by L. P. Maxa
I smiled as we sat on the sofa, and I watched my son push his toy trucks around on the plush cream-colored carpet, making what I assumed were engine noises. He was so precious.
Sitting in the corner of the couch with her leg tucked under her, Cassie began speaking. “When I woke up that morning, the morning after we were together, you were gone. It hurt.” She took a breath as she knotted then unknotted her fingers.
“That night we spent together was so perfect, I honestly never thought I’d wake up alone. But when I did, I knew that I needed to figure things out. Figure out what I really wanted. I canceled my bachelorette weekend. I spent three days hanging out in Seaside by myself, trying to work out my next move.
“I slept in your bed and drove your Jeep. I sat down by the water and drank beer from a bottle. I walked the town square and ate beignets every morning. I did what I wanted to do, just me. And then when I got back to Dallas, I went to Steven and told him that I didn’t love him and I didn’t want to marry him. He slapped me. I was stu—”
“What? He slapped you? Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell? Please tell me Brice kicked his little bitch ass.” I’d hated Steven from day one; now that I knew he’d hit Cassie? I loathed him with a rage that settled around my heart. I couldn’t wait until I saw that prick again.
Cassie’s eyes flew to Wyllie to see if my outburst had scared him. He didn’t even bother to look up from the train he was playing with. “I didn’t tell anyone about that. Just listen, okay?” Although it took a hell of a lot of calm I didn’t have, I nodded.
She continued. “He called me a child and said that marriage wasn’t about love. I told him that I cheated on him. He laughed, said that he’d never been faithful to me. He’d been cheating since the very beginning. I felt so stupid, so naïve. All the courage and strength I’d built in Seaside disappeared. I knew I couldn’t marry him, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. One day back in Dallas and I lost who I was. Again.”
My gaze fell on Wyllie. I couldn’t get enough of watching him, and he calmed me in a way I’d never experienced.
When I faced Cassie, she smiled. “He looks just like you, Dec.”
He did, and I loved it. “He has your beautiful green eyes though. Why didn’t you tell me, Cassie? How could you deny me this? Deny me him?”
“I found out I was pregnant the day of my rehearsal dinner. I knew he was yours. Steven and I hadn’t been together in over a month and…well…you and I weren’t careful.”
I narrowed my eyes, memories of that night filling my mind. We had sex over and over. I hadn’t been able to get enough of her. Protection never even entered my mind. “We weren’t, were we? I’ve never been so reckless in my life. I can’t believe we did that.”
She shrugged. “If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change it. Wyllie is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Her comment made me angry. Wyllie was the best thing that ever happened to her? What about me? I didn’t get to know that feeling. I wasn’t given the option. “God, Cass, I missed so much. I didn’t get to feel him kick in your stomach. I wasn’t there when he was born. His first word, his first steps. I missed it all.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “When I told Steven I was pregnant, he was so angry—”
“Did he hit you again?” Just the mere thought of him touching her in anger—well, touching her at all really—made me see red. That bastard really pissed me off.
She shook her head. “Uh, no, he called off the wedding though. I was finally free. But my parents flipped out. Of course, they were embarrassed and worried about what everyone would think.”
Of course.
“Brice was pissed. He thought I was careless and that I would end up scared and alone. The stress was overwhelming. I ended up in the hospital; the doctors weren’t sure if the pregnancy was going to work out. I didn’t want to tell you and then have something bad like that happen. It would have just been unnecessary heartbreak, you know?”
I ran my hands through my hair, pulling. “Dammit, Cassie, I would have been there for you. I would have wanted to be there for you, for Wyllie. You didn’t have to do that alone.”
“I did, Declan. I did need to do it myself. Don’t you see? Wyllie made me strong. He made stand up for myself. I told my family I was moving and I left.”
I could see how Cassie standing up to her family was a big step, a big deal. But that didn’t justify what she’d done. “Okay, then why didn’t you call me when you got to Florida?”
