Accidentally All Of Me

by Parker, Ali

  I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I couldn’t stop thinking about any of it, not if I was being honest with myself. How had his life changed, just like that? I had seen the shock on his face, and it made my heart ache. His life had been full of so much pain and change already, more than anyone should have to deal with at such great levels, and now, he had this to deal with on top of all of it. It wasn’t right. I wished I could have taken some of that load from him, but I knew that it wasn’t how it worked. He had to decide how to handle this. Nobody else could do it for him.

  I spent the rest of the day with one ear cocked toward my phone in case he called me. I could see now how it must have seemed to him when I had basically run out of that house when he had told me what was happening. But I could still make up for it, right? I just needed some time, and now I was back in the game, ready and willing to make things work.

  And I wanted to tell him that I loved him. I wanted to tell him that this didn’t change a thing. I wanted to tell him that I was in this for the long haul and that I wasn’t going to pull out now, not when things had been going so well between us. Kids or not, I was there because I loved him, first and foremost. I needed to see the look on his face when I told him that, to know that he understood that I really meant it. This wasn’t lip service. This was love.

  But the whole day passed by, and I didn’t hear a word from him. Not a text, not a call, not anything.

  I found myself starting to worry that I had dropped the ball and that I wouldn’t be able to pick it up again.

  Chapter 49

  Harry

  I checked the front door and the back door and then walked around to the long driveway that ran down the space in front of George’s house. He really knew how to deck a place out. It looked great here, perfectly preserved, and I would have been lying if I said there wasn’t some part of me that craved something similar in my own life.

  But I wasn’t here to check out his property. I was here to make sure that nobody got so much as close to George again, at least not unless I knew something about it first.

  “I really don’t think we’re in any danger,” George called to me from inside the house, but I shot a look over at him and gestured for him to sit down again. He did as he was told. I knew that this had been a lot of stress on him, and I didn’t like the thought of being the one who had caused it.

  “And I really don’t think that you’re going to need the guard,” Yara added, appearing next to me, slightly winded from the swift journey she had made around the property to check out all the entrances.

  I frowned and said nothing.

  “He’s a little boy,” she reminded me, an edge of teasing to her voice to try and lighten the mood. I shot her a look, and she held her hands up. “Or you know, whatever you think is right.”

  She headed off to take care of the calls that would get a guard installed in this place.

  I knew that it was an overreaction, but I felt the urge to lock everything down and make sure that my family didn’t suffer any more interference. Maybe I was just trying to prove to myself that I had nothing to worry about, that there was no good reason to keep me out of the lives of the people I wanted to be close to. Like my son.

  I had a meeting with Allison later that day, and I was already freaking all the way the fuck out about it. How could I not be? This would be confirmation, one way or another, on whether this kid was going to be part of my life or not.

  We were doing a DNA test, and I was trying to distract myself from my dislike of potentially having blood taken—not to mention how panicked I was about how all of this was going to dump right into my lap and in the middle of my life. Yara and I had driven out here to George to make sure that he was doing all right and wasn’t too shaken up by the revelation.

  He was fine. In fact, he seemed to be doing better than me. He had been trying to crack jokes about what I had gotten myself involved with, and I would have been happy to laugh along with them if it didn’t feel like my throat was closing up every time I thought of what was to come.

  By the time that we had to head down to the lawyer’s office, I felt like my entire body was buzzing with a panicked energy. Yara was there with me, and I would be meeting Michael too, and I knew that this was going to go easily and smoothly and that I had nothing to worry about.

  Apart from, of course, if that DNA test came back and said that I was the father of that child.

  We got there, and I waited outside the office until it was time for me to head inside. I was fidgeting on the spot, and Yara put her hand on my shoulder and raised her eyebrows at me.

  “It’s going to be fine,” she promised me. “Don’t stress about it. We’re going to get through this, all right?”

  The door opened, and everything in my life changed in a damn instant.

  I saw the woman first, Allison, the woman who had to be his mother. She was tall, willowy, with long dark hair and pale skin. I wished I could say that I knew who she was, but I didn’t recognize her at all.

  I tried to console myself by reminding myself that it had been a few years since I had last seen her and that she might have changed a lot in that time, but in truth, I knew it was probably because I had forgotten what she looked like as soon as she had walked out of my apartment.

  But then, there was the boy. He was in her arms, small and so delicate it looked like I could break him just by looking at him. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and the same nose as me. He even looked a little like Winnie, from what I could remember from the last time I had looked at her baby pictures.

  His eyes were stuck on me, and I couldn’t help but smile as I saw him. Even as I stood there, I could feel my heart expanding, like it was making room to fit him in amongst everything and everyone else that held a place in there already.

  There was a nurse standing there in the office, too, and she gestured for me to take a seat at the table. The room was crowded with people, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that boy. That boy. He had to be my son. There was no doubt in my mind about it.

