by Serena Bell
Don’t get distracted.
She turned away.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do this.”
Chapter 2
Eight years later
Mira Shipley watched her son, Sam, through the window of the physical therapist’s office. He was frowning as the PT explained something. His seven-year-old forehead was wrinkled under too much hair, his skinny body stork-like in shorts and a T-shirt. He needed a haircut and socks that fit and probably, as usual, to have his fingernails cleaned and trimmed. When she’d lived with her parents, she hadn’t fully appreciated how much they took care of. Now all the tasks of a single mom were hers and hers alone.
She wished she were in the office with him, but the physical therapist had asked her to stay in the waiting room. Watching Sam from a distance made Mira feel deeply, peculiarly, tender, some vestige of the way she’d felt when she’d stood outside the newborn nursery and watched him through the glass. That one’s mine. I made him. And now I have to keep him safe. She’d been alone with him in the world, terrified—having no idea how to change a diaper or administer a bath or soothe that spazzy, overstimulated crying he’d launched into at five p.m. on his fourth day of life, a pattern that would continue for ten solid weeks.
She could smile now, thinking of it, of walking the halls of her parents’ house with Sam swaddled tightly to her chest. Of the small, exhausted sighs Sam emitted when he finally dropped into sleep. Of the way he’d nestled against her on the bed as he’d nursed in the early morning. They hadn’t done so badly, she and Sam. Not at all. They were a good team, and they’d get through this crazy summer, too.
Of course, she hadn’t felt at all tender toward him in the car on the way here as he’d griped about physical therapy. She wanted to say, You should have thought of that before you climbed that spindly tree. What did you think was going to happen?
Even if Sam had been able to predict that the branch—half the diameter of his absurdly thin wrists—would snap, he wouldn’t have been able to foresee all the consequences of his risk-taking. He’d hurt his shoulder, arm, and knee, earning himself a couple of weeks of physical therapy. And disqualifying him from going to summer camp.
Now she had no place for him to go while she worked.
She and Sam had just moved out of her parents’ house in Florida, where they’d been living for the last seven years. Under their roof, she hadn’t had to work. They’d paid Sam’s medical bills, supported them both. Now she and Sam were living in Seattle, where she’d been born and raised, and they had no one to depend on but themselves.
That was how she wanted it.
Or so she’d thought.
Behind the plate-glass window, Sam stretched a giant red rubber band while his therapist, a thin woman with gray hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail, corrected his form. Mira was supposed to have started work Monday, but they’d granted her an extra week to find childcare. Now it was Friday, and she was due to plant her butt in her office chair on Monday, but luckily, yesterday she’d finally interviewed and hired a sitter. Penny had been charming, articulate, and a big hit with Sam, who wasn’t always the easiest kid to win over. For the first time since Mira had unrolled sleeping bags on the floor of their new house, she felt like she had all the pieces of her new life—her fabulous, independent new life—in place.
The door of the office swung open and a man stepped in. He went to the check-in desk and spoke in a low voice to the woman there, then came into the waiting area. The slightest hesitation in his step drew her eye downward. One of his legs was prosthetic—an expensive gray running shoe was fitted with a slim shank of metal ankle that thickened to a robotic calf and knee. She tried not to stare—at either the prosthetic or his flesh-and-blood calf, which was lean, well-muscled, and covered with golden curls.
Nice.
She made herself look away, feeling vaguely guilty for wondering what had happened and how he felt about it. Even though she wanted to look again, she wouldn’t let herself.
But she peeked. He wore nylon hiking shorts with a red plaid short-sleeved shirt, untucked. Slim hips and waist, nicely sculpted posterior, broad chest and hunky shoulders.
Very, very nice.
He made his way over to a chair and sat down on a diagonal from her. Even in her peripheral vision, she could see that he’d taken over the seat like an alpha male—knees apart, leaning back casually. This is what I’ve got to offer, baby. I’m so good, I don’t even have to convince you.