“I was so scared, Declan. I was scared that you would want nothing to do with him, with me. I was scared that all this strength and control I worked so hard for would crumble away again. Then where would I be? I’d be broken. I couldn’t be broken for him. He needed me strong. He deserved me strong. I never told anyone. Brice doesn’t know, my parents, no one knows that he’s yours.” She smoothed Wyllie’s dark hair when he came crawling over to us. “I know now that I messed up. The way you look at him… I’m so sorry, Declan. With all my heart, I’m sorry.”
I stared at Cassie, my first love; the best sex of my life and the mother of my child. How could she think I would want nothing to do with them? I’d told her, in Florida, how much she meant to me. What I felt for her…but then she’d woken up alone. No note, no phone call, no email. In her mind, I’d left her.
And I had.
She looked so heartbroken.
“Cassie, I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know where to start. Brice really doesn’t know Wyllie is my son?” Man, that was so weird to say, my son.
“No. They asked, and I told them it was a one-night stand. They pushed for information, of course. But once he was born, it was like it didn’t matter to them anymore. He’s so loved, Declan.” She plucked him up and sat him in her lap.
I reached out and tickled his plump little tummy, making him giggle. “He’s loved, by you and your family. What about mine? My parents?” Connor and Gale Preston were much more loving and kind than Cassie’s parents had ever been. They would have been so overjoyed at having a grandbaby.
Cassie took a deep breath. “He knows your parents. Your mom got him the sweater he was wearing on the plane.” She switched Wyllie over to my lap, stood and headed toward the kitchen. “Your dad asks me all the time where he got his dark hair. And your mom always comments that he looks so much like you did as a baby.”
Her head was in the fridge, looking for what, I had no idea. The house was staged, not stocked. “Are you telling me that my parents have suspicions that Wyllie is mine? And you lied to their faces? Repeatedly?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds horrible.” She was digging around in one of her many bags now.
“It is horrible. They are going to be pissed.” I bounced Wyllie on my knee. “Your other grandparents are going to be so mad at Mommy, Wild Man. It’s going to take her years to get back in their good graces.”
Cassie joined us on the couch, handing Wyllie a plastic cup full of little fish-shaped crackers. “I never really lied. I always just kind of laughed it off and changed the subject.”
“Semantics, princess.”
Her phone started to vibrate on the counter. She reached for it, showing me the screen. “Brice.”
It was a picture of Brice and Wyllie on the beach laughing. Stupid bastard of a best friend. “Put it on speaker phone.”
She looked like she wanted to protest, but didn’t. “Hello?”
“Hey, little sister. How’s my handsome nephew? Was the flight okay?”
Wyllie started clapping when he heard his uncle’s voice over the phone. “Bwacey.”
I could hear the smile on Brice’s face when he answered. “Hey, buddy.”
“He’s good, the flight was good. We’re all good.”
I raised my eyebrows; she seemed nervous and jumpy. Hearing Brice talk so affectionately to Wyllie made some of my anger evaporate. Some. Not all.
“Where do you want to meet for dinner? Ocean Prim
e?” Brice laughed at his own lame-ass joke.
“I think they would kick us out of Ocean Prime if we tried to walk in with a toddler. How ’bout Mia’s? It’s always loud and chaotic in there. Wyllie’s noise will just blend right in.”
“Fine by me, do you want me to pick you guys up?”
Cassie looked over at me. I shook my head.
“No, we’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll try to get there early so we don’t have to wait too long for a table. I know how cranky Wild Man gets when he’s hungry. Two adults and a high chair, right?”
The warmth in Brice’s voice was genuine, but it started to piss me off that he knew these things about my son and I didn’t. He ate with them enough to know that waiting on a table made things hard on Cassie.
“Actually it’ll be three adults and a high chair. I ran into Declan at the airport and invited him to join us for dinner.”
I hadn’t expected Cassie to say that. And judging from Brice’s long pause, he hadn’t either.
