by Leslie North
Grayson’s stomach yanked painfully at the words custodial situation. “Right. The legal side will definitely be hammered out by the time the baby is born. I don’t even—” His voice faltered before he could say the words. He was going to say ‘I don’t even want custody’ but he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. It wasn’t that he didn’t want his kid—but he wanted what was best for the child. And that couldn’t be him, right? He couldn’t be a father. Stepping back was the smartest, kindest thing he could do.
So why did it feel so wrong?
“What?” Blake prompted.
“I still feel like I’m overlooking something. I’m just trying to do what’s best.”
“Okay, let’s look at this logically,” Daniel said. Typical Daniel, always assuming every problem could be picked apart and explained. “You’ve already said you’ll be providing for them financially, right?”
"Right,” Grayson agreed.
“So if you think you should be doing more, does that mean you want to be more involved, from a custody perspective?”
“What? No! Getting involved would be a terrible idea.”
“For who?” Blake asked.
“For everyone. Mila. Me. My business. And the baby.”
“Why is that? Why shouldn’t you be part of the kid’s childhood and all that?” Daniel asked.
Grayson faltered. Here it was. Back to square one. “You guys know as well as I do that I have no business raising a kid. I have zero fucking idea what to do—”
“But you’ll learn,” Daniel interjected.
“Yeah, you’re not even gonna try?” Blake asked. “Look, it would be one thing if you just weren’t interested in kids. Some people aren’t—we wouldn’t judge you for that. We know you’d take responsibility—you’d make sure the baby and mama were taken care of financially, and that would be that. But you said it yourself, man. You want to do more than just stick some money in an account. If the only thing holding you back is that you don’t know if you’d be good at it, then that’s just a cop out. Nobody knows if they’re going to be a good parent. You’ve just got to make the choice to try. But instead, you’re letting fear take over. And that’s not like you. So why aren’t you stepping up to be a father? To at least give it a shot?”
Grayson fumbled for his words. “I-I don’t know. I don’t see the point. I’ll do more harm than good.”
“How do you know?” Blake asked.
“You didn’t know how to start a business until the first time you tried,” Daniel chimed in. “And look at you now—prepping for your IPO. You set that challenge for yourself, and you reached it even though all the odds were against you. You knew you could do it—and we knew it, too. But what I’m hearing now is a bunch of bullshit excuses from a guy who does not typically talk like that.”
“Yeah, buddy. Daniel’s right on this one,” Blake agreed.
“I’m not saying you’ll be the greatest father who ever lived, or that you’ll never screw anything up. I’m just saying that if you approached Finlay Technologies with that same defeatist mindset, you’d have been bankrupt before you even began.”
Grayson nodded, even though his friends couldn’t see him, as he studied the passing cityscape that shimmered under the final rays of sunlight. Daniel was right. A little too right. But his words felt a lot like the missing piece of the puzzle for him. The knot in his gut began to loosen.
“And that goes for Mila, too,” Blake cut in. “Everything Daniel said.”
The knot unraveled a little more. “Don’t tell me you two want to see me get married off and become a family man,” he tried to joke.
“Maybe not a consummate family man who moves to the suburbs and never sees his friends,” Daniel clarified, “since we definitely need our guy time. But I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen you as happy as you were during the challenge. I thought you were just happy about the app, but it wasn’t that at all, was it? It was her.”
“Yeah, you’re right!” Blake chimed in. “Now that I think about it, you were way happier than normal.”
“I’m always happy,” Grayson said, but he could hear the own hollowness in his voice. It’s not like he was unhappy regularly. But even he couldn’t deny the spark that Mila had brought into his life. The way in which he’d just felt that everything was better, even if he didn’t understand how.
“Maybe. But you were definitely humming under your breath whenever you were texting with her,” Daniel remarked.
“Humming?” Grayson scoffed, but there was no denying it. His friends were right. “Mila and I have some serious chemistry—that’s never been disputed. But the question here is time. And focus. And priorities. My priority is Finlay Technologies. All of my time and focus goes there.”
“So why don’t you schedule some time and focus for, I dunno, Mila and the baby?” Blake asked.
The suggestion stopped Grayson in his tracks. It was simple enough. Though ludicrous.
“You know a place where I can buy more hours in the day?” Grayson cracked.
“If I did, you know I’d be their biggest customer,” Daniel said, and all three of them laughed.
“But seriously,” Blake continued. “This is a life change. Why not roll with it?”
His friends chatted a bit more, but Grayson couldn’t get Blake’s words out of his head even after the phone call ended and he sat alone with his thoughts. The words didn’t just echo, they steamrolled everything else in his head.
Replaying the conversation in his head, Grayson cycled through all the different reactions that he hadn’t had while on the phone with his friends. By the time he arrived to his penthouse, he’d shifted to anger about the suggestion. And then ten minutes later, while he overlooked the San Francisco skyline, he was solemn. Considering it. Wondering what an alternate future might actually look like.
His friends had provided insight, but there was still one more important voice that needed to weigh in. The one woman who could cut down to his core with a sigh, a laugh, or a word.
