by Paige North
Secret Baby Daddy (Part Two)
Paige North
Favor Ford Publishing
Copyright © 2018 by Favor Ford Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Want To Be In The Know?
Secret Baby Daddy (Part Two) by Paige North
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Want To Be In The Know?
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Secret Baby Daddy (Part Two) by Paige North
Chapter 1
Colt’s words reverberate in my mind like lost sound waves.
I want to see the baby…
He’s watching me from the driver’s side of the car, and there are so damned many things in his eyes that are tearing me apart: simmering anger, fierce pain, confusion, and finally, that soulfulness I’ve always seen in Colt, even when no one else saw it. In his eyes, I see the guy who would lie beside me on a blanket by the lake, waiting patiently while I took pictures of sunsets and moonlight, then looking at every image as if it was a gem. He would make up stories about the photos, surprisingly romantic stories, anecdotes about where we might be when the sun set tomorrow or who else was sitting under the same moon.
I know I was the only one who ever gave him the chance to spin those tales, and now he wants me to give him another chance—an even bigger one.
He wants to see our baby.
Without looking away, he turns off the car’s engine. It’s obvious that he knows I’m not going anywhere. He’s probably even used to girls telling him yes all the time, especially since he can have any female in the world he wants.
Maybe it’s that fact more than anything that has me shaking my head. “No, Colt, you can’t see him.”
He continues to stare at me, breaking me down with that magnetic gaze.
I swallow, then say, “Sebastian’s sleeping right now.”
“Perfect, because all I want to do is look at him.” A muscle in his strong jaw ticks. “If he wakes up, then I might even be able to—”
“Hold him?” Panic is chiseling its way through me. “Don’t push this, Colt. I said no.”
“Where’s the dad, Serena?”
Why can’t he just give up? “None of your business.”
“Is he inside your parents’ house?” One side of his mouth curls into a snarl. “Is he a bigger loser than I am? Shit, at least I would’ve been able to put a roof over your head.”
“Just stop it.”
“Why? Because you’re thinking that, whatever I say, I’ll always turn out to be a fuck up? Or maybe you’re telling me to stop because Sebastian’s dad left you and the baby hanging, and you don’t want me to know that.”
There’s such venom in the way he talks about the dad that I know he’s thinking about his own crappy father and how the man left Colt and his mom high and dry.
As I search for something to say, he runs his fingers through his hair, then fixes his gaze on the house. He looks back at me, and I gasp under the burning desperation I see in him now.
“How come you never mentioned the dad tonight?” he asks. “Why haven’t I ever heard a damned thing about him on Instagram or from anyone?”
I don’t think I’m going to get out of this unscathed, so I give in slightly. “Let’s put it this way—Sebastian’s dad didn’t leave me and my son hanging.” My throat is clogged with emotion. “God, Colt, it’s complicated, okay? This is a discussion for another time…”
Not tonight. Maybe not ever. But I definitely can’t do this now. I want to get inside the house to be with Sebastian again, to hold him against me just like I held him before I left for that downtown bar and Colt found me.
I start to get out of the car, but Colt grabs my hand. My skin reawakens under his touch. I realize only now that his hands are still calloused, a working man’s hands. Hollywood hasn’t turned him soft at all. Even so, there’s something tender in his gaze, an open wound, and I look away because I just can’t handle the damage I inflicted on him anymore.
“Serena, look at me.”
I shake my head.
“Serena…”
At his shattered whisper, I can’t help myself—I look at him: those gray-blue eyes, those beautiful lips, the face that’s always haunted my yearning dreams.
“You broke my fucking heart,” he says. “You told me Sebastian wasn’t mine and that you’d cheated on me, and when I demanded to know who the father was, you wouldn’t tell me. On that day, I left and tried to never look back. Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed by the only woman I ever…”
He stops short of saying loved, and I take in a long, uneven breath.
His voice turns to a growl. “Of course you know what it was like for me. You read about it in the tabloids.”
Yes. I’ve read about how he goes through women like he’s collecting one-night stands. After I burned him, he became a wreck, and it’s only now that I see the true destruction firsthand. He’s jaded and bitter about losing me.
He still has my hand in his, and the temptation to just tell him the truth about Sebastian overwhelms me, especially when I look into his eyes and see the beaten-up heart he tries so hard to hide from everyone else.
“I’d give it all up in a second for you,” he whispers.
A sob rips through me, but I hold it back. I shake my head again. “I don’t want you to give up anything for me. You escaped from that dead-end job at the gas station, and look at you now. You’ve got the world in your hands.”
“I don’t want the world. If I’d only heard a word from you…” He tightens his hold on my hand, his voice gruff. “If you’d only given me one small sign, I would’ve dropped everything and been yours…all yours.”
Dear God, every time he says something it’s like a blow to me, and I’m slowly cracking apart.
