by Becky Wade
“We did.” He pulled the bracelet from his pocket and extended it to her. “But you dropped this and left it behind. I wanted to return it to you.”
The little girl’s eyebrows rose.
Celia took the bracelet from him and snapped it onto her wrist. “Thank you.” She gave him the tightest smile he’d ever seen. “That was nice of you. Well. ’Bye.”
The child tapped on Celia’s arm.
Celia gave her a “not now” look.
The girl tugged Celia downward, then cupped a hand around Celia’s ear. “It’s just like in Cinderella,” she whispered loudly. “’Member how Cinderella left the glass sipper at the ball and Prince Charming had to find her to give it back? He found you to give your bracelet back.”
Celia might hate his guts, but the kid was comparing him to a prince. “I don’t think I’ve met you yet.” He smiled at the girl. “I’m Ty. What’s your name?”
“Addie Porter.”
A white void opened inside his head. A car drove by, its wheels creating short fans of water. The trees rustled with wind. He took in the sight of her, this girl in bright clothes and glasses. Cute and small. Straight, dark blond hair. Green eyes. He’d no idea how old she was or why she called herself by his last name. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
“Addie Porter,” she answered. “This is my mom.”
My God, Ty thought.
He glanced at Celia in time to see her eyelids sink closed with despair. A pulse went through him then, painful and ice-cold, as if he’d touched a live electrical wire. This girl, this Addie, could not be his child. Surely.
Celia was still married to him. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t had a child with someone else. He knew nothing about her life in the years since he’d seen her.
Through the roaring vacuum of his thoughts, he noticed Addie watching him, waiting for him to say something normal. “Nice to meet you, Addie.”
“You too.” She looked back and forth between the two adults, finally settling on Celia. “Mom?”
“It’s all right, Addie. I know Ty from years ago.”
“He brought you your bracelet,” she insisted, still trying to talk Celia into liking him.
“I know he did.” Celia tugged her cell phone from her back pocket and quickly typed a text with an unsteady hand. “Addie, I’m going to need to talk to Ty for a little bit. And I just remembered that Uncle Danny wanted to take you on another bike ride today. Doesn’t that sound like fun?” Fake excitement filled her voice.
Addie’s expression said she wasn’t buying it.
Ty walked alongside them as they headed back to their apartment. Two adults with a tornado of tension between them and one kid. Ty had never once imagined that Celia had had a child. Especially one that reminded him a little of his sister, Dru, at that age.
The icy pulse slashed through him again.
Celia started asking Addie pretend-happy questions about her upcoming bike ride with her uncle. Ty remained silent, his gut churning, his temper rising. They took a path around one corner of the complex to an apartment that faced trees and tenant parking spaces.
Celia let them into an undersized living room. Hallway on one side. Kitchen and kitchen table on the other. At the back, sliding doors emptied into a miniature backyard full of color and plants.
Celia, her brows drawn together, watched Addie. Addie, her brows drawn together, watched him. “This is our house,” Addie said.
“It’s nice.” In fact, there were so many colors and patterns going on that it looked like a circus. His mom—yikes, he couldn’t bear to think about his mom right now—had raised him in a house packed full of stuff. Maybe that’s why he’d gone the opposite way. He liked his rooms plain so he could think.
“Would you like to see my artwork?”
“Sure.”
Addie led him to the kitchen and pointed at the fridge. “I did this one at my school—well, my preschool. I’m going to start kindergarten soon. It’s a princess, see? She’s wearing a tiara and a purple ball dress. . . .”
She continued. Not with chatter, but with a kind of shy seriousness. Ty found it hard to hear her, to focus. The refrigerator door was covered with all kinds of things. Pictures of Addie as a baby, as a toddler. Pictures of Celia and Addie together. Invitations. Certificates.
Over Addie’s voice, he registered the front door opening and closing. Murmured talking. A few moments later, Celia brought over a man who looked like Crocodile Dundee.
