something like, I’m fucking pregnant, Jack. Call my ass back, would have worked just fine.”
“Jack, you’re right; I don’t want you to think I’m blaming you. I should have told you. I should have found a way. There’s no question about it; I fucked up. But I was a kid. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew I was pregnant by a guy who didn’t care about me, who wanted nothing to do with me, and I had to be strong for the baby. I did the best I could.”
My heart was thumping through my chest, my pulse was racing, and a scary mix of emotions was shackling my goddamn brain. Every justification she had given me made it all worse.
“Samantha, you kept my fucking child from me.”
“Jack—”
“We would have figured out a way to talk to your brother and your family, and we would have made it right. But you took that option away from me. And you took seven years of her life away from me.”
“I know.” She wiped her face with her sleeves. “I’m so sorry.”
“If I hadn’t seen you at the Super Bowl, would you have ever told me?”
It appeared like she was thinking about my question, but she was shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
My arm went back, my fingers twisted around the bottle, and I tossed it as hard as I could toward the wall. It flew through the air, beer spilling onto the floor, and when it smashed, it made the loudest noise.
The only sound that followed was Samantha’s sobs.
<
br /> I looked at her and hissed, “Get the fuck out of my house.”
“Jack, I—”
“Get the fuck out, Samantha. I don’t want to see your face.”
Her tears were streaming faster. Her lips and her chin were quivering.
I didn’t give a shit.
Every drip that came from her eyes only disgusted me more.
The sight of her did, too.
“I know it was wrong. I know I should have tried harder. I’m so sorry—”
“Sorry isn’t good enough.”
She stood and backed up to the far side of the kitchen. “How can I make this right?”
I shoved my hand in my pocket before I searched for something else to throw. “You can’t. You’ve done enough damage. Now, get the fuck out.”
I heard her rush through the living room and go into the foyer, her fingers pounding on the button for the elevator.
Before it opened, I had a question to ask, so I moved into the next room, which gave me a full view of her. “Samantha?”
She glanced over her shoulder with the tiniest bit of hope on her face.
There was no reason for that.
I wasn’t going to throw her a goddamn bone.
“Yes?”
“Are you going to let me see her, or do I have to hire an attorney?”
She put her hand over her mouth for a few seconds, and then she gradually moved it down. “Just give me a chance to tell her first. Once she knows, I promise I won’t keep her from you.”
Now, she wouldn’t.
How fucking nice of her.
“Get out!” I roared again and turned around, heading straight for the bar that was on the other side of the living room.
I lifted a bottle of scotch, twisted off the cap, and held it to my lips. The liquor burned my throat, but it was the only thing that was going to make me feel better tonight.
24
Jack
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Max said. He finished off the scotch I’d poured for him and then added, “I can’t even wrap my head around this shit.”
I felt the same way, which was why I’d called the guys and Scarlett shortly after Samantha left and asked them to come over. Since they’d arrived, we’d been sitting in the living room where they ate the pizza I’d ordered, and I filled them in on everything that had gone down.
Getting it all out seemed to help, and having them here made me calm again.
Exploding like I had earlier would only make this situation worse.
“How did I not know any of this was going on?” Max asked.
He looked at Brett and Scarlett, and she responded with, “I just found out, too. You weren’t the only one.”
“There wasn’t anything to tell,” I replied. “Samantha and I reconnected at the Super Bowl. Once I had a better idea of where things were going, I would have told you.”
“I know you’re looking for advice,” Max said. “But, man, this is a tricky one. I think it’s important you get a paternity test. At least then, you’ll know for sure.”
“I asked her for one, but I already know what it’s going to say. Samantha wouldn’t have told me unless she was positive.”
“What’s your opinion, Scarlett?” Max asked.
She took her heels off and put her bare feet on the ottoman, running her fingers through the ends of her hair. “As a woman, it’s your responsibility to tell the father of your child regardless of your relationship with him.” She glanced at me. “But I can’t pretend to know what she went through or what that would have felt like or how scary that would have been at nineteen.” She sighed. “That’s what I keep going back to—that she was only nineteen. You’re a baby at that age, and you don’t know a decision that massive will affect the rest of your life.”
Silence passed between the four of us.
We’d been through so much together—deaths in our families, career-ending decisions, financial turmoil. A kid was one we hadn’t dealt with yet. I had known it would come one day, especially with Brett and James getting hitched. I just hadn’t thought I’d be the first to have one.
A child.
Fuck, it still hasn’t set in.
“I can’t believe she never reached out to tell you,” Max said.
That was the part of the story I’d left out.