  “All right, so I just want to collect a swab from your cheek,” the nurse announced.

  I sat down and opened my mouth. Behind me, Yara cracked a joke.

  “At least buy him some dinner first,” she remarked, and there was a titter of amusement around the room. Even Allison smiled.

  She was trying to avoid looking at me, and I couldn’t say that I blamed her. I was likely the last person she wanted to see right now. If she had avoided me for so long, there had to be a good reason for that. It was obvious that she hadn’t wanted me in her life, and now here I was, right there in front of her, in front of that boy she was clutching to her like she never wanted to let him go.

  Before I had gotten here, Michael had mentioned that her willingness to submit to a DNA test meant that she was actually pretty likely to be right about her kid’s parentage. I would do it, no matter what, and I wasn’t going to make a fuss. I needed answers, and she needed something out of me, too.

  They had mentioned in passing that this boy was sick. Looking at him now, it was hard to see where he was storing that illness, but kids were resilient little things. It made my chest hurt to think of him suffering in any way, even though I had only just laid eyes on him for the first time.

  “The tests will be back in a few days,” the nurse said, and she packed up her stuff and headed for the door.

  Just like that, it was done, and I was sitting there in the middle of this room with all eyes on me as everyone tried to work out what to say next.

  “Allison, why don’t you take a seat?” Winston suggested.

  She sank down into one of the chairs nearby and finally looked at me. She seemed exhausted, as though she had been peeled clean of all her energy by whatever it was that had happened to bring us all together.

  “Could we get a moment?” she asked.

  I glanced at Michael and Yara to let them know that I would more than capable of handling this by myself. Everyone else filed out of the
room and left Allison, the boy, and me all alone together.

  “This is Nico,” she said to me after a long pause. “He’s... well, I know you won’t believe me until you get the results back, but he’s your son.”

  “I believe you,” I murmured, and I reached out to touch his cheek.

  She smiled as soon as she saw us connect. I wondered how many times she had imagined this or if she had hoped that she was going to be able to make it through the rest of her life without introducing us.

  “Thank you for coming here,” she blurted out.

  I looked up at her to see a tear in her eye. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she told me. “I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to guilt you. It’s just...”

  “Tell me,” I asked her gently.

  She nodded and dabbed away the tear that had begun to leak down her cheek. And with that, she let me in on everything that I had been missing out on.

  Nico had gotten ill—a skin condition that could make it hard for him to function sometimes. He would be in such pain, she said, that it would make her cry. Apparently, it was something to do with his immunity, a common illness that struck a lot of kids around his age.

  It wasn’t terribly hard to treat, and she had been told that she’d had nothing to worry about, but then she had gone into the hospital to get herself tested to make sure she could donate blood to him, should the time come. And she found out that she had a cancerous lump in her breast.

  “It’s still early,” she explained quickly. “And they told me that my chances of survival are high. But still, I knew I would never be able to forgive myself if I left Nico without...”

  She had to catch her breath, and she shook her head. My heart was heavy for her. I couldn’t even imagine how brutal it must have been to find out that she was ill herself, not when she was working so hard just to take care of a little one.

  “I need help,” she told me bluntly. “And I want you to know that I wouldn’t have come to you if there was any other way. I never intended for it to be like this. Really, I didn’t. But with his medical bills on top of mine, I can’t keep up with them. I need someone who can help me afford them if he’s going to keep getting the treatment that he needs right now.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I promised her, and I meant it. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done in that moment, not now that I had seen him. Even if he wasn’t mine, he didn’t deserve to suffer just because his mother was ill, too.

  She smiled at me, though it was tinged with a deep sadness.

  I felt that same sadness rise up in me. I hadn’t been a part of this boy’s life for so long. And she was making it pretty clear that I wouldn’t have been, not if this hadn’t happened. I had missed out on so much of his life already, and I could have missed out on so much more of it had it not been for the misfortune that had struck the two of them at the same time.

  That was even more painful to me. The thought of all that loss, all that lack, all of it coming to nothing. Of going through my life without ever being close to him.

  “I’ll do anything,” I told her, trying to pull myself out of my head. Yes, this might be hard, but it was harder by far for her, the woman who had to deal with all of this, who had been dealing with it alone for so long.

  And I would do well to remember it.

  Chapter 50

  Raina

  “Hey, Harry.”

  Is that what I sounded like? My voice echoed around my head, and I tried to keep myself from slamming the phone down and forgetting this whole thing. I didn’t want to have to do this, but I didn’t see what choice I had. I was worried about him, and I needed to hear his voice again before I lost my damn mind. I took a deep breath and forced myself to keep talking.

  “Hey, Harry,” I repeated. “I just wanted to check that you got my message the other day. I miss you. I wanted you to know that I’m thinking about you, and I can’t wait to see you again.”