“Ty, this is my uncle, Danny Sullivan.”
Ty extended his hand and they shook. Danny, who didn’t appear to be the type to worry about anything, had worry in his eyes. “How are you Addie Potaddie?”
Addie gave him a fist bump. “I’m cool. Are we leaving now?”
“Sure are.” Danny rubbed his hands together as if he couldn’t wait for the bike ride that had been shoved at him. “You ready?”
Danny and Celia guided Addie to the door while talking about helmets, where the two were headed, and when they’d be back.
At the last second, Addie paused on the threshold to look back at Ty. “’Bye.”
“’Bye.”
Then she and Danny were gone.
Celia closed the door, shutting the two of them into a house gone deadly still and quiet.
“Whose child is that?” Ty asked, his emotions and confusion barely controlled.
Celia sank onto the nearest chair. She looked at the rug and covered the lower half of her face with her hands. Her chest rose and fell unevenly.
Ty gave her all the time he could spare. “Whose child is that, Celia?”
Slowly, as if everything inside of her ached, she pushed herself to standing. She looked him right in the eyes. “Mine.”
“Who is her father?”
She didn’t speak, but the trace of guilt in her expression gave him her answer.
His stomach pitched. “I’m not that child’s father, am I? If I were, you’d have told me about her a long time ago. Right? You wouldn’t have let me live my life without knowing something so important.”
Her sigh broke.
He pushed his hands through his hair. Dropped his arms. “Am I Addie’s father?”
“Yes.”
She’d replied to him with a single word, but that one word changed everything. Who he’d thought he was. His life. His future. “We were only together one night.”
“Apparently one night was all it took.”
How was that possible? He had buddies who’d been trying for years to have a baby with their wives. “I’m supposed to believe that?”
“No. You don’t have to believe it.”
“What—what proof do you have that she’s mine?”
“None.”
“When was she born?”
“Eight and a half months after our wedding night and a couple weeks before her due date.”
He thought back over all the years, one on top of another, that had passed since then. All those pictures on the fridge. A baby with hair that stood straight up. A little girl riding a trike. A bigger girl in a princess costume. He wanted to yell. “If this is true . . . if she’s mine, then why didn’t you tell me about her?”
“Because I didn’t want you to be a part of our lives.”
“Didn’t you think I had a right to know?” His voice climbed in volume.
“No.”
“I could have helped you,” he accused. “Have you followed my career at all?”
“No.”
Shortly after Vegas he’d joined the Bull Riders Professional Circuit. He’d been good to the BRPC, and the BRPC had been good to him. “If you had followed it, you’d have known that I could have provided more for her than this.” He gestured to the apartment.
Celia bristled. “More isn’t necessarily better.”
“What about growing up without a father? Do you view that as better?”
“Until recently, Addie was too young to realize that other kids had fathers. She’s never lacked f
or anything.”
He tilted his head. Fury pushed against him from the inside.
“You had your freedom, Ty, and I had Addie. It seemed fair to me.”
“You talked with me on the phone a couple days ago. You sat down at a table across from me yesterday. Both times you didn’t say anything about Addie. You were going to let me leave without ever telling me.”
She didn’t deny it.
“I hurt you,” he said, “and so you kept my daughter from me.”
“Yes, I did.” She glared at him. “I did. I didn’t trust you to be good to her.” The air snapped, anger a tangible thing in the room with them. “Go ahead and leave, Ty. You can keep on traveling and riding bulls and whatever else it is that you do. Addie doesn’t know anything about you yet. We’ll divorce, and you’ll marry Tawny and have a family of your own. I promise you that I’ll never contact you or ask you for anything.”
Muscles knotted down his neck. “If you think I’d ever walk away from a child of mine, then you don’t know me at all.”
“I’m offering you an easy way out.”
“And I’m not taking it,” he said flatly. “I want a paternity test.”
She drew back, her face defensive.
“If I have to bring in a whole firm of attorneys to make it happen, I will. Am I going to need to do that?”