“Dammit, Serena, I would’ve raised that little boy as my own.”
That’s what finally breaks me, and I heave out a sob. “But he is your own.”
Absolute silence presses down on the air, and my eyes are so full of sudden tears that I can’t see Colt’s face except for a blur. I can feel his confusion, just as if it’s my own. The tears finally spill from my eyes, clearing my vision, and now I can see the turmoil that’s started to fill his gaze.
“It’s true,” I whisper. “Sebastian’s yours.”
When he slowly lets go of my hand, I try to reach for him again. He raises his hand as if to tell me not to touch him, then turns to face the windshield. I’m totally falling apart now, seeing my own tragedy play out before my very eyes.
“Colt…”
He grips the steering wheel as if the enormity of the truth has pierced through his shock. “All the time I’ve lost with him…”
“I’m so sorry, but there were reasons…”
And right now, as my heart crumbles, those reasons seem so stupid. But there’s still a niggle in the back of my brain asking, What if you were right? What if he goes off the deep end right now?
He’s shaking his head. “You lied to me.” He turns the full force of his dark gaze on me, and I shrink back. “You assumed I wasn’t worthy of raising Sebastian.”
“There’s so much more to it, Colt—”
“You need to go.” He’s so calm and
cool on the surface, but I can tell there’s a threatening storm beneath his façade. “I need to get out of here.”
“Wait, I can explain it all—”
“Maybe I should fucking rephrase it.” He’s clenching the wheel so hard that veins are standing out in his arm. “I need to get out of here now.” There’s fire in his gaze. “Get out, Serena.”
This isn’t the Colt I’ve been with for the past couple of hours… He’s flipped. This is the guy who drinks and brawls and ends up tangling with the law, and I don’t wait for him to warn me again. I fumble with the door, knowing when to push him and when not to.
As soon as I close the door and stumble to the curb, he starts the engine, then peels away in a squeal of tires. I stand there with the night weighing down on me, watching the taillights of his fancy car as he turns a corner to get away from me as fast as he can. I’m too numb to feel anything because… Why? Isn’t this the way I thought things would eventually end up if he ever found out? I deserve to be left in his rear view mirror.
I betrayed the hell out of him.
My mind is filled with white noise as I walk toward the house. The windows offer only wan light, and everyone is obviously in bed. Jack’s BMW isn’t even here, but Sebastian will be.
Sebastian...
Once I’m inside, I see that my parents have left my bedroom door open, even though they have the baby monitor in their room. As I make my way to my son’s crib, my heart weeps, especially when I look at Sebastian under the moonlight from the window. He’s sprawled on his back, his baby blanket covering him from the waist down, his little rosebud lips pursed in sleep, his fists loosely curled. I run my finger down his soft, soft cheek, and it’s only then that more tears rush me.
Sebastian is the only part of Colt I have left. As the realization seeps into my very soul, I sink to the floor, muffling my sobs, keeping them as much of a secret from everyone as all the secrets I’ve kept before.
Chapter 2
It’s late, but Margot is still up when I call her from the corner of the backyard where I’m wrapped in a blanket. The summer night has a chill to it, but I think most of the frost is deep down inside of me, in my heart, in my very soul.
She answers on the first ring. “Okay, I’ve been dying to ask for the deets, but I didn’t want to interrupt whatever you had going on with Colt! What happened?”
I guess I wasn’t ready to make this call after all, and I bite down on my lip so I won’t cry.
“Serena?” Her voice is softer now.
I exhale. “I told him.”
“Oh. Oh man.”
“And he handled it about as well as any guy who discovers that the mother of his child lied to him.”
“I’m so sorry…”
“I’m the one who’s sorry. I just wish I had the chance to handle everything in a different way.” And just like that, I’m submerged in the past, on the day I realized my period was late. I took a pregnancy test and then another…and another. But there was no escaping the truth.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Margot says. “You were extremely emotional when you found out you were pregnant. It was the same day Colt called and told you that he’d been approached by that movie producer.”
“He was so happy.” I sob and smile at the same time, but the smile dies quickly. “I was so dazed and panicked, and I had no idea what to do. Colt finally had something to be optimistic about, and I didn’t want to spoil it for him. I can’t tell you how many times he would tell me about his dreams of getting out of Haverill, making something of his life somewhere else. God, he hated being the ‘loser who worked at a gas station.’”
“He wasn’t meant for that life, and everyone around here knew it, especially you. You were always his biggest cheerleader, and I know firsthand how lost you were after you got the news of the pregnancy.”
She’s right. At first, I told only a few people about it, including my family, who I swore to silence. Margot was the one who pointed out that once Colt finished filming in Europe and came home, I could give him the big news. But he never did come home from that shoot. He moved directly to LA to start working while I went back to school, still not knowing what to do, even though he pressed me to visit him or even move out there.