“You ran into Dec? Did he, um, did he meet Wyllie?”
“Yes.”
Another long, loaded pause.
“Oh, okay, great. Well, it’ll be great to see him. It’s been months. Love ya, sis, bye.”
I shook my head, and smiled at the toddler still contently sitting in my arms munching away on crackers. “You’re Uncle Bricey is a d-i-c-k.”
I looked over at Cass. “He knows Wyllie is mine.”
Chapter Seven
Cassie
I loaded Wyllie into his car seat and climbed in the passenger side. Declan looked edible. His gray sweater fit snugly against his chest, his hair effortlessly styled. I was staring, and he caught me. Luckily he didn’t call me out on it.
He checked his mirrors three times before backing out of the driveway. “It’s nerve-wracking having such precious cargo in the car with me.”
“I know. Driving a baby around is a whole different experience.” It’d taken me weeks before I felt comfortable driving him around by myself.
“I’m sure it was even worse when he was so tiny and fragile.” He looked over at me and winked. “You look beautiful, by the way.”
I shook my head and looked at my hands, “Why are you being nice to me? After what I did, you should hate me.” I didn’t deserve his sexy winks, his smiles, or his compliments. I’d lied to him about something huge. He should punish me forever.
Declan shrugged, checked his mirrors, put on his blinker, and then checked again before changing lanes. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed. I’m pissed that I missed so much, I’m pissed that you made these choices for me. Pissed that you lied.”
“Pissed.” Wyllie repeated his father’s words with enthusiasm.
I looked over at Dec, lips pursed. “He’s in a repeating phase.”
“That’s exactly what I mean, Cass. I didn’t know that about him, you didn’t give me the opportunity to know that about him.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat. I wanted to just melt into it and disappear for a few days. “I know. I’m a horrible person. So, again, why are you being so nice to me?”
“Pissed.”
I turned around and shook my head at my son. “No sir, we do not say that word. That word is not nice.”
Declan grinned at Wyllie in the rearview mirror. “You did what you thought was best for you and our son. You aren’t a bad person, Cass, you just made a bad choice. You’re the mother of my child, I’ve loved you since you were six and I was nine. I don’t want to keep looking back. I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to Wyllie for us to not get along, for me to hold this against you forever. I want to move forward. I want to move forward after I beat the s-h-i-t out of Brice for never mentioning you had a child. But forward all the same.”
Loved, he said it in the past tense. I didn’t blame him. How could I?
I did find it odd that Brice never told him about Wyllie. I always figured that Brice told Declan I was pregnant and that Dec didn’t really care to know any more about it. That was one of the things I would remind myself of when I would start to feel guilty for not calling him.
“You named him after me?”
“I did. I know you might not believe me, Dec, but I was always going to tell you.”
“When?”
“What?”
“When were you going to tell me about Wyllie?”
“Oh, uh, when you moved home. I thought maybe we could meet for dinner. I could tell you about Wyllie and then go from there. I don’t need anything from you…money or whatever. But I always wanted you two to have a relationship.” I bit my nail. I hadn’t bitten my nails since I was in junior high.
“What’s his middle name?”
“Brice. Wylder Brice Huntington.”
Declan glanced over at me. “His name should be Wylder Brice Preston.”
I nodded. I wouldn’t fight him on that. Declan was a good man, and he was going to be a good father. He and Wyllie could share a last name. “Yes, it should. We can change it, whenever you want.”
I looked behind me to check on Wyllie since he was so quiet, and that was unusual.
Wild man had fallen asleep.
“I had him alone. I mean, when I was in labor, it was just me and the nurses. He was two weeks early and my parents were in Mexico, and Brice was in Greece on business. They didn’t make it to Florida until the day after he was born.” I’d never felt sorry for myself, I was always proud of what I’d been able to do. But now, sitting here with Dec, I wished he’d been there. I glanced over at him, and his eyes were filled with tears. “I’m so sorry.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. “I know you are. Tell me about it, tell me about the day he was born, please.”