  I paused for a moment. Was that enough? It was going to have to be. Before I could talk myself into more of a corner, I hung up the phone and slumped against the wall outside the clinic. It was done. I had done it. Now I just had to find some way to get on with the rest of my day without my head exploding.

  I knew that I was overreacting. It had just been a few days since I had heard from him last, and he had to be crazy busy with everything that was going on. I just wanted to see him. That was all. I just wanted to hold his hand and tell him that I wasn’t going anywhere, not in a million years.

  Reed had been the one to tell me to give him a call. I had filled him in on everything that had happened, and he had been so supportive. Like Rita, he thought it was important for me to make it clear that I was totally and utterly here for him, no matter what, which was just what I planned to do. If I could actually find a chance to talk to him, of course.

  I focused on putting the smile back on my face and headed back into the clinic again. Rita had been sweet enough to cover for me as much as she could, but I knew I couldn’t just sit around feeling sorry for myself forever. I tucked my phone into the front of my scrubs and headed in to do my first check-up of the day, a fussy Pomeranian who tried to nip at me when I got too close. At least it was a good distraction.

  When I checked my phone on my break and saw that he had texted back to me, I could have cried with relief. I had been so scared that he was just straight up cutting me out of his life now that he had so much more to think about. I knew this must have been intense for him, but I had to hope against hope that it wasn’t too intense that he would forget all about me—forget all about what we had shared.

  It was just a quick message, an apology for taking so long to get back to me, along with the suggestion of meeting tonight for dinner and a chance to talk things over. I replied at once, agreeing with the proposal, and I went back to work with a smile on my face.

  “Well, something’s perked you right up!” Rita remarked when she saw me again.

  I held up my phone to her and beamed. “It looks like I’m going to see Harry tonight,” I explained.

  She punched the air, always invested in what mattered to me. Leaning over the counter, she gave me a hug. “It’s going to go great,” she promised me. “Just remember to put yourself in his shoes, yeah? He’s more scared of you than you are of him.”

  “I thought that was spiders,” I joked back.

  She tossed her hands in the air. “Hey, I’m trying,” she protested playfully. “You haven’t had much of a dating life to speak of until now. I’m still trying to figure out how to give you actual advice.”

  “You’ve been amazing,” I said. “I wouldn’t have been able to make it through the last few days if you hadn’t been around to keep me sane.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” she replied, and she nodded to the packed-out schedule on the wall. “Shall we? Don’t want to fall behind and run late for your date tonight.”

  “We shall,” I agreed, and we dived into work for the day once more.

  I felt like I was walking on air, so bright and happy and optimistic in the face of everything that had just happened. A weight had been lifted. At the very least, he wanted to talk to me, and that was more than I’d thought I had to lay claim to when I got out of bed that morning.

  Once I was all done at the clinic, Rita practically chased me out so I would have time to go home and change before I went to see him. She reminded me to be optimistic and to keep myself in his shoes so I wouldn’t freak out if he seemed a little overwhelmed. I threw on some jeans and a sweater to combat the cool evening air, and I headed over to his place once more.

  As soon as I got out of the car, I could hear Tink barking inside, like he knew that I was on my way. I grinned. Man, it was good to be back here again. And to get such a warm welcome, too. I made my way up to the door, and before I could even knock, it sprang open in front of me, and I was greeted with a giant hug from Winnie.


  I closed my eyes and hugged her back, and I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. No matter what, coming here always felt like coming home to me. It was a gift to feel so comfortable in the house of the man I loved, and I knew that.

  Speaking of the man I loved, a moment later, he emerged from the kitchen and gave me a kiss on the cheek in greeting. Winnie pulled away, dashing off with Tink to give us some privacy.

  “Good to see you,” he murmured, and he brushed his nose against mine.

  I felt like my knees were going to quiver out from beneath me. I couldn’t believe that we had only been apart for a few days. It felt like my body was responding to him as though it had known him forever, and we hadn’t spent a second apart in that time.

  I supposed the last time I had been here, we had been getting down to something that was far from totally family-friendly, so maybe my body was just hoping that we were going to pick up right where we had left off. I could remember making my way around his kitchen, wrapped in his shirt, his arms around me as we nuzzled and flirted.

  But that was before. Before all of this had started. Before our lives had changed beyond anything that we could have predicted. And I had to accept that. I had to accept that there was change to come and that I would have to find some way to fit myself around it. Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to just politely dip out of this relationship when I felt so much love for him.

  Rita had a point, I supposed. I was so new to all of this that navigating the sticky parts of a romance was something that I just didn’t have any experience in. I would have liked to think that I was skilled enough with people to know how to make it through, but Harry was more than just people, and I knew it. He was everything to me. He was a whole life that I couldn’t wait to start living, and I had to find some way to fit myself around that. Because the other option was just giving up and moving on, and I wasn’t capable of that.