Catherine winced like I’d slashed her with a knife, my words cutting her deep.
I took a breath and controlled my anger, dimmed it and brought it down to an appropriate decibel. “I don’t want to hurt you, Catherine. But you’re leaving me no choice right now.”
She took a few breaths because my words had hurt her, probably made her sick to her stomach to imagine me married to anyone else but her, just as it made me sick when she was getting married to some other guy. But that was our reality now. “Look, I really want to talk to you in private. It’s not about us…but it’s really important.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Dex, please—”
“No. Whatever you have to say to me could have been said the other two times we spoke.”
“You really think I’m so evil that I’m trying to sabotage your relationship?” she asked incredulously. “Dex, I want us to be together, but you’ve made it very clear that’s of no interest to you. I love you, so I would never try to cause you any unhappiness. I’m being genuine right now. I need to talk to you, and I’d like you to give me the respect for us to sit down and talk in private. It’s not about us, okay?”
“Then what could you possibly want to talk about it if it has nothing to do with us?” I believed Catherine wasn’t some maniacal, spiteful ex, but it was hard to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“When I tell you, you’ll understand. I don’t want to have this discussion in your office either. Can we…talk later?”
My mind tried to find a solution, but I couldn’t think of one. “Are you…sick?” Despite my anger right now, it would kill me if that were true, if there were a chance her life could be taken far sooner than it should be.
She sighed. “Can we just talk later? I’ll come by after work.”
Now I was actually a little scared.
“Dex.” Sicily’s voice came to me.
I turned to look at her, having forgotten she was there.
“It’s okay.” The look in her eyes was genuine, like it wasn’t a test. “Really.”
I turned back to Catherine. “Alright, come by around six.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
We closed up the office and then left the building.
There was so much weight on my chest that I could barely breathe. We were both somber, walking under a heavy rain cloud, while everyone else was blanketed in sunlight. I hoped, prayed, that Catherine wasn’t sick.
The idea of her dying nearly gave me an anxiety attack.
Sicily was quiet too, like it was the only thing on her mind.
“I’ll call you as soon as she leaves.” I turned to look at her before I headed the opposite way.
She gave a nod. “I hope everything is okay.”
“Yeah, me too.” My mom was young when she had her cancer scare, and my dad had told me enough horror stories to know that cancer had no prejudice when it came to its victims. Young people assumed they were invincible, but in reality, it lurked in the shadows right behind you.
She rubbed my arm before she stepped back.
“No matter what happens…it doesn’t change us.” Even if Catherine was sick, my commitment was to Sicily. A near-death experience wouldn’t flip my feelings. I would be there for Catherine, I would do whatever I could to help her, but my heart was unavailable.
“I know, Dex.”
I gave her a kiss before I walked away.
I got to my apartment, showered, had something to eat, and then waited.
Waited an eternity.
At six o’clock on the dot, she knocked.
“It’s open.” I stayed on the couch, my nerves all over the place, worse than when a patient coded on me.
She let herself in and joined me on the couch. Her hands moved to her lap, and she was quiet for a long time, composing her thoughts, her hair pushed over one shoulder, so the contours of her face and her slender neck were on full display.
“Catherine.”
She met my look, hesitance in her eyes.
“Talk to me.” I loved Sicily with all my heart, intended to spend my life with her by my side, but once you loved someone the way I’d loved Catherine, it never really went away. You couldn’t be married to someone, and then one day, stop caring whether they lived or died. If something happened to her, I would be devastated. I braced myself for the same news that my father gave me years ago, that my mother was battling for her life, and there was nothing substantial that could be done about it.
“I’m not sick, Dex. I’m sorry if I let you think that.”
I wasn’t even mad, just relieved. So fucking relieved. I inhaled a real breath and let the carbon dioxide leave my body. It’d been building up since lunchtime because I hadn’t really breathed for hours. “Good. That’s good.” I dragged my hand down my face, feeling the weight off my shoulders.
“But I do have something else to tell you…and it’s delicate.”
I regained my focus and looked at her.
“I’m sorry for keeping it from you. I don’t have a good excuse for it. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me…”
Did she cheat on me? “Just tell me. The suspense is killing me.”
Her eyes started to well up with tears, her breathing uneven, and she cupped her hand over her mouth for a moment before she let it out. “We have a son.”
I paced in the living room, dragging my hand down my face, over the coarse hair of my thin beard. It was impossible to sit still. My blood needed to circulate so the adrenaline wouldn’t build up in a single place. “I…I don’t understand.” I stopped in place and stared at her seated position on the couch.
“When we were trying…I got pregnant. I didn’t even realize I was pregnant. With everything that happened with my father, I didn’t notice that I’d skipped my period, or the next period, and then after three months, I was getting all the typical symptoms of pregnancy, and I didn’t know why I felt so sick. We were divorced at that point, I was living alone…and then I went to the doctor.”