Sadly, the posture worked on her. But it was somehow at odds with her expectation, and she chastised herself. What? He’s not allowed to be cocky because he has a prosthetic leg?
Her phone buzzed in her back jeans pocket. Penny Dawson. Her life-saving babysitter.
“Hello?”
“Mira? It’s Penny. I’m so sorry to do this to you—”
Oh, shit. Mira’s breath stopped. She couldn’t lose Penny. In her last conversation with her new boss, Haley had been patient but firm: “We can give you till Monday, but we need to know that we can depend on you. We need to know childcare isn’t going to be an ongoing issue.”
Mira had moved across the country. She’d pulled up stakes, broken her parents’ hearts, and bet everything on herself. She needed her job.
“I’m so sorry, Mira. I just got a permanent, full-time offer teaching at Broadview Montessori. Summer and school year.”
A collection of desperate thoughts went through Mira’s head. Bribes, extravagant promises, a willingness to prostrate herself and beg.
“Any chance you could watch Sam just next week?”
“I’m sorry. I asked. They said no. They said they had another candidate who could start right away if I couldn’t.” Penny sounded wretched.
So Mira would have to go back to the drawing board on babysitters. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could still find one for Monday. She swallowed hard. “It’s okay. That’s great about the new job. I’m really psyched for you. Of course you need to take it. You wouldn’t happen to have any ideas about who else could watch a smart, well-behaved seven-year-old for the summer—or even just next week—would you?”
“I’m really sorry,” Penny said. “I wracked my brain this morning to try to think of someone who could do it. I even called a few friends. I swear if I think of anyone, I will let you know.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate that.”
“It was really nice to meet you. And Sam. If you ever need an evening sitter, or weekends—”
“I’ll definitely call.”
“And meantime, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you find someone, and I’ll call you if I think of anyone.”
“Thanks.”
Mira let the phone drop into her lap and took a deep breath.
On the other side of the room, the cocky guy with the prosthetic leg shifted in his seat, drawing her gaze. Brown hair, on the longer side of short, uncombed. A couple of days’ unshaven scruff. Not her type; she liked professional men, clean-shaven. Her mind was about to dismiss him—a guy I ran into in the physical therapist’s office and wasn’t attracted to, but not because he was an amputee, just because he wasn’t my fantasy. But something made her look again.
Holy shit. She knew that face. The strong jaw, the well-formed upper lip, the deep groove that ran vertically between his brows—
She’d memorized his features in the few weeks they’d been together, the quick three-quarters way he smiled, like he couldn’t quite fully commit to happiness, the all-in truth of his smile when he gave himself over. The creases that formed when he frowned, the way his jaw set when something bothered him. That night at the lake—the last night—the look on his face when she’d taken off her clothes. Gratitude and longing and Who, me? For real?
The night came back to her in sharp contrasts, pairs of impressions. The coolness of his wet skin and the heat of his body. The softness of his mouth moving over hers, over her breasts, and the hard tug of his suckling, the yank of desire she’d felt. The ri
ch summer smells, green and overripe, and the clean soap scent of him. How open she’d felt, how boundary-less, melting, flowing, willing—and how her body had betrayed and frustrated her.
How good he’d made her feel, better than she’d ever felt in her life, and the way he’d hurt her. The way they’d dressed, packed up, and driven home in silence. How hard she’d cried, and for how long.
Jake.
His eyes caught hers, caught and held and held and held. Sam’s gray-blue eyes, Sam’s full lower lip, Sam’s absurdly long eyelashes. Jake’s face.
Would Sam someday have a jaw like that, square and strong? Would his nose, which was still a little boy’s pudgy upturned nose, be as bladelike as his father’s?
How many times had she promised herself that if this moment ever came, she wouldn’t hold the truth back from Jake?
But she’d never pictured it happening in a setting like this. Public. Awkward.
“Mira.” He said it slowly, as if he were pulling the name from the furthest reaches of his memory.
