I lowered Mo’s arms and had to talk myself out of pulling her in even closer to my body as I watched Jonah take another step. And then one more. His eyes—Mo’s eyes—bounced between the baby who had her back to him and… me.
Resentment, I knew it was resentment, made my stomach sour all of a sudden. Just about every ounce of joy I’d felt over Mo’s presence disappeared in that instant as the big man kept coming into my office, one slow step after another after another. His feet didn’t make a sound on the stained concrete, and I wasn’t sure why I noticed that, but I did. Across from us, that tanned face was curious… but not at all guilty looking or nervous or any of the other shit that I might have expected him to experience as he approached his daughter for the first time ever.
What the hell was this fucker up to?
The question stayed in my head when he asked again, “Is she a friend?”
I loved this kid. I loved Mo so much there weren’t words for how much. Which was funny considering how terrified and nervous I’d been before having her. I had worried my ass off that we wouldn’t bond or that I would resent her for kicking my life off track… and, fortunately, all it had taken was hearing her fucking cry, feeling and seeing her in my arms, to make me instantly fall in love. Just seeing her wrinkled pink face had confirmed there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the helpless little body that had lived inside of me for nine months.
So I didn’t want to say her name. Because this fuckface didn’t know it in the first place. Because he was an asshole who was looking like he hadn’t missed his daughter’s birth and the first eight months of her life and felt no shame over it.
But I said it anyway, because this wasn’t about me. This was about her, and the fact that this shithead was here regardless of whether I wanted him to be or not. Because he was her father and there was no changing that.
“Mo.”
His eyes went back to the small back facing him, and I watched the curiosity grow across his serious face. “It’s a girl?”
If I’d had any more joy to lose, it would have been gone. How did this fucker not even know he had a daughter? Jesus Christ. I had mentioned that in my last email. He hadn’t even had the balls to read it and make sure she’d been born alive and fine? Was this a motherfucking joke?
I was going to kill him and throw his ass in a swamp. That was it. I’d lived a good life. Grandpa Gus and Peter could raise her just fine. They’d come visit me in jail. Luna would be a great mother figure for her.
And then he kept going with the stupid questions.
“Babysitting, eh? I thought you didn’t like wee ones?”
Babysitting?
Oh. Oh. He was going to get it for sure. For fucking sure.
I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop myself. If he wanted to play stupid, okay.
I looked at him, smiled sarcastically and said, “It’s not babysitting if she’s mine.”
His normal expression had been there one second… and the very next it was gone.
Jonah’s face instantly fell. The color in it doing the same, and I knew I didn’t imagine him giving the slowest blink ever. Or that it took him a moment before he literally choked, “Yours?”
The sarcasm was stronger in me than usual today. “You want me to be specific? She’s ours.”
I was an idiot. How could I have been so wrong and stupid to have wasted months of my life getting to know him? How the hell had he been able to fool me so bad? I had honestly thought he was a good guy. A really good guy. A wonderful one. Wonderful, and I didn’t throw that word around lightly.
But here he was—
He stopped breathing, his skin color going damn near almost white. I almost missed his croaked, “Pardon me?”
I blinked at him, ignoring the tone of his voice and the way he was blinking himself from across the table. I leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead in an apology for making this dipshit her dad. I’d make it up to her somehow. “She’s ours, dumbass. Who else would she be?”
I remember hearing someone say once that time had, at one point, stopped for them, but it didn’t seem like one of those things that was real. Like… your life flashing before your eyes when you think you’re close to death. Once, when I had been younger, my godfather had snatched me out of the way of a moving car, and I hadn’t thought of anything until I’d been on my back, wondering what the hell had just happened.
But as I sat there, I watched it happen. I watched Jonah suck in a breath through his almost perfect nose. I watched his head jerk…
Witnessed his mouth fall open.
And I saw that tall, solid body wobble in place for a second before his hands shot out to the back of the chair in front of him. Those long, strong fingers wrapped over the top, becoming the only thing holding him up. If I thought his face had been pale thirty seconds ago, whatever color had been left, leeched out too.
And none of it, none of it, made any sense.
What he said next had my head jerking back.
“You’re saying she’s my daughter?”
Chapter 6
“Jonah, it’s Lenny. Look, you really need to call me back. I’m not fucking with you. Seriously.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He was lucky I had Mo in my arms when that stupid question came out of his mouth, because if I’d had my hands free, I would have been sliding over the desk like I was on Dukes of Hazard to choke the shit out of him.
I was pretty sure a lawyer somewhere would have let me plead Jonah’s murder as a crime of passion. But unfortunately, I was never going to find out because of the kid sitting in my lap. Her simple existence was saving me from a life in prison and saving her dad—not that she knew he was her dad—from being murdered.
I could feel my face getting hot as I stared at him like I had never stared at anyone, not even someone I was competing against that I had beef with. His same stupid question rang in my ears all over again.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Why the fuck didn’t I tell him? Was he shitting me? Was he delusional?
