Love, Exes, and Ohs

by Violet Duke

  “None of it, all of it.” He growled in frustration, and sidestepped to keep her from running away from him. “Please. Just let me explain—”

  “Did you know this entire time? Were you just thanking your lucky stars that I’d been too drunk, and that you’d looked nothing like,” she waved her hand over him, “this back then for me to remember you?” Her hands fisted. “Did you know when I was telling you about him? Pouring my soul out to you?!”

  “No. Absolutely not. I swear, Xoey. I didn’t know until that day I went to get your clothes and rollerblades for you from your apartment. That’s when I found your Bears jersey. My Bears jersey.”

  Utter confusion momentarily took away the fury. “But you’re a Packers fan.”

  “But as you well know already, my dad isn’t. That was his jersey. He got it as a gift from a client.”

  “Then why did you have it?”

  “Because Cody was a Bears fan just like my dad. And my dad had given him that jersey. After Cody’s funeral, my dad gave it to me to have something of Cody’s to keep close.”

  “Oh God, Isaac. I’m so sorry.” She stepped forward, and stopped, a war of emotions on her face.

  “Don’t you dare apologize, Xoey.”

  “I didn’t steal it, I swear. You had it in your closet. And I thought it had to be cheaper than your dress shirts. Also, it was long enough to cover—ˮ

  “Stop. It’s fine.”

  “But it was a memory of your brother.” She turned back to the door, unwilling to meet his eyes even though her voice was heavy with regret. “I’ll go get it. Nine years is a long time to be separated from something special to you.”

  “Please, Xoey. Stop. Forget the jersey. Let’s talk about this.”

  Finally, she brought her eyes up to meet his. Eyes filled with emotions he couldn’t describe really traced every line of his face, and then his standard t-shirt-over-jeans attire. “You look so different. The guy I remember from that night looked straight out of an investment banker’s dress code handbook.”

  “I donated all my suits. Don’t actually have a single one from that time of my life anymore.”

  She reached up, but pulled her hand back at the last second. “Your hair is lighter.”

  “Never used to go out in the sun before. Too busy trying to make a lot of money.”

  “It’s not gelled, either. And it’s longer.”

  He stared down into her soulful brown eyes. “I always liked it when you ran your fingers through my hair. So I’ve kept it this length ever since. And I dumped every last bottle of hair product when I quit my job as a banker.”

  “You’re bigger, too. Way more muscular.”

  Damn, he loved the way her eyes softened with appreciation, even through her anger.

  She shook her head. “Sorry. This is stupid.”

  “No it’s not. Continue, please. I want our memories to meet the reality. Because I have my list too. You…” He ran his eyes over every inch of her face. “You don’t look anything like I remember from that night either. But we’ll take turns. What else is different about me?”

  Her gaze tangled with his. “Your eyes. You were wearing glasses that night.”

  He nodded. “Glasses got in the way in the MMA ring.”

  Her lips tipped up at the corner a bit. “I kind of liked the glasses. They were sexy.”

  “Damn, now I wish I hadn’t done the laser surgery. I can go stare at a TV and damage my eyesight again,” he said in complete seriousness.

  Another hint of a smile had him returning one right back at her.

  “And that.” She pointed at his mouth. “That’s different, too. You didn’t smile that night. You were just serious and intense.”

  “I wasn’t happy back then.”

  With one more roaming stare over his face, she whispered, “Hello Mack.”

  He cringed. “That’s not me anymore.”

  “I know. And when it boils down to it, I liked Mack a lot, despite his job, his clothes, and his crunchy hair.”

  “So you liked Isaac.”

  “Yes. But I wanted to say hello to Mack…so I could tell him goodbye.”

  He reached for her but stopped when she flinched.

  Trying to convince himself that this wasn’t over between them, he threw a Hail Mary. “Did you become a Bears fan because of my jersey?”

  The tortured look on her face dissolved a little. “Yes. Sad, right?”

  “Adorable.”

  With a ragged sigh, she said, “Your turn. You said you had a list of my differences?”

  “I’ve actually had longer to compare the past you and the current you. I guess I just want to know why. Not that the shorter hair with all those highlights wasn’t sexy. But…it doesn’t seem like you. And I don’t know why you would cover those gorgeous eyes of yours and make them green.”

  “I was only twenty. It was my friend’s twenty-first birthday, and the entire group of us were supposed to take her out. They were all twenty-one except for me. So my friend’s sister lent me her I.D. We looked similar because I had short chin-length hair like she did. As for the highlights, I was up for trying anything so we highlighted the crap out of my hair a lot and I got a box of green contacts to match the eye color listed on the I.D.”

  Pain shot through him as he made a mental calculation he hadn’t until now. “You were only twenty when you gave birth to Blake.”

  “I gave birth a few weeks before my birthday.”

  “And instead of celebrating it up like your friend did…”

  “I was curled in a ball crying,” she said in a hoarse voice.

  “Xoey.” He ran right through all her red lights and cupped her face in his hands. “I would give anything to go back and undo the pain you went through.”