“Hi, Jake.”
Her voice was splintered, thready. There was no pretending this was a no-big-deal moment. Not for her. And he wasn’t trying to play it cool either. He scrutinized her, jaw set, expression serious. There was grief in every line of his face. Something she thought might be anger. A darkness behind the surface of his eyes that she’d seen only once before, that night by the lake, when she’d asked him for a future he couldn’t give.
She was feeling too much, and she couldn’t put it all together. When he’d been a stranger with a prosthetic leg, she could manage the sympathy, the curiosity, the faint survivor’s guilt. But he was her Jake, a man she’d been intimate with, and he’d lost part of the body she’d worshipped. He was her Jake, and he was here, in this room, and she was so glad to see him, so glad she wanted to hurl herself at him, but also terrified, because what was she supposed to do or say now?
She had promised herself she’d tell him.
But he had never really been her Jake, had he? And now—
Now he really was a stranger. Even if her body was trying to tell her he wasn’t. Insisting it hadn’t forgotten the scent or the heat or the weight of him, hadn’t forgotten what he could do with his hungry mouth and skilled fingers.
She wasn’t eighteen. She wasn’t free to indulge herself, to throw herself open like a book. She had Sam to think about.
“You look good,” she said, because the silence was spreading and someone had to say something.
For a fraction of a second—she might have missed it if she hadn’t been so hyperalert—he looked down at his leg. Then back up at her face, his eyes empty.
He didn’t say it back. You look good, too, Mira. She hated herself for wishing he had.
She had no idea what to say next. How to make small talk with a man who was all the things he was to her: a summer fling gone wrong, the hottest not-sex she’d ever had, the father of her child. How to make small talk with someone who so obviously wanted nothing to do with her.
“You look like you’re doing great.”
The look in his eyes, pure scorn, told her how absurd he thought that was. “I do all right.”
Every word she said that was not I have a son, and he’s your son, too felt like a lie. Like postponing the inevitable. But could she just … do it? In the waiting room of the physical therapist’s office? They were the only two people here, but surely there was a better time and place. Someplace quiet, someplace private, someplace … intimate.
But how would she get him alone like that? How would she explain why she needed to?
So many times, she had imagined a chance meeting, this opportunity to finally say, Jake, I have something to tell you. You might want to sit down.
Well, here he was. Sitting.
“That’s my son,” she said, pointing through the window. “Sam.”
Her heart pounded so hard she thought she’d be sick.
She waited for a flicker of recognition, something to indicate he’d made the connection, but there was nothing. Only his blank, grim expression. Was he still in there somewhere, behind that mask? Was it the loss of his leg that had made him like this, or what he’d seen in the war? She’d read somewhere that the army was requiring longer and longer commitments from soldiers, pushing them to the outside limit of what they could endure, physically and mentally. Who knew how damaged he was?
Who knew if he was someone she would choose to let her child spend time with, let alone love?
“Could I—could we—get coffee?”
Maybe if she sat down with him, if they could talk, if she could find out who he was and where he’d been.
“What?” he asked. “Chat and catch up?”
“Yes. Chat and catch up.”
“I fill you in on what it’s like to be down a limb?”
He was angry. Not at her, or at least not at her for any good reason. At his fate, at the world. And she couldn’t blame him for that. She couldn’t imagine—couldn’t fathom—what it would be like to have to relearn everything, to start from scratch with walking and balance and all the things she took for granted.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not much for coffee talk these days.”
“Ms. Shipley?” The physical therapist, Joanne, had poked her head into the waiting room. “I want to go over Sam’s homework with you.”
Okay, what did she do now? Walk away? Despite his curtness, she couldn’t imagine turning her back on him and writing him off. Sam’s father.
If she walked away now, if she let him walk away now, she’d have no way to get in touch with him. It would be as good as if they’d never had this chance meeting.
Was that what she wanted?