“But she did,” I told them. “She texted several times. She left me voice mails. She even sent a few emails.”
“And you never got back to her?” Max asked.
I shrugged. “No.”
“That’s fucked up of you,” Scarlett said.
I nodded. “I know.”
Brett walked to the bar, refilled his glass, and came back. He didn’t sit. He stood in front of the large sectional and stared at me. “Samantha came to my condo today to drop off some sketches. She had Lucy with her.”
My feet dropped off the cushion in front of me and fell to the floor, my body sitting up straight. “You met her?”
I didn’t even know what she looked like.
What she sounded like.
I hated that he had seen her before me.
“The second I saw her, I knew. Of course, it helped that I was expecting a toddler, and she was far from that,” Brett said, looking like he was going to turn a little soft on me. “Jack, she’s beautiful. She’s got these huge blue eyes that are identical to yours and the same shape of your face. She’s got her mother’s lips but your smile.”
I exhaled. Loudly.
And I tried not to let his description hit me too much.
“Did you say anything to Samantha about this?”
“Hell yeah, I did. Once I called her out, she admitted it and said she was going to tell you tonight. I followed that up with an ultimatum and said if she didn’t tell you by tomorrow morning, I would.”
Any person in this room would have done the same.
“What time did this happen?”
He seemed to think about my question and finally answered, “Around three this afternoon.”
Samantha had texted me about dinner long before that, which told me running into Brett had sent her over the edge. That was the change I’d felt in her when she showed up at my place.
“She’s a cool kid, Jack,” Brett continued. “Smart and sassy, like James would say. She even shook my hand. I was only with her for a few minutes, but I can tell Samantha raised her right.”
I couldn’t believe he was talking about my kid.
That she had my eyes.
That she lived in Miami.
“Fuck, this is complicated,” I said.
Brett sat on the end of the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. “I’m going to agree with Scarlett on this one. Samantha was young; she didn’t know what the hell she was doing. It sounds like she even lied to her family about who the father was. When you blew her off, she could have gone to her brother to track you down, outing you in the process. Instead, she chose to keep what you two had done a secret, and she had a baby entirely on her own. That took some balls, Jack.”
“Yeah, it did,” Max said.
I pushed myself forward on the couch and gripped the sides of the cushion with both hands. “She didn’t have to do it on her own. I would have been there for her, had she told me.”
“Jack, we know that about you, but not everyone responds the way you do,” Scarlett said. “Samantha obviously didn’t feel the same way. I think you might need to cut her a little slack because, to me, it sounds like she tried to tell you.”
This was coming from a woman and my best friend and someone who always had my back.
As pissed as I was at Samantha, I needed to hear this.
And I needed to consider how she felt.
“You were pretty rough on her, brother,” Brett said. “I could tell she was panicky at my place, so I know it couldn’t have been easy for her to come here and confess.”
“Look, she fucked up; we all know that,” Max said. “But you fucked up, too. You can’t just point your finge
r at her.”
I had been rough on her.
I’d thrown a goddamn bottle at the wall.
I’d kicked her out of my house.
I’d told her I would get a lawyer if she didn’t let me see Lucy.
“You know, if we’re being technical, this whole thing is your fault,” Brett said.
Max and Scarlett looked at me, waiting for me to react.
But I didn’t. I let Brett finish his thought.
“What fucking idiot sticks his cock inside a chick when he doesn’t know if she’s on birth control?” He took a drink. “You know better than that. We all do.”
I did know better, even at that age.
Fuck, especially at that age.
I just hadn’t thought those few pumps would do anything.
Man, was I wrong.
“You need to think about everything that happened tonight,” Scarlett said, hugging her arms around her stomach. “Break it all down—the things you said to her, what you want, how you see this moving forward. Then, you need to address it with her. Just don’t make any irrational decisions when you’ve been drinking.”
“In other words, don’t fucking call her tonight,” Max said. “And don’t throw any more glass.”
“I won’t.” I shook my head. “But I was so fucking angry, and I’m still so fucking angry. I lost seven years of her life.”
Max pulled his tie, loosening the knot from his neck. “I get it, but she’s not just some random chick or a baby mama you want nothing to do with. You wanted to be with her before you found out she’d carried your child. Now that you know, that’s got to change things a little.”
I didn’t know what it did.
My mind wasn’t ready to go there yet.
Scarlett’s hand landed on my arm, and she said, “Do me a favor; don’t come into the office tomorrow. With Brett and Max flying out, that gives me a whole day without the three of you, so I’ll actually be able to get some work done.”