by Emma Vikes
But Andrew merely sighed, got up, and walked away.
I felt dumbfounded and guilty— never realizing the predicament that being with Kate would put my best friend in. It never occurred to me that he would be sandwiched in between us. I’d been too focused on wanting his little sister that I forgot my best friend. With a sigh, I finished my coffee and ate the pudding, mulling over the decision I’d made. It wasn’t as if I regretted being with Kate.
Being with her made me feel alive like I was engulfed in a wildfire.
Andrew was like a brother to me. Lois and Bob served as my parents and they did a better job being parents than my own. I didn’t want to lose any of them but at the same time, I didn’t want to lose Kate either. What I had with her was something I’d never had with anyone else….something I didn’t want to have with anyone else but her.
When I came back to my office, I felt surprised to see Kate waiting for me there. “Shortcake?”
She smiled and then waved at me with both hands. “I thought I’d drop by. I wanted to talk to Andrew but he wasn’t in his office.”
I wanted to tell her Andrew was there now because he just left me alone in the cafeteria. I didn’t. Instead, I pulled her close to me and wrapped my hands around her waist, hugging her tight. I liked the comfort her presence brought me. Despite how bothered I was with her brother’s words, my worries eased when I saw her.
She pulled away from me and placed both hands on my cheeks, squeezing my face, kissing my pout away. “Tough day?”
Nodding, I pulled her close again. “Seeing you is the very highlight of this shitty day.”
Kate chuckled but pulled away from me again. “I don’t think my news for you is going to be though.”
Now, I could feel her tension. I’d been too wrapped up in my annoyance with the Andrew problem to notice her anxiousness. “Is something wrong? Did something happen to Faith?”
Shaking her head, I saw the anxiety flashing in her eyes. “It’s not something about Faith per se. It’s about her father.”
Eyebrows furrowed, I stared at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
“Adam’s back.”
I expected her to say something else, anything but that. It never occurred to me that one day, Adam would be back in their lives. I felt like the two words were a sucker punch to my gut, leaving me breathless and rendering me speechless. I pursed my lips, racking my brain with the right words to react to this.
I said the first thing that came to mind, “Faith. Does she—did she…?”
Kate shook her head. “I just talked to Adam today.”
“Did he come back today?”
Kate looked a little guilty when she lowered her head down. “No. I bumped into him when we went to the supermarket on Sunday. I told him I would contact him when I wanted to talk and I did that today.”
“What does he want?”
She gave me a flat look as if the answer was as clear as day. “He wants to be back in my daughter’s life as if he didn’t turn his back on her the moment he found out about the pregnancy.”
I licked my dry lips, feeling my stomach flip and drop, my heart going along with it. “What are you going to do?”
Kate sighed and began to pace around the room. “I don’t know! I thought I’d prepared myself for this moment in the last seven years but it didn’t occur to me that it would happen now! I always thought he would come back when she was a little older. But Faith is six years old, Ryan. How am I supposed to explain the whole thing to her?”
I could feel her dilemma and although I had my anxiety about the situation. Pulling her close to me, I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head. Kate didn’t need to know I felt uneasy about the whole situation because I knew she had it worse than I did. What she needed right now was my comfort, not added stress. “It’ll be okay,” I murmured to her. I wasn’t sure if this reassurance was meant for her or me. But I kept repeating it over and over and Kate went quiet, letting me comfort her. We stayed like that for a while, wrapped in each other’s embrace and warmth.
“I have an idea.”
She looked up at me. “If you’re going to ask me to have sex here, I’m leaving you.”
Chuckling, I shook my head and swayed us around. “Let’s have dinner at The Pepper Place with Faith tonight. Then we can have coffee.”
Kate eyed me but slowly nodded her head. “I have to pick up Faith from her friend’s house anyway. You’ll pick us up?”
I nodded then kissed her lightly on the lips and watched her leave. When she closed the door, I collapsed on my swivel chair and sighed, running both hands over my face. The day was nowhere near done yet but I already, desperately, wanted it to.
Everything had been great until I saw Andrew in the cafeteria. The conversation I had with him almost made me second guess what I had with Kate now. Then, Kate dropping in with her news.
I already had to wrap my mind around the fact that Faith and Kate were a package deal and it was one I’d been more than willing to take. I knew the extent of it.
When I was younger, my father always made it clear to me to never leave baggage. I knew he meant not to impregnate a woman but he also added something else. He told me never to start seeing one that already had baggage. In his words, it was too much responsibility, too soon.
But then again, it wasn’t as if I needed his advice. The picture of the love and commitment my parents never brought to me was enough for me to steer clear from their advice.
My parents’ marriage fizzled as quickly as their romance began. As far as I knew about their love affair, it seemed to be a case of a whirlwind romance that quickly led them to the altar. They soon had me and what they thought could work out… didn’t. Dad began to cheat on Mom and while they tried to make it work, it still felt apart.
I didn’t want to fall prey into that trap of commitment masked as love. But Kate had me thinking otherwise. She made me wanting to reconsider and re-evaluate what we had. I knew telling her I liked her and that I wanted to be with her wouldn’t be enough at some point. I thought maybe by then, I would have this already figured it out.