Grayson’s mother.
He called her around nine, after ordering himself some pizza. While he waited for her to pick up, he paced the long wall of windows in his dining room.
“Grayson? You’re calling awfully late,” his mother’s voice sounded tired as she picked up.
“Sorry, Mom. This is kind of an emergency. Did I wake you?”
“No, no, honey. Nothing of the sort. What’s wrong?”
He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. Part of him was hung up by the fact that he’d referred to this as an emergency. But dammit…it was. A personal crisis. An emotional roadblock. And if he wanted to enjoy any part of his future, he needed to resolve this immediately.
“Grayson?” his mother prompted.
“You’re going to be a grandmother,” he said, his throat tightening.
And it was there that it clicked for him. This news didn’t just affect him and his business. It affected everyone. Mila. Her family. His mother, for god’s sake. The woman who raised him. The only person who had always been there for him. He was giving her a grandchild, and he wanted to walk away from it all.
She gasped, and he could practically see her, covering her mouth with her hand. Suddenly he wished he’d had the foresight to share this news in person. Just from her gasp, he could picture the slow way in which joy crept over her cheeks, deepening the wrinkles around her eyes, but it would have been wonderful to see it.
When she spoke, it was already clear she was crying. “Oh, Grayson! This isn’t a joke?”
“Not a joke, Mom.” He laughed a little, regret cycling alongside his excitement. God, he’d been so wrong. So naïve to think that he could offer money and the occasional drop-in visit and think that it would be enough. “I was seeing this really amazing woman for a while. She’s about three months along. And we’re, well…” His own voice went wispy and clogged with emotion. “We’re both really excited.”
Because it was true. Even if Mil
a was no longer excited about him. But he planned to change that.
He just had to figure out how.
“Ohh, honey! This is the best news ever!” His mom sniffed—yep, definitely crying. “Ohhh, you just made my night. My week! My year!”
The warmth spreading through him was something he hadn’t expected. Not in the slightest. He rubbed at his eye before the tear could fall.
“But here’s the thing, Mom. I’m scared. I never had a dad. I mean—you were both mom and dad to me, but I…I don’t know what the hell to do. I don’t know how to do this.”
“Honey, nobody does,” his mom said without missing a beat. “But you know what? You’re going to figure it out. I promise you. I had no idea what to do when you came along!” A hearty laugh rolled out of her. “Oh, my lord, if you could have seen me running around like a chicken with its head cut off that first time you peed all over me, right before we went to church!”
“But, you had help from Grandma—” Grayson began.
“Just like you’ll have help from me,” she finished for him. “Nobody knows what they’re doing when it comes to their first kid, Grayson. Nobody. And if they tell you they do, then, they’re damn dirty liars.”
He massaged the bridge of his nose, letting her words sink into him.
“I’ll be right there for you and for this baby. This child is a gift, just like you were a gift to me. Yes, it was hard for us at times. But every second was worth it. It’s a big risk. But it’s the only bet that pays off in the end, without fail.”
He smirked, scanning the San Francisco skyline. Of course she’d mentioning betting—his favorite pastime.
“I kind of…ruined things with Mila,” he said quietly. “But I’m going to get her back. I’m going to prove to her that I’m ready for this.”
“I know you will, honey,” his mom said. “And in true Grayson Finlay style, it will be the grandest gesture you could conceive of.”
His mother’s warm confidence left him feeling happier, more secure, than he had all week. Even though he had no concrete plan, he finally knew his direction.
And that direction was back to Mila and their baby.
The enormous, invisible elephant in the room had finally dissolved to nothingness. Because his family, both his blood family and his chosen family, had helped him realize the major flaw in this to-do list.
He’d only been thinking about himself and his business.
But his world had grown much larger than that. And it was time to make sure that Mila and his unborn child knew the place they held in his life.
21
“Yes, Mother. You can put the boxes on top of one another. It’s fine.”
Mila had repeated this direction to her mom four times already. This last time, it had come out through gritted teeth. She’d recruited her family and a couple friends to help pack up the boutique, and she didn’t regret much in life, but she sure regretted asking her mom to come.
But beggars couldn’t be choosers. She needed to have everything gone today. It was all hands on deck at this point, because the landlord wanted her out by six p.m. Exactly two weeks since getting the news. It reeked of technically-not-legal, but she didn’t have the means to hire a lawyer and pursue it further. So what else could she do but pack everything up and bear it?
“Little sis, what should I do with these?” Philip came up to her, holding the awkward body parts of some disassembled mannequins. She snickered.
“Go marry one?” she suggested.
He pointed at her with the white plastic mannequin arm. “I’m getting a little sick of your dry pregnant humor.”
“You’ve got six more months of it, so get used to it,” she teased, sticking out her tongue. “And you can pack up the mannequins in the backseat of my car. I don’t care if you make them look like passengers or not—that’s up to you.”
Philip snorted and headed out into the parking lot with his mannequin pieces. Mila breezed over to her parents, who seemed to be arguing over hangers.
“What’s the problem now?” she asked.