“No.”
He could tell that the threat of lawyers had scared her. “If the paternity test proves that I’m her father, I’ll let you tell her. But she is going to be told, and she’s going to be told right away.”
Celia’s hand lifted to her neck, her fingertips bending into the skin.
“Then we’ll work out custody.” He strode through the front door, banging it behind him.
Ty didn’t know what to do with himself.
He ended up returning to his hotel. He pulled on work-out clothes and headed for the treadmill in his hotel’s gym.
He ran. His head filled with one enraged thought after another. His chest burned with emptiness. He kept upping the speed. Still didn’t help. His feet pounded the belt. Sweat rained off him. He had no way of comprehending the turn his life had taken today. He had no skills for dealing with the discovery of a daughter he didn’t know.
After an hour, he showered. Still feeling murderous, he climbed into his truck and started driving. He took aimless turns until he stumbled onto a highway. When the highway brought him to the Pacific coast, he pointed the truck north.
Once, he stopped for gas, but he couldn’t stomach lunch. Or dinner, either, as the hours crept by.
His brother Bo had gotten married almost two years ago, but he and his wife, Meg, hadn’t started a family yet. At the rate his brother Jake was going, he’d never marry. The idea of his sister, Dru, as anyone’s wife or mother was laughable. Like him and his brothers, Dru had joined the Marines. She’d been shipped overseas, and there was no telling the amount of damage she was bringing down on America’s enemies.
All of that made Addie the Porter family’s first grandchild. Ty knew his mom and dad well enough to know they’d have sold everything they had to love and care for a granddaughter. They’d have wanted to rock her when she was a baby, spoil her, and show pictures of her to all their friends. That’s what grandparents did, right? Instead, they’d gotten this handed to them, same as he had.
Worse, he was largely to blame.
The sky darkened. A storm rolled over the ocean, each lightning flash brightened the gray water and the white tips of the waves.
For five and a half years, he’d known himself to be the guilty party in his short relationship with Celia. But now it turned out that she’d done something to him, too. She’d hidden his child from him.
He remembered how hoarse her voice had sounded that morning in Las Vegas when she’d said “I’ll never forgive you for this.” The fact that she hadn’t told him about Addie proved that she’d meant every word.
He understood now why she’d taken the Porter surname. She’d come back from Vegas pregnant. She’d known her child would one day grow old enough to understand about illegitimacy, and she’d wanted that child to know she’d been conceived within marriage.
It suddenly made sense to him, too, why Celia worked for the university’s cafeteria. She hadn’t been able to risk starting her own bakery, because she’d had a child to take care of. She’d needed a steady paycheck and health insurance.
The miles passed beneath his truck’s tires, silence thick inside the cab. Why hadn’t he searched for Celia years ago? Why had she let her bitterness toward him steal Addie’s chance at having a father? Why hadn’t either one of them taken care of birth control in Vegas? Why hadn’t he ended the relationship more gently?
He pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the highway. The dark and lonely view spread outward for miles without a single sign of human life. Full of anger, his spirit swept empty by wind, he began to pray. It was not a pretty prayer. Rugged, unfinished sentences dead-ended into half-formed thoughts. He tried to ask God for help, to make something good out of a lousy situation, to calm him down, to forgive him and Celia.
Ty had grown up going to church. Even though he hadn’t attended a single worship service since the night he’d married Celia, he still believed in God. Still prayed.
This particular prayer, though? He sensed that it did nothing. It made him feel no better.
Frowning, he U-turned the truck and headed back toward Corvallis.
Whenever he’d imagined the kids he might one day have, he’d imagined boys. He and his brothers had all been tall, strong kids, and that’s the kind of kid he’d expected to have.
Addie was nothing like the picture in his mind. She was small and delicate, colorful. She didn’t look like him. She looked a little like his sister, yes. But more than anyone, she looked like Celia.