Now Adam was back and everything was suddenly so incredibly overwhelming. I felt lost with what I was meant to do.
A part of me felt confident that Kate wouldn’t run back into his arms. He broke her heart and there was no way she would run back to the guy who’d left her in pieces. But…
Faith was another story entirely. Even though she’d shown little interest in her father, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t interested. If Faith knew her father was finally around, it would change things. It could mean she would want to spend more time with him and where did that leave me? I was the guy seeing her mom. Compared to her father, I was nothing.
And what if…
What if Faith begged Kate for them to be a family? Her, Adam, and Kate… all three of them together. Like how it was supposed to be.
What then?
I flinched when a small bit of bread was thrown in my direction, hitting me on the nose. In front of me, Faith giggled. “Being too lost in your head can be bad, Ryan, that’s what Mom tells me.”
Her words made me smile and my gaze flickered to Kate.
She looked at Faith and me with amusement as our order arrived.
I picked up Faith’s plate and cut her food in smaller pieces, so it wouldn’t be too hard for her to eat.
Kate watched as we interacted and I caught the small, soft smile on her face as she did so.
“Your mom’s lost in her pretty head too.” I pointed out, placing Faith’s plate back to her and then proceeding to cut Kate’s.
She swatted my hand away. “I can do that for myself.”
I chuckled but didn’t stop. “I know you can but it’s not a crime to let other people do stuff for you. Plus, I’m already around, Kate So you should get used to it.”
Faith was smiling at us the whole time, eating her food cheerfully. “The other students stopped teasing me befor
e school was over.”
Kate’s eyebrows shot up at that. “They were teasing you?”
The little girl nodded, smiling a little sadly. “Sometimes. They didn’t do it all the time but whenever we were supposed to do something with parents, they teased me. They said I didn’t have a dad.”
“How come you never told me?” Kate sounded hurt.
Faith merely shrugged. “It’s not like it bothered me, Mom. I had you.”
Hearing this, a sharp stab of pain went through my heart. “So what do you mean that they stopped teasing you?”
A shy smile spread across Faith’s face. “They think that you’re my dad. We look nothing alike but you acted like one during our game. I didn’t correct them. I liked the idea that you are.”
I let out a shaky breath and felt a hand on mine. It was Kate’s.
She seemed a little bit worried as she glanced at Faith. “Sweetheart, I know that you love having Ryan around but he’s not—”
“If you want me to, I can be.”
Kate looked at me, surprise evident in her eyes as Faith cheered. We didn’t discuss the topic further and talked about random things. Faith told us about how her day went and both Kate and I listened intently. I realized this was what I’d missed out on with my parents. They never asked me about my day or showed interest in what was going on with my life.
As I planned out, we had coffee after dinner.
“Coffee from a vending machine?” Faith was staring at the cup I handed her mother.
I also got her hot chocolate from the vending machine. It didn’t taste anywhere as good as one from Starbucks but she was a kid, so she didn’t mind. I led them to the boulevard and held Faith’s hand when we crossed the street while Kate clung to my other arm.
They both walked ahead of me and I watched them. Faith was skipping along the pathway, asking her mother to do the same and squealing in delight when she did. They’d made it through seven years with just the two of them. Kate raised her daughter in a way, so she wouldn’t feel the absence of one parent. Even with the kids at her school teasing her, it didn’t prompt her to force the truth out of her mother.
“Ryan!” Faith called me, her eyes bright with glee when she turned to look at me. “Look!” She pointed at the reflection of the city lights on the water.
It was stunning.
I approached her and picked her up, setting her carefully on the railing while wrapping my arms around her waist.
She squealed in delight and watched the moon’s reflection on the waters. “Mom, can I borrow your phone?”
We thought she intended to take a picture. We watched her maneuver through Kate’s phone as she opened the Note app and switched into a pen. She began to draw the view in front of us and we let her. Kate was still sipping her coffee. The three of us were quiet as Faith drew.
The silence felt satisfying though.
Kate rested her head against my shoulder, her eyes flickering from what Faith was drawing and then back to the view. She closed her eyes, letting the night breeze blow on her hair and I stared at her.
“You deserve to be happy,” it was a sudden thought I said out loud.
Kate opened her eyes and stared at me, the question clear in her gaze.
I smiled at her and kissed her nose gently. “It’s just a thought. It’s not that I think you haven’t been happy. You have this pretty girl with you.”
Kate waited for me to go on.
Faith wasn’t even listening, too focused on her drawing.
“But there’s a different kind of happiness that you and I both know you think you don’t deserve. Just know that you do, everything this world has to offer you, no one else deserves it as much as you.”
There it was again, that familiar warmth tingling from the left side of my chest, right where my heart was supposed to be. The warmth started from that point and traveled throughout the rest of my body. It felt like I’d just been set in front of a kindling furnace, meant to warm me all over.
Finally, the truth came to me, as startling as it was frightening.
I’m in love with Kate.