  * * * * *

  “YOU CAN’T. You can’t undo the one reason that started the avalanche: You didn’t want me.” Xoey closed her eyes and tried to think about anything but how good his hands felt. How much she wanted to sink into the comfort he was trying to provide.

  “Bullshit! I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you. I’ve never stopped wanting you, Xo. Even after you broke up with me. How can you possibly doubt how I feel about you—I’ve waited for you for over a year.”

  “And I’ve waited for you for over nine,” she cried out.

  His hands fell away from her face, torment darkening his hazel eyes to a dark pool of despair. “Tell me how I can fix this.”

  “I don’t know that you can. It’s all tangled together, wrapped up in a messy bundle.”

  “Do you believe me that I would’ve found you if I could’ve?”

  “No.”

  He jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “You think that low of me?”

  “Of course not. I know exactly how great you are, which is exactly why this hurts so much worse. I left you a note. I wasn’t too drunk to remember that, Isaac. I asked you to call me in that note.”

  “I remember the note, but babe, you didn’t sign it.”

  What? She could’ve sworn she had.

  “And how could I have called you? You didn’t leave your number on the note either.”

  “Because I’d already given you my number the night before.”

  Pure confusion looked back at her and for the first time in nine years, she wasn’t sure. She ran through the old, hazy memories again.

  “Did you give it to me or did you type it into my phone?”

  “I gave it to you.”

  “Xoey, I was so drunk I probably couldn’t have remembered my own number that night.”

  No. This wasn’t her fault. “You recited it back to me.”

  He looked off into space, as if he were trying to see that memory. “I didn’t have a lot of numbers in my phone. Mostly business contacts and the guys. I would’ve noticed if a woman’s number was in there. Did I punch in your name or did you?”

  “Isaac, we’re just splitting hairs now.”

  “Please. You have memories of tha
t night that I don’t. Please share them with me.”

  “You typed it in. So yes, there’s a possibility you could’ve input my name wrong. Hell, you could’ve even deleted it by accident. We’ll never know.”

  “I don’t remember any of this.” He looked back at her with dismay. Shoving his hand into his hair in frustration, he cursed under his breath. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been so friggin’ drunk that night—ˮ

  “Why were you?” she interrupted, needing to know. “I remember the month we met, and it wasn’t the anniversary of your brother’s death, or his birthday. So why were you so drunk?”

  “Because I’d been riding the end of a tailspin since Cody’s death.” He frowned sadly. “Did I mention that I’m the one who got him interested in bikes in the first place? That I’m the one who taught him how to ride, and I’m the one who’d decided we should go out riding that day.” A bitter grunt escaped him. “That was all me, but yet, I was the one who lived. He suffered and then he died, right before my eyes. And that was. All. Because. Of Me.”

  “No, Isaac, it was an accident.”

  “Which he wouldn’t have gotten into if not for me.” His pain-drenched eyes fell down to the ground. “That’s when I started drinking, and being a tool, basically—a lot like those friends you met at the house. But unlike them, I did it because I hated myself, hated life and all of existence in general. I did it to be numb on the weekends, just so I would forget that I was essentially a robot during the week. You actually helped me turn all that around. ”

  He turned his eyes back to her and shook his head with what looked like no small amount of regret. “After our one night, I realized that I’d hit rock bottom. Because I’d finally found a girl who I liked, who made me not want to be numb, and drunk. A girl who was special…and I couldn’t remember her name, couldn’t find her. We had a connection, and I blew it.”

  A connection.

  So he’d felt it too. She took comfort in that, at least. “So that’s when you started training and working in MMA.”

  “Well, sort of. I’d been unemployed for a while first, trying to find myself. I quit my job as an investment banker a week after our night together, and moved out of my buddies’ house a week after that.”

  She nodded in understanding. “And that’s why they told me you didn’t live with them or work with them. And the name part we already covered.” Sighing, she tilted her head and tried to assess if she saw her memories through different lenses now. “So you didn’t lie to me that night.”

  “Of course not. Baby, I’m sorry those assholes made you feel like that. Their admiration of effed up player practices was never one I shared with them.”

  Wondering why she was torturing herself, she went ahead and asked the question that had been burning in her mind since the moment she figured out who he was. “Would you have wanted the baby if you’d known about him back then? Would you have raised him with me?”

  “Yes.” His forehead fell to hers. “No force on earth could’ve kept me from you, or from our son.”

  Words she’d wanted to hear for nine long years hit her with a sharp pleasure-pain that felt almost too much to bear.

  “He was a good baby,” she whispered. “He used to do cartwheels in my tummy every morning, but he never kicked at night. He always let me sleep. I never had nausea or weird food cravings. And he grew just like the books said; I kept every ultrasound—in one of them, he was even sucking his thumb.”

  Even as she smiled at the memory, the tears fell. “I don’t remember the pain of the delivery at all, because it paled in comparison to the pain in my heart when I saw his face for the first time, lying there in my arms, and it hit me that I wouldn’t get to keep him. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I’d cried, wishing you could see him too. Because he was perfect. Our perfect little son.”