I heard every word she said, but I couldn’t actually believe it. “This is the part where you explain why you didn’t tell me.”
Her eyes sparkled like lights on a tree because they were wet, reflecting any source of illumination around her. “I guess I was in denial about the whole thing. I just…wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with the truth. So, I ignored it. I was able to hide it for a long time. My mom didn’t even know. I even started to see this guy, and when he realized I was pregnant, he didn’t care. And then I gave birth, and…” She closed her eyes, as if ashamed.
“Catherine, I…” There were literally no words. None.
She wiped her tears away. “He’s about eight months old now…”
My arms crossed over my chest as my heart pounded against my rib cage. I had an eight-month-old son. I had a fucking son. I’d been living my life like a train wreck during that time period when I had a boy who didn’t have a father. “Catherine…this is insanity.”
“I know. I’m sorry…”
“How do I know he’s even mine?” Maybe the guy who knocked her up left her, and now she needed a partner to be a father to her kid.
“You can get a paternity test if you want. But he’s yours. You could just look at him and see it.”
I fell into the armchair across from her, my hands cupping my face for a moment. “Jesus fucking Christ.” My hands slid down, and I stared at her, my head shaking slightly. “Why didn’t you tell me this at the café? Or when you gave me the check?”
“Because I wanted us to get back together because you wanted us to get back together…not because of our son.” Her eyes continued to water. “I imagined we’d be together again, and then when the timing was right, I would tell you…and it would be this big, romantic thing.”
Romantic…that was not the word I’d use at all.
She wiped away a couple more tears before she looked at me. “I understand if you don’t want to be involved…since I didn’t tell you
.”
My eyes shifted to her face, and I gave her a furious look. “Don’t insult me.”
She had the decency to look away.
“I’m in a state of shock right now. Cut me some slack. My ex-wife just told me I have a secret son who’s almost a year old. Did you expect me to do cartwheels or something?”
“I…I didn’t have any idea how this was going to go.”
I sank into the chair, my fingers rubbing across my temples. I sat there and thought about how much my life had changed in a split second. Catherine and I had been trying for months, and after every negative test, we started to wonder if we weren’t meant to have children. And then this happened… I had a son. His existence didn’t anger me, didn’t make me worry about my relationship with Sicily. I was pissed off with Catherine for lying to me, but no, I wasn’t pissed off that I had a son.
“Does this change anything?”
My cheek was propped against my closed fingers. “What do you mean?”
“With us?”
My eyes narrowed. “Why would it change anything?”
“Because the three of us could be a family. That doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“We can still be a family whether we’re together or not.”
“Dex.” She sharpened her tone, just the way she used to when we were together. “Come on, let’s talk about this. We were happy together, then disaster struck, broke us apart. I completely understand why events have turned out the way they have, but we have a son together. We can get back what we had. We can simply resume the life we had before this. I know I fucked up, but…come on.” She spoke to me like I was the one being ridiculous. “Your girlfriend is cute. I get it. But you’ll never have what we have.”
“Had.”
Her eyes flinched.
“Had, Catherine. Past fucking tense.” I felt so much anger toward her, more than at any other point. “I have no obligation to you. I owe you nothing. I was the one who busted my ass to keep us together, but you left.”
“But then I came back. I was completely struck by grief—”
“Just stop.” I held up my hand to her. “We’ve had this conversation already. It’s over. It’s buried. The reason you’re in my living room right now is because we have a kid together. I want to talk about that. I don’t want to spend another moment talking about us. There is no us.”
“I just think our son deserves to see his parents together.”
“Wow…” I shook my head. “You’re a bitch, you know that?”
Her eyes snapped wide open.
“I think our son deserves to have had his father at all the doctor visits, in the delivery room, the day he was born… You took that away from me. How fucking dare you say that shit to me?”
She looked away, ashamed.
The fucking audacity, man. “I will be the father of the fucking year, and I don’t need to be with you to accomplish that. So, tell me about him? What’s his name?”
She just sat there, looking down at the cushions beside her.
“Catherine.”
She cleared her throat. “Ryan…his name is Ryan.”
That was a name we had picked out together when we were trying, getting ahead of ourselves picking out names when the tests kept coming back negative. Ryan Hamilton. Cute-ass name. “Do you have a picture of him?”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “More like a million…”
I moved to the seat beside her so I could see.
She opened a picture and handed me the phone.
He was sitting on the floor on a rug, a couple toys scattered around him, wearing a onesie. He had a little hair on the top of his head, had the brightest, bluest eyes ever, and he looked just like me. It was like looking at Little Deacon and Derek, and I’d always been a little jealous that I didn’t have that.
Now I did. “Oh my god… He’s…he’s my son.”
She nodded.
“What’s he like?”
Her eyes stayed on the screen. “Happy. Sweet. Gifted.”