Yeah, my nostrils were flaring, my face was hot, and my eyelid suddenly felt like it was on the verge of exploding off my face as I took in the man clutching at a chair for dear life. Even his mouth hung open like all the life had been sucked out of him. I was pretty sure I wasn’t imagining the fact that he looked on the verge of fainting either.
I kept my mouth shut though, at least while I had this booger on my lap. I didn’t want her getting all flustered because she could sense me getting that way. She was sensitive, and if she’d sensed me even starting to get upset, whether it was sadness or anger, she’d immediately pick up on it and get fussy.
So, with all the strength I had inside of myself, I kept my voice nice and even, tried to will my eyelid to get its shit together and my face to quit being hot and my nostrils to go back to normal. I managed to put a smile on my face, even though part of me was making stabbing motions inside, and asked, almost sounding sweet, “Why didn’t I tell you?”
God, the sarcasm was dripping off every word out of my mouth.
I bounced Mo on my thigh, earning a big toothless grin. We were pretty sure she was about to start teething soon, a little late but the pediatrician said not to worry, and from everything I’d heard, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but that wasn’t for me to focus on right then. I had bigger things to stress over. Specifically six foot five inches and two hundred and fifty pounds of fuckface to focus on.
I kept my voice light…ish even though I gave him a bitchy bright smile. “What do you consider me calling you and calling you, and calling you some more? Me not trying to talk to you?”
He didn’t answer, and whether that was because he borderline fainted or because he knew I was right, I had no fucking idea. Mostly because I didn’t give him the chance to talk because I kept going.
“You never answered, Jonah. And I left you… oh, I don’t know… a dozen messages too. I did that until you stopp
ed checking your voice mail and let it get full and stay full.”
Jonah Collins brought both hands up to palm his forehead.
Why didn’t I tell him? He was either a master liar, an asshole, or just… a jackass. I wasn’t done though. “There were the texts too. It might have gotten old deleting every email I sent you, but I did try to contact you until right after she was born. So… I did try and tell you. Don’t try and turn this around on me.”
I thought about his words for a moment, watching his palms scrub over his forehead as he forced one loud, ragged breath after another.
Was he having a panic attack? He wasn’t straight-up wheezing, but it wasn’t much off. What a fucking asshole.
I stared at him, my anger rising. “Is that what you’re trying to imply? That you either didn’t care enough to listen to my voice mails, read my texts, or my emails? That you didn’t know?” I told him on a whoosh, my stomach clenching up in pure fucking fury that almost made me want to throw up. On him.
Because it had pissed me off when I thought he didn’t care enough to reply, but the possibility he hadn’t listened or read a single fucking thing I’d sent him over nearly nine months, might have honestly been worse.
I wasn’t going to overanalyze it and figure out what won because it didn’t matter.
I didn’t look at him, and because I didn’t look at him, I didn’t see his reactions.
The only thing of his that I did catch was probably the hoarse curse word he spit out. “Fuck.”
He could say that again.
Why was he making it seem like he didn’t know? I’d left him so many voice mails, emails, and texts. So many. And he wanted me to believe he had either not gotten them or ignored every single one?
Motherfucker.
Piece of shit.
Asshole.
Of course this would happen to me. The one time I picked out a guy who I felt comfortable with, who I was unbelievably attracted to, who I liked so much, who seemed like a decent human being… who wore a condom and everything… knocked me up during the two months of almost nightly sex we’d had. Then his life had gone to hell, and he’d disappeared.
Like some of the assholes in my life did. They just left me for other people to be there for me. Or for me to be there for myself.
And that was where my sad sob story ended.
So what, I had asked myself back then, once I’d made my decision to have Mo? So what if the baby’s dad wasn’t going to be in the picture? So what if I was going to raise this kid without him?
I was thirty, not sixteen, I had told myself. I had a grandpa, a Peter, a Luna, a sister of a Luna, a Ripley, a Cooper couple. I had friends.
I had been raised by a village, and my daughter was and would be too.
Everything had been going fine too, not counting that nonstop worrying and the fuckups.
Yet none of that made me feel any less pissed off toward this asshole having the nerve to look like he’d seen a ghost. Like he had any right to be mad or upset. Like I hadn’t fucking tried telling him a hundred times he was going to be a dad.
He’d known.
He had to have known.
And on the tiniest, tiniest chance that maybe he’d been an extra prick and had ignored everything I had tried to tell him…
Well, I still couldn’t believe that was possible. He was an athlete. He’d told me about having endorsements. He was a human being with family. There was no way he’d ignored all forms of communication. It was stupid for him to even try and pull that lie on me.
It had just been me he’d ignored.
Goddamn it, I hated his guts.
“You… you…,” the mountain of a man stuttered, quietly, forcing me to take in his pale face. But at the same time, making me notice the way those huge shoulders had started to hunch too.
I stared steadily at him, leaning forward just enough to take another whiff of Mo’s clean baby smell because I needed it for fuel to get through this ridiculous-ass conversation. “You what?”