  Isaac looked as devastated as she felt.

  “Xo, I’m so sorry you have to give up our son. This was all my fault, and I’ll never forgive myself. If I’d known, I swear to you, I would’ve been by your side for every one of his cartwheels in your tummy, for his birth, and every milestone of his life.”

  “Don’t,” she uttered brokenly. “Don’t make it harder than it is. Don’t make me wish for things I can’t ever have.” She gazed at him, now seeing so many different men—the man she’d fallen in love with a year ago and the man she’d thought she hated nine years ago, her best friend and her first, Blake’s father and the man she had been falling even more deeply in love with for the past few weeks. “I think…I think I need some time, Isaac.”

  He stilled, and then growled. “No, I’m not losing you again, Xoey. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you as soon as I figured it out but I just didn’t want to hurt you anymore with the past, especially not with everything you were going through with Blake.”

  Suddenly, an extremely tardy realization occurred to her and she blinked up at him in utter empathy. “My God. This must’ve been so hard for you. The past few weeks…being his father and no one knowing.”

  He didn’t deny that.

  …Which compounded how chaotic the whole situation was.

  “I’ll talk to Darcy and we’ll figure out how we’re going to tell Blake.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “He’s your son, Isaac. I’m going to make sure you get to spend time with him.”

  “Why can’t we just spend time with him together?” he asked in a low tone, eyes studying her as if already knowing what her answer would be.

  “Isaac, you being my best friend isn’t going to change, no matter what happened in our past, or what we’re trying to juggle now. And you being Blake’s dad—that, I’ll make damn sure happens. But you and I dating…that just can’t work. Not right now. Maybe not ever.”

  He stared silently at her for long minutes, no doubt looking at the mirror-like reflection of pain in her eyes. Then he turned and left without another word.

  The very moment Isaac left her office, Xoey felt lost, more lost than she’d ever felt before in her life.

  In normal circumstances, this would be the sort of thing she’d talk to Isaac about.

  So it surprised her to no end who she ended up calling first.

  “Vivian? Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE NEXT DAY, Xoey went over to see Darcy as planned, not letting on that underneath the smile she was doggedly keeping on her face, she was a ragged mess.

  She still didn’t know how she was going to tell Blake about Isaac being his biological father.

  This whole situation was just insane.

  Surprisingly, Vivian had been the perfect person for her to talk to last night, mainly because she’d played devil’s advocate and asked Xoey if she thought her life would’ve ended up the same way had there not been a mix-up with her phone number, or if he’d been there at the house still when she’d gone over to tell him about the pregnancy.

  It wasn’t her own answer to that hypothetical question that surprised her, but rather, her feelings about it.

  But that was another analysis for another day.

  “Hey Darcy, you’re looking good today.”

  Seeing Darcy’s improved color helped to put a genuine smile on Xoey’s face as she sat down in the chair beside her hospital bed. It wasn’t just her coloring either, Darcy looked…almost serene. “Your pain level better today?”

  “It comes and goes. Today’s a good day.”

  “I’m glad.” She glanced at Darcy’s left arm before quickly looking away again, wanting to ask more questions, but didn’t know whether she should.

  Darcy, as if reading her mind, said simply, “I still can’t move my legs or my arms.”

  Pain for her friend lanced through her heart. “The doctors said these things take time.”

  “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Surprised at her serious tone, Xoey immediately became concerned. “Did they have a new prognosis for you?”
>
  “No, not a new one. But he did have more clarifications and insight.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I’ll live. And I won’t get worse. But I almost definitely won’t regain any feeling or movement in my legs. My arms, they said might start responding to rehab, but my fingers very likely never will.”

  “But before your second surgery, before the coma, you’d been able to move your right hand. Can’t that mean it’s possible?”

  “Maybe. But the odds are really slim. I’ve actually already talked to Vivian about what the doctors have concluded and that’s why I asked her to take Blake out for lunch so you and I could chat alone for a bit.”

  “Sure. Is there anything I can do? A friend of mine, Lia—you remember her, Blake loves her—has a gadget whiz for a brother who’s doing work on biofeedback rehab right now, I can ask him to talk to your—ˮ

  “That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” interrupted Darcy. “Sorry. There isn’t much time before Blake comes back and I wanted us to really talk about this.”

  Xoey just nodded then, wanting Darcy to get out whatever was on her mind.

  “I want you to regain custody of Blake.”

  For a second, Xoey was too stunned to speak.

  So Darcy kept talking. “My doctors have described what my future will look like with not just the injuries to my spine, and thus my limbs, but also the damage to my brain. I’ll be in constant care for the rest of my life, and the older I get, the worse my brain symptoms may become.”

  She sighed. “I want Blake to have a childhood. He lights up when he’s with you. But lately, he’s been so worried about me, and working so hard at being brave and positive that I feel like I’m stealing some of his childhood away. He’s a great kid and he deserves a great parent that can take care of him. I can’t, not without help.”

  “Darcy, you know I’ll help you in any way I can.”