I always thought falling in love would feel like wanting to be burned by the sun. Like an obsession people had of flying too close to it, regardless of how it could burn you. Not once did I think it would feel like a gentle trickle of sunlight seeping through a window.
Most of all, the warmth I felt thawed my cold perspective on what love was.
22
Kate
Adam was adamant to be back in Faith’s life.
He constantly messaged me and called, asking when I would introduce them to each other. I honestly didn’t know if there was such a thing as the right time to do so. I didn’t want to overwhelm Faith. She’d just wrapped her head around the fact that Ryan was willing to act like her Dad. Now, her real father was back.
I didn’t know where either man should fit in her life. I didn’t know what I should do about the whole thing.
“You keep getting lost like that, Katie, and we will never be able to finish this video,” Vanessa commented, sighing and lowering down the camera. We were in the middle of shooting a video wherein I would put my DIY skills to the test, using my line of DIY merch. It would serve as launching on my channel and the products would be available the day after the video went up.
I stared at the macramé I was doing and groaned, setting everything aside, then rested my head on the table. “God, I can’t do this right now, Nessa.”
“You’ve been so out of it recently. What’s wrong with you?”
My whole family knew Adam was back. Before I told them, I contemplated which of them I should tell first. What I had with Ryan was too fresh and too new but I knew I had to tell him too. Although I knew, I had to tell my brother and Mila first. The last thing I wanted was for my parents to break the news to Andrew.
Andrew stared at me stonily. I knew I wasn’t exactly welcome in my brother’s office in the hospital. I’d begged my parents not to tell Andrew anything and to let me be the one to break the news to him. I didn’t want him searching for Adam because I was aware of how pissed Andrew still was with him.
“You’re kind of making me nervous, Kate,” Mila said.
I’d asked her to meet me at the hospital in Andrew’s office. I wanted to break the news to them in their house but I figured that since Ryan worked here too, I could kill two birds with one stone.
That is, if my brother doesn’t kill anyone.
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Accusation vibrated in Andrew’s voice.
I knew he still wasn’t over the news about me and Ryan. He was still pissed at us. I knew when he came in earlier and saw me with Mila waiting for him that I was the last person he expected to pay him a visit at work.
Rolling my eyes, I took a seat in front of him.
Mila hovered behind him, to be in a position to hold him in case things went south.
“No, Andrew, and will you please cut Ryan some slack?” I knew it was probably the last thing I should mention to him.
He gritted his teeth in annoyance and Mila put a hand on his shoulder to calm him.
“But I’m not here to discuss Ryan and my relationship with him.”
Still, Andrew refused to say anything.
Mila was the one who pressed, “Is there something going on, Kate?”
I chewed on my bottom lip. I remembered the time I broke the news of my pregnancy to my family and how I broke up with Adam that same day. I remembered the fury in my brother’s eyes. Taking a deep breath, I finally told them the news, “Adam’s back.”
Just like that, Andrew switched back to protective brother mode. “What did you just say? That prick’s back here?”
Mila gripped his shoulder, keeping him still.
“Did he ask to meet up with you?”
Shaking my head, I told them what happened. I bumped into him at the supermarket and how he’d wanted to see Faith.
At the mention of this, Andrew slammed his
hand down on his desk. “You’re not letting that prick see my niece, Kate.”
I let out a frustrated sigh.
Fortunately, Mila responded to his statement, “You can’t just keep him away from his own daughter, Andrew. Besides, it’s Kate’s decision.”
They were both staring at me.
I let out another exhausted sigh. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
They weren’t entirely happy with the news but at least they were aware.
Vanessa, on the other hand, had no clue that I’d bumped into the father of my child. If she knew Adam had been pestering me to meet Faith, she would go off him. She and Andrew both. And the last thing I wanted to do was bail my best friend and brother from jail.
“Adam’s back,” I finally admitted to Vanessa, my voice muffled against my arm.
Vanessa sucked in a breath and when I looked up at her, I could see her eyes darkening in anger. “Where is he?”
I sighed and sat up straighter. “I’ve already talked to him. I told him that I get to decide when he gets to meet her. It’s just, I know that letting him meet her is the right thing to do but there’s this part of me that doesn’t want to!” That lump formed in my throat again and the heaviness pushed against my heart. “But if I don’t let him meet her, I just—I feel so incredibly selfish. Is that wrong?”
Vanessa’s gaze softened and she sat down beside me, reaching for my hands. “You’re entitled to be angry at him and to be selfish, Kate. He turned his back on you at the time when you needed him the most. He can’t just waltz back into your life and expect you to welcome him with open arms.”
This was exactly what I needed to hear. I needed to hear that it didn’t make me a bad person if I didn’t let my daughter’s father meet her. I wanted someone to tell me that what I felt was okay and understandable.
But he was still Faith’s father and he deserved to meet her.
My phone buzzed on the floor and I picked it up.
Another text from Adam.
I know that you’re probably annoyed at me by now. But I do want to meet her, Kate. We can pretend that I’m just a friend of yours visiting. We don’t have to tell her right then and there if you don’t want to. I just really want to meet my daughter, Kate. It’s been six and a half years. I regret not being in her life and I don’t want to regret even more.