“I just think this whole mess could have been avoided,” her mother said, crossing her arms.
“What mess, Mother?” Mila felt her irritation reaching a boiling point. “Getting knocked up despite using protection, or the fact that I have no control over what the landlord does with his own property?”
“Opening a shop was never a good idea in the first place. The retail business is too volatile. Too whimsical. You have one good month, and then the next month everything could come crashing down. You could have become an accountant, honey.”
“Yeah, and pigs could fly,” Mila said, staring at a blank spot on the wall to give her strength. “Mom, that was never my path. Honestly, I would rather die than become an accountant.” She shrugged, feeling oddly lighter now that the words were out. Because they were true. “So, you have two options: either accept that this is the life I’ve chosen, or don’t. But if you don’t accept it, then understand that spending any time with me in the future will be on the condition that you never bring it up, ever again. And furthermore,” she jabbed her index finger in her mom’s direction, “it’s okay that this happened. I don’t regret it. It’s a speed bump, not a train wreck. I don’t regret this, or Grayson, or the baby, or any of it. So please—can you stop acting like my life is a train wreck? Can you stop acting like I should be regretting the biggest, most important decisions of my life?”
Her mother’s face softened, watching her with a mixture of sadness and tenderness. Silence swelled in the shop. Her dad was grimacing behind her mother, and Philip—who had come back in at some point during her speech—had quietly picked up a new armload and had tiptoed out of the shop with more mannequin parts. “Honey, I know you’re strong. And I know you’ll make the best out of…all this.” Her mom sighed, and that’s when Mila noticed she was crying. “I just worry about you. It’s all out of love. I promise. It’s always been out of love.”
“Thank you for that. And I will make the best of this. I absolutely will. And thanks for believing in me.” She wasn’t completely convinced her mother meant it—or would continue to mean it in the days that followed—but it was nice to hear right now. It at least helped her plod forward another day.
Her mother hugged her briefly before scooping up the hangers. Her father squeezed Mila’s shoulder, offering a smile.
“You’ve got this, honey. I just hate you were wrong about the tech guy,” he said softly.
“Yeah, me too.” Mila frowned, looking at the ground. If there was one thing she’d change, it was that. Because she and Grayson had shown such promise. But it was his choice, at the end of the day, where his priorities lay. And she couldn’t do a damn thing to change that.
And she couldn’t do a damn thing about missing him so much, either. Even though two weeks had passed since their painful conversation in her living room, she still pined for him. Missed him each night, even though they’d spent so few nights together. It made her feel crazy—more than just pregnancy hormones.
Mila’s friends Jason and Kerry popped their heads in to say goodbye after having loaded their SUV with tons of product. They promised to drop everything off at her apartment before heading home. Lainey was already en route to Mila’s with a car jampacked with product and her cash register. Once Philip came back in, looking for his next load, she looked around and realized the place was pretty much packed up.
“Man. This place looks different.”
A new voice broke through the quiet, and Mila snapped her gaze to the door.
Immediately her stomach shrank to the size of a pea. All of the resilience, calm, and cool that she’d managed to cobble together over the last two weeks evaporated in a puff.
Grayson had stepped inside the store, his gaze bouncing all around the now-bare walls. And without even another word, without anything spoken or stated between them, Mila was ready to crumble at his feet. Her fingers curled up into tight fists as she resisted the urge to
drift his way and melt into his arms. She didn’t even know what he was here for—but oh, lord, seeing him again made her realize just how much she’d missed him.
And it was even worse than she’d expected.
“Is this—” Philip began.
“Grayson.” Mila cleared her throat, quickly assessing all the horrified looks on her family members’ faces. “Yes.” She turned back to her ex. What are you doing here?”
She expected his usual easy grin—the mask he wore to make himself look comfortable and at ease in every setting. But instead, his face was uncharacteristically solemn. He raked a hand through his dark tresses, his jaw flexing as he stepped closer.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Mila’s father stiffened at her side. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Grayson raised his palms in submission. “I come bearing news is all. And a modification to a previous offer.”
Mila furrowed a brow. It had to be related to the app. She doubted that Grayson would come out here in person for anything other than a problem that was business-related, after what he made painfully clear two weeks ago. “What’s the news?”
Grayson faltered, rubbing at the back of his neck and glancing at her family members who stood like guard dogs around her.
“I was hoping we could talk in private.”
Mila’s mom pursed her lips, crossing her arms. “We’re staying. You hurt my daughter, and I’m not leaving you alone with her.”
Grayson cleared his throat, nodding vehemently. “Okay. That’s fine. I get it. Then I’ll just dive right in.” He wet his bottom lip, looking at Mila so intensely that she thought she might wilt. “Your mom’s right. I hurt you. I made a mistake, Mila. The biggest one of my life. That mistake was thinking that I could live without you. I want you in my life. I want our baby in my life.”
Tears immediately filled her eyes. God, how she’d pined for something like this, so many long and lonely nights in her bed. But still, it didn’t seem real. Her mother gripped her forearm, as if she was reminding her to stay focused.