Jonah reared up to that height that had been one of the first things I’d noticed about him, and he breathed out with wide honey-colored eyes that were bouncing back and forth between Mo’s spine and myself. “I listened to the first two months of voice mails….”
Did he want a gold star or something?
I glared at him as Mo gave a wiggle warning me she was going to want to be put down soon. She was already rolling from her stomach to her back. I had a feeling it was going to be no time before she was crawling… or even fucking walking.
And really, what the hell was wrong with this asshole?
One of those big, hard hands went up to the top of his head, and I couldn’t miss how it shook in the process. Fucking faker. “I broke my phone, but I didn’t… I didn’t….” He kept going, looking worse and worse with every word out of his mouth. Paler and paler, sick….
This was what he was trying to say? That he conveniently hadn’t read any of my texts either? Just the ones at the beginning, and then he’d given up on the rest of them because he’d broken his little phone? That’s where this was going?
Yeah, fucking right. I rolled my eyes. “Okay,” I told him, sarcastic as hell. How fucking convenient was that?
His shoulders dropped, and his fingers curved over his nearly buzz-cut head.
And then he pissed me off even more when he peered over at me through his eyelashes, those honey-colored irises flashing. “You didn’t say anything about being pregnant!” he suddenly exploded quietly on an exhale, color literally flooding his face. His tanned cheeks with faint honey freckles over the bridge of his nose and across his cheekbones went pink.
I didn’t tell him I was pregnant? Was this bitch for real? Was he trying to turn this around on me? No. No, he couldn’t be.
He was shaking, I could see he was shaking, but what-the-fuck ever.
“I’m sorry, Jonah, that you chose not to call me back or read my emails. I didn’t know I was pregnant when I first started calling you and you were still listening to my messages, supposedly. I’m sorry that I was just contacting you because I was worried about you. I’m sorry that I didn’t think to plan that you would only listen to my messages for the first… what? Two months or so, you said? Or that I waited until the last few months of my pregnancy to straight-up tell you over email.” I rolled my eyes. “Dipshit.”
Fury backed up my throat as I won the hardest match of my life and somehow managed to keep my tone cheerful even though I was literally ready to go to jail for the remainder of my life if I could beat him with a bat. Fuck it. “Are you going to pretend like I didn’t blow you up for months? That you broke your phone and that’s why I never heard back from you? Do you really want to make it seem like I’m the one who forced you to ignore me for so long?” I asked him, hoping that didn’t come out as borderline hysterical as it felt in my chest and in my brain and in every goddamn part of my body.
But I wasn’t done. Oh no. “I don’t know about you, Jonah, but if someone were to leave me a ton of voice mails and text messages and notes on my apartment door, I would actually call them back. I wouldn’t be a coward—”
“I haven’t checked my email since then, Lenny,” he said roughly, his accent coming out thicker, his voice cracking at the end even as the pink across his cheeks became deeper, stretching up to the tips of his ears. “Since I broke my phone. I swear!”
Did I look like an idiot?
I smiled at him again, and I knew he could see the smart-ass there. “If you want to play this I had no idea game, go for it, but I’m not an idiot. No smart, reasonable person would suddenly just disappear from the world and kill their career. You would have been communicating with someone. You just weren’t communicating with me.”
I was not mad. I was not.
The hand that wasn’t already on his head went up to meet the other one, where he cupped the expanse of his scalp, breathing harder than I had ever, ever seen before, and that was saying something because I had seen
him right after finishing a rugby game when he’d been exhausted and riled up and sweaty. I’d been in the stands and he’d come over and kissed me on the cheek—
God, I hated his guts.
“Lenny,” he said, luckily ripping me out of that memory with the jagged quality of his voice, like it hurt him to speak. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know about… about….”
It was the strangest thing, seeing a human body imitate a balloon that had been pricked by a needle just small enough to make its ultimate death slow.
But that was what I saw.
And I wasn’t sure what to think of it other than be suspicious.
This enormous asshole who weighed more than any other person in the building slowly sank to his knees behind the chair he’d been gripping onto for dear life minutes ago. If I hadn’t been watching him so closely, I would have figured he fainted, but no, he’d just… dissolved. Both of his hands were all of a sudden gripping the back of the chair again, his body curled so that his forehead was pressed into the material in between his hands. And he was gasping for breath.
Was this a joke? Was he acting? I didn’t see what he would get out of any of this but…
He was faking it. He had to be.
Jackass.
After a moment, his face lifted and his eyes moved back to Mo like… I wasn’t sure how, honestly. Shocked, mostly. A little anger resided somewhere in there, but mostly… mostly it was surprise hidden in his eyes as he looked at the dark-haired baby on my lap…. with the same honey-colored eyes he saw in the mirror every day even though he didn’t know it.
He was faking it.
“You…,” he stuttered, those big hands still clinging to the chair with white knuckles. “The messages….”
In my lap, Mo started to fuss, and I knew I only had a few moments before I had to set her down.
“You’re serious?”
I didn’t even bother responding to that stupid-ass question.
The Best Thing Page 8