At Addie’s age, he’d been daring, bent on finding trouble, and willing to do any dumb thing to make people laugh. Addie had struck him as the opposite: polite, calm, serious.
It could be that she wasn’t his. Before going hog-wild inside his head, he should have waited for the paternity test to come back.
Except, no. He rubbed his thumb against the steering wheel. Addie might not look like him or act like him, but his gut told him what the paternity test would reveal. His gut told him he’d had a good reason for spending the whole day on the rough side of crazy.
She needed to tell Addie.
Celia stood in the shower late that night, her head bowed, hot water pouring over her. She felt like she’d been crying for hours—that spent, fragile, exhausted feeling. But she hadn’t been crying. What had happened was too terrible for tears.
After Ty had left, Celia had sat on her sofa in her familiar spot, the spot where she watched TV at night after Addie went to bed. She’d clenched a pillow to her abdomen, bent her legs up, and stayed that way, frozen with dread, shaking.
When anxiety would no longer let her sit, she’d bolted into the kitchen and made brownies from scratch. Full sugar. Full butter. Baking had always been her therapy. In some mysterious way, the creative activity of her hands usually helped Celia order her thoughts. As soon as the brownies had come out of the oven, she’d told herself she’d just eat one of the crimped-looking edge pieces that nobody else would want. She’d ended up eating five of them.
After Addie had returned home, she and Uncle Danny had entertained her at a frantic pace, overcompensating and helpless to stop themselves. Let’s go to a movie! Uncle Danny had treated them. Feed the ducks! Walk around the pond! Go eat pizza followed by ice cream! Uncle Danny again treated them. The stress and the food had made Celia’s chocolate-stuffed stomach roil.
Three times during the afternoon and evening, Addie had asked about Ty, who’d clearly dazzled her with his handsomeness and similarities to Prince Charming. Celia had employed her usual evasive tactics. She’d finally gotten Addie to bed forty-five minutes later than usual. Then she’d spent thirty minutes explaining to Uncle Danny about Ty
and their past.
She turned in the shower, feeling the water pressure shift to her other side. Her arms crossed and wrapped around herself.
That stupid bracelet! Why had she even worn it to lunch? She couldn’t believe she’d been so careless, dropping it without noticing. She didn’t understand why Ty had bothered to return it or how he’d found her address.
The bracelet was a little thing she’d purchased years ago, one of many inexpensive bracelets in her jewelry drawer, worth nothing. And yet dropping it and leaving it behind—that small mistake—had been the key that had unlocked a predicament that might cost her everything: Addie, her baby, her greatest love.
If that happened, what would her life be worth?
It’s not right, a voice inside seemed to whisper, for you to base your identity on your child. It wasn’t the first time this idea had occurred to her. Building her life on the foundation of her daughter might not, in the end, be the healthiest thing for Addie or for herself. And yet, was it really so bad? To love a child so much?
She groaned, lifting her face and using her hands to slick away water and wet hair. She should have told Ty about Addie from the beginning. If she’d been braver, better, and more noble, he could have been a part of Addie’s life from the start.
Because she’d excluded him, he’d thrown the threat of lawyers and a custody battle at her—two things that sent fear down to the bottom of her soul.
She needed to tell Addie. In fact, she needed to tell Addie tomorrow that Ty was her father. That way, Addie would have a few days to get used to the idea before she’d need to face Ty again.
Nothing within Celia wanted to share Addie. Nothing. And yet she needed to tell her little girl, because she knew with one hundred percent certainty what the paternity test would prove.
Chapter Six
Wasn’t it nice of that man to bring you your bracelet?” Addie asked the next morning.
Celia’s mood sank. She’d vowed to herself that she’d tell Addie about Ty the very next time Addie asked about him. Instead, ten reasons why she should procrastinate sprang to Celia’s mind. First and foremost, she didn’t have much time. Riding the bus to day care and then to her job took ages. She’d planned to arrive at the bus stop on the road in fifteen minutes, and the walk there would take ten.