I let out a shuddering sigh. “Colt told me tonight that, if he’d known then what he knows now, he would’ve given everything up to come back and raise the baby.”
“Oh, God…”
“Didn’t I do the right thing?” I ask. “Because look at him now, Margot. He’s got it all. And if he had known about the baby, he would’ve returned to Haverill to work at that gas station, even though his heart was never in it. He would’ve come to resent me and Sebastian for destroying his chance at making a better life for himself. Besides, I wasn’t ready to leave my family and friends and my entire circle of support behind to move to LA.”
“It would’ve been hard to raise a baby alone in Hollywood while Colt was off acting and hob knobbing with celebrities...”
She’s only making me feel better by echoing what I’ve told her in the past, and with every word that bounces back at me, I get more confused, because I truly didn’t think he could handle the pressure of a budding career and a baby all at once. I tried so hard to put him off and make a decision later, but then he showed up out of the blue and saw me pregnant. And that’s when I lied and broke his heart—and my own—in the process. I did it to protect him. I did it to free him from all obligation. I did it because I didn’t want him to try and be what his own absentee father wasn’t and to lose the chance of a lifetime in Hollywood because of his sacrifice.
Margot finally speaks again. “Why was he even in town?”
“You’ve seen the tabloids. He’s out of control and is supposed to be cooling off here, away from the press before Mystery Man comes out.”
“He could’ve done that anywhere—at a discreet spa, in a little village on the Italian coast…”
“But he came here,” I whisper.
I huddle into myself, almost wishing that I could shrivel away into nothing, at least for the rest of the night, at least until I can figure out what comes next with Colt.
“Do you think you’ll ever see him again?” Margot asks.
“I don’t know.” I feel another tear slip down my cheek. “I really don’t know, Margot.”
I don’t sleep that night, but as I lie in my bed with Sebastian, stroking his soft, brown hair, I find a little bit of peace. There’s nothing like the comfort of a child, especially my own child, and I’m thankful for the miracle of him, even if everything else is falling apart.
The next day, I’m pretty useless as far as studying for the final online class for my Master’s goes. My degree is in English for Speakers of Other Languages, and I have a crapload of reading to do about theories and how they apply to the elementary classroom, but I don’t absorb a word. I merely spend most of the day playing with Sebastian, listening to him laugh and babble while my parents are at work.
I don’t hear from Colt, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Then the day after that arrives, bringing with it a knock at the door during the afternoon. It’s a purposeful knock, and I feel it in my chest, because before I even put Sebastian in his playpen and peer out the window, I know who it is.
When I see Colt standing on the porch, it feels like every part of me twists and turns: my veins wrapping around each other to throb and pump, my blood going hot, my breath turning sharp and tight. He’s got his hair tied back, fully revealing his silver-screen jawline. His beautiful face is detached, unreadable, his hands jammed into the front pockets of his faded jeans.
I want to run and hide, but I can’t do either. I can only try to face him as I gather my guts, praying that Sebastian stays quiet in the playpen at the other end of the room. Then I crack open the door.
Colt gives me a lowered gaze, and the force of it nearly makes my legs buckle. I hold for dear life to the door.
For a tense moment,
neither of us says anything, then Colt steels his shoulders and jerks his chin at me in a sexy but cold greeting. My pulse stutters.
“I needed some time to think about everything,” he says.
“Understandably.”
When I hear the musical sound from one of Sebastian’s toys in the background, I freeze. Colt obviously hears it too, and he takes his hands out of his pockets.
“Is that him?”
I nod.
“I want to see my son.”
“If Mom and Dad saw you here, they’d—”
“Their cars aren’t here, Serena.”
“If Jack—”
“You know I can handle Jack.”
A cloud passes over his eyes as if Colt misses the days when he and Jack used to be best buddies before they went their separate ways. Then determination takes Colt over, steel taking over his gaze, his muscles coiling as he looms over me.
“I’m going to see Sebastian,” he says. “And it might as well be now.”
Fear grips me: Colt has money. What if he tries to take my son away? What if he hates me enough to do something like that?
As more musical notes go off behind me, I realize that I can’t keep Colt away from Sebastian anymore, and I open the door. For a moment, something in Colt’s eyes softens. He looks at me like he used to during our summer together, and I fight the urge to go to him, wrap my arms around him, and tell him that all I’ve ever wanted was him. But I only stand aside, silently inviting him in.
He comes through the door, and my heart is beating so hard that it pounds in my temples, my throat, everywhere. Then he sees Sebastian in his playpen and comes to a halt.
It’s as if a switch has been turned on inside Colt as he lights up, first in his eyes, then in a slow, tender smile. Something in my throat cracks, making it hard to swallow as he cautiously approaches the playpen.