I grinned. “Damn right, he is.” I’d missed eight months of his life, missed all the things every father dreams about, and that would always make me a little sad, but at least I had him now. That instant connection was there, that instant love, the deep, unconditional love. “When can I see him?”
“He’s at my mother’s right now. You can come by tomorrow, if you want.”
I texted the picture to myself so I would have it. When it was on my phone, I made it the screensaver so it would always be there. “I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight. I’m a dad…a fucking dad.”
“I know.” She gave me a slight smile. “Congratulations.”
“Yeah.” I could continue to be angry with her for what she did, but it didn’t matter anymore. What was done was done. It was time to move on. Now I was overwhelmed once again, how my life had changed in an instant. Most people had nine months to mentally prepare for the new responsibility about to hit them in the face. I didn’t have any time at all.
“I’m so sorry about everything I’ve done. I’m sorry about the way I ran away, the way I didn’t tell you about Ryan, the way…I basically lost my mind. I wish I had a better justification for my behavior, but I really was just traumatized and grief-stricken.”
I didn’t have the energy to continue to be angry about what happened. Now that I had a son, it just didn’t seem important anymore. “Grief has inexplicable effects on the mind and body. It can break anybody. Look at me. You left me, and I closed up shop and went to work for Mom for about a year. I just…lost it.”
Her eyes closed, like that made her feel worse.
“It happens. I forgive you.”
She opened her eyes again. “You do?”
I nodded. “We’re parents now. I want to set a good example for my son. We’re divorced, and I want him to see that you still treat an ex with respect, that you can still love someone even if you aren’t together anymore, that you can still be a family. I want my son to grow up to be a good man, not a misogynistic asshole.”
“We won’t have to worry about that, Dex.”
All the weight hit my shoulders, the responsibility I would have to carry for a lifetime, even when Ryan was an adult and out of the house. Parenting never stopped, no matter your age. I learned that from my parents. “When can I take him?”
“Um…you want to?”
“Duh. Can I have him this weekend?”
“Uh…” Flustered, she didn’t know what to say. “Dex, you don’t have any supplies, you don’t know anything about taking care of a kid—”
“I think I can figure it out, Catherine. And I’ll grab everything tomorrow. So, yes? The weekend?”
She gave a shrug. “Sure.”
“Perfect.”
“But this is exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t want him to go back and forth between us. I want him to be with us both…all the time. I want us to be a family. I think the only reason we’re not is because of Sicily, and I don’t think that’s right.”
I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to yell. I wanted us to move forward as parents and friends. I’d have to deal with Catherine until Ryan was out of the house, so it was a relationship I should treat with delicacy. “That’s exactly right, Catherine. She is the only reason. But I’m in love with her—and that’s not going to change.”
Nineteen
Sicily
It was almost eight, and I hadn’t heard from Dex.
Dex had made his commitment to me very clear, but the longer the silence stretched, the more afraid I became. What if she was sick and that rekindled his feelings for her? What if the possibility of her passing away made him realize he couldn’t live without her? What if Catherine would always have the upper hand over me because she had something I never could?
His last name.
I wrote out a couple messages to him but never sent them. I almost attempted to call him a couple times, but I refrained. Every time my imagination w
ent wild with possibility, I reminded myself that Dex would never hurt me…not again.
I sat on the couch in front of the TV, my eyes constantly glancing to my phone, hoping it would light up any minute.
Then a knock sounded on the door. “Baby, it’s me.”
I skyrocketed off the couch and sprinted to the door, getting it open quickly. “What happened?”
He walked inside and headed straight to the couch. He relaxed and let himself go, falling onto the couch and relaxing into the cushions. “Sit with me.” He patted the cushion beside him.
I was so nervous that I just stood there for a while before I joined him.
His forearms rested on his thighs, and he looked at my coffee table for a while.
“Dex…is she sick?”
“No.” His answer was immediate. “Thankfully. It’s good news, actually.”
“Good news?” What could Catherine possibly say that would be good? That she was moving? Ooh, maybe she was relocating to the other side of the country. That would be perfect. She would be out of our lives for good.
“I know this is going to sound a little crazy, but…she and I have a son.”
Uh…what?
Sorry?
Did I just make that up in my head?
He studied my face. “Yeah, I know.”
“Sorry, could you repeat that? Because it sounded like you said you guys have a kid…”
“That is what I said, baby.” He looked into my gaze, his eyes a little soft, but there was distinct happiness there. “I told you we were trying when we were married. I guess she was pregnant without knowing it. We got divorced, she realized it sometime after that, and then…yeah.”
“Wait, let me get this straight…she had a child and didn’t tell you?”
He rubbed the side of his face and sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“So, she blames you for her father’s passing, leaves you, devastates you, and to top it off, she has your kid without mentioning it? She gave birth, and you missed it? She just…became a mom without telling the dad? Who the fuck does that? Bitch…”
The Doctor Who Has No Chance (Soulless Book 11) Page 15