I took a deep breath and smiled at the memory. “It was the middle of September, his birthday is September eighteenth, by the way, and it was warm outside. I was huge. None of my maternity clothes felt comfortable, and my back hurt. So I put on my bikini and got in my pool. Nothing ever felt so good as floating weightless in that cool water. I stayed in there all afternoon.
“When I got out, I showered and changed, did some laundry. When I was making dinner my water broke. I remember thinking, damn I should clean that up before I leave, but then the contractions started and cleaning was the last thing on my mind. I drove myself to the hospital, checked in, and by the time I got to my room I was already five centimeters dilated. My labor went fast. I got an epidural. I watched Friends reruns. I pushed about a million times and then he was here. He was so tiny. He weighed five pounds, twelve ounces and was eighteen inches long. He’s had that head full of dark hair since the day he was born.”
Declan parked the SUV expertly in a tiny parking spot. He placed his hand on my face, stroking my cheekbone lightly. “I would have told you I was proud of you. If I’d been there. I would have told you how strong you were, how good you did.” He let his hand drop, and my heart followed.
Chapter Eight
Declan
I carried a sleeping Wyllie into Mia’s. I hadn’t eaten good Tex-Mex in two years. Suddenly, I was starving. Cassie walked next to me, designer diaper bag on her shoulder; most likely an extravagant gift from her mother. Cassie wouldn’t feel the need to carry butt paste in a thousand-dollar bag.
The look on Brice’s face when I walked up, carrying his nephew with my hand on the small of his sister’s back, was priceless. I chuckled. “Good to see you, man. It’s been too long. What was it, September? The last time you came to visit? That would have been right after Wyllie’s first birthday.”
Brice shook my outstretched hand and kissed Cassie loudly on the cheek. “Yeah, it was September. We went down to the French Riviera, spent the week with those gorgeous redheads. Remember?”
I narrowed my eyes. Asshole. He knew what I was doing and I knew what he was doing. That’s what decades of friendship will get you. I pulled out Cassie’s chair so she could sit. “How could I forget? Didn’t you get crabs
?”
Cassie snorted into her water glass.
“No, I don’t think I did, man. Let me hold my perfect nephew. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
Reluctantly, I handed off a now awake but groggy Wyllie to my possibly former best friend. Wyllie’s face lit up when he saw who was here with us. Ugh, guess I couldn’t really hate Brice if Wyllie loved him that much. We ordered. Then…nothing. No one said a word. The awkward silence at the table was agonizing. Luckily our round of beers came quick.
Cassie sipped hers, her eyes darting between me and her brother. Clearly waiting to see what would happen.
Brice tickled Wyllie and turned to Cass. “Hey, what did you think of the remodel Mom did to Wyllie’s playroom? Isn’t that slide the coolest? I wish we would have been allowed to have an indoor slide when we were little.”
“Oh, uh, actually I haven’t been by the house yet.” Cassie tore up pieces of tortilla and handed one to Wyllie. He grinned, his two lower teeth sticking out.
Brice’s eyes went wide. “Running errands? You could have brought Wild Man by my office. I would have watched him for you.”
Cassie glanced over at me before answering her brother. “I was with Declan. We went over to look at an investment property he just finished.”
“The one off Lemmon?” Brice shoveled chips and salsa in his mouth, careful not to spill any on the happy baby in his lap.
I nodded, taking a pull of my beer. “Yeah, we’re going to stay there tonight. Since your parents won’t be home until tomorrow anyway.”
Brice looked at Cassie. “We? You and Wyllie are staying with Declan tonight? Why?”
Cassie grabbed Wyllie and put him in the high chair that was placed between her and Brice. I was irritated that the highchair wasn’t between her and me. We were his parents.
“We are. Declan and I needed to talk about some stuff.”
“Like?” Brice held his sister’s gaze.
She took a deep breath but didn’t answer him.