She’d promised herself. If I ever see him again, I will tell him he’s Sam’s father.
“Sure. Can you hang on a second?” she asked Joanne. “I’ll be right there.”
“No problem. I’ll show Sam one more thing on the ball while we wait for you.” Joanne disappeared again.
“Just—please,” she said to Jake. “Coffee, a drink—I don’t care. I’d just like us to get a chance to talk.”
“Do we have something to talk about?”
His words found their way into her old, half-healed hurt. The part of her that had tried for months—years—to understand how she could have been so wrong about what he felt for her.
But there was no room for pride now, no room to care if he thought she was desperate or throwing herself at him, hoping for a reprise of the good old times. She just didn’t want to lose this thread, this chance. She would not let her cowardice cheat Sam out of the chance to have a father in his life.
“Yes,” she said. “I have to tell you something I think you’ll want to hear.”
Nothing. No curiosity, no glimmer of the old Jake. It was like he wasn’t in there at all.
“Jake?” The receptionist had poked her head into the waiting area. “Linda says you can head back there as soon as you’re ready, and she’ll be with you in two.”
Jake used the arms of his chair to pull himself to his feet and shook his head at Mira. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
He crossed the room, then paused and turned back. “Nice to see you, Mira.”
“Wait. Wait.” Her heart pounded like crazy.
He hesitated.
Half a room separated them. She crossed the space and stood next to him. “Sam. He’s seven.” Her voice had slid to a whisper.
“Good age,” Jake said.
Was he being deliberately dense? Subtlety wasn’t going to do it; she’d have to blurt it out. After all these years, it was no easier to say the words. Her heart beat hard, her stomach clenched tight, her hands and feet were numb. When she opened her mouth, she didn’t say what she’d meant to say.
“I should have called or written right away, once I knew, but they said—everyone said—that I should wait. Till you were home on leave.”
Something moved behind his eyes
, just enough of a shift that she was sure he heard the urgency in her voice.
They—mainly her friend Polly, who had a brother in the army—had said it would be dangerous to give the news of her pregnancy when he was deployed. That he’d lose his focus and get himself killed.
“And you’d said you’d be home for leave in six months, so I waited, and then I called. Did you get my texts and messages?”
He shook his head. Slowly, his eyes wary.
“I didn’t know how to find you, other than the cell number. I tried to find your parents, but—”
“Their number was unlisted.”
“I kept thinking you’d get in touch. That you’d see the texts and messages, and then you didn’t, and then—I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Sam’s yours.”
If she’d expected a reaction, if she’d expected drama, she would have been thoroughly disappointed. His jaw might have tightened a notch, but otherwise, she couldn’t see any evidence that he was moved by her revelation. Her life might have been remade from scratch, but she could have told him there was a donut shop opening in town, for all the emotion he’d showed.
Just when she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to say anything at all, he said, “We didn’t have sex.”
Oh, fuck you, dude.
In all her fantasies about what it would be like to tell Jake that he had a son, he had never denied responsibility. It had never crossed her mind that he would deny responsibility. She guessed that made her ridiculously naive.
“We did have sex.” The word “sex” sounded particularly loud in the empty waiting room. Mira looked over at the receptionist, but she was making calls with a headset on. “Just because it was bad sex doesn’t mean it wasn’t sex.”
That got more reaction from him than the news that Sam was his son. She saw a muscle jump in his jaw. Just telling it like it is, baby denier.
“I wore a condom.”
“You put it on too late. I was shocked, too, believe me. My OB said the odds are low, but it definitely happens. Look. I’m telling you Sam’s yours because I thought you might want to know. I thought you might want to know that there was a person walking around on this earth with half your DNA, doing stuff he probably inherited from you. For all I know he got all the asthma and allergies from your side of the family, because he sure as hell didn’t get them from mine. But whatever. We don’t need anything from you. We’ve done perfectly fine without you up to this point. I didn’t tell you so you could argue with me about whether he’s really yours.”
