by Keeland, Vi
“Rocco.”
“Really? I love that. Where does it come from?”
“My grandfather.”
“Cool name.”
He moved the sheet to gaze at my naked body. I loved the way he looked at me.
Sebastian seemed like he was pondering something. “You know, the fact that I didn’t think to stop when we were having sex is really telling. I’m usually so responsible. And I think part of why I slipped is that I’m just so damn comfortable with you.” He blew out a breath. “But I’m sorry I didn’t check that it was okay with you first.”
“I would’ve stopped you if I was worried. But if you want . . . we can just forego condoms now that you know.” I winked.
“I think I’d like that . . . a little too much.” His eyes then landed on a scar on my abdomen. It was the first time he seemed to notice it. Sebastian traced his finger along it. “What’s this?”
I looked down at myself. My heart raced a little because telling this story might lead to me admitting other things.
“My appendix burst when I was a teenager. I had to have an emergency surgery.”
“Shit. That must have been scary.”
“It really was. It actually . . . caused some complications for me.”
A look of concern crossed his face. “How so?”
“It’s a bit of a long story.”
“I have time,” he said as he gripped my hip and pulled me toward him.
I wasn’t sure if it was too early in our relationship to be bringing it up. But this was the perfect window to talk about it. His not knowing had actually been eating away at me a little bit. I didn’t think he would judge me. But regardless, I still felt like it was something that I needed to tell him. Since we were on the subject, there was probably no better time than the present.
I took a deep breath in. “A few years after my appendix burst, I started experiencing pain. I was in my late teens. I went to the doctor to get it checked out, and when they examined me, it turned out I had scar tissue blocking my fallopian tubes as a result of the appendix rupture. That meant that basically down the line, I might have trouble getting pregnant.”
His expression darkened. “They couldn’t do anything for you?”
“Well, I ended up getting surgery to repair them, but they couldn’t remove all the scar tissue, so there are no guarantees. I was told that in the future, they could become blocked again. It’s possible that I won’t have a problem, but at the time, I really became quite worried that maybe I wouldn’t have any luck getting pregnant someday when I was ready. My doctor knew how anxious it was making me. So she encouraged me to consider having some of my eggs harvested. That way, if one day I reached a point where I couldn’t conceive naturally, I would have young, healthy eggs for IVF.”
Sebastian blinked a few times to process that information. “So you froze some of your eggs . . .”
“Yes. But . . .” Here was the part I needed to brace myself for. It was something I’d never told anyone I’d dated before. “Shortly before the procedure, I started to think about everything that my mother went through . . . losing her ability to conceive from the cancer and struggling to adopt. It all worked out in the end, because she got me. But not everyone is as lucky as we were. I’d always wanted to do something to honor her. So an idea came to me . . . since I was going in for the harvesting-eggs procedure anyway.” I swallowed and continued. “My doctor expected to get a good amount of eggs because I was young and healthy. I wondered if that might be my only opportunity to donate some to a family in need, in honor of my mother.”
His eyes slowly widened. I couldn’t gauge what he was thinking.
So I continued. “It made me feel like I was not only doing something to protect my future fertility but to also help someone.”
Sebastian blinked a few times. “Wow. That’s . . . certainly an honorable decision for someone so young to have made.”
“Yeah. I mean . . . I didn’t want to ever have to do it again. I figured since I was going through all the trouble, if there was ever a time to make that kind of decision, that was it. So I bit the bullet.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I don’t even know why I was so compelled to admit this to you now. It’s just . . . you asked me about the scar, and I felt like this was the right time to let you know.” I looked into his eyes. “I hope you don’t think any differently of me because of my decision.”
The seconds that passed where he didn’t immediately say anything were excruciating.
Then he cupped my face. “I would never judge you for making a decision that helped someone else. Don’t ever think that. It’s definitely . . . surprising . . . but not something that makes me think any differently of you, Sadie. If anything, I admire you even more for doing that.”
I let out a long, relieved breath. Not sure why I expected that to be harder than it was. I supposed I didn’t have to admit anything to him at all, and he would have never known about that decision I made all those years ago. But deep down, I think it would have bothered me to not know how he might have felt about it or whether he would have looked at me differently.
“So . . . these eggs . . . ,” he asked. “Did they go to different people?”
“No. I didn’t want that. I wanted them to all go to one person in need—a cancer survivor like my mother. And I didn’t want to know who that person was. It was important to me that there be no contact at all. I just wanted to help someone. So I made sure it was all anonymous. To this day, I have no idea whether anything took . . . whether there was a baby who came from it.”
“Wow. Okay.” He squeezed my side. “Thank you for opening up to me. I know you didn’t have to do that.” Then he stared off for a bit.
We lay in a sort of awkward silence after my admission—until Sebastian got out of bed abruptly and said, “How about I order us some lunch?”
I sat up against the headboard. “That sounds great.”
“Why don’t you take a hot shower? I’ll go pick something up so that it’s ready for when you get out.”
Things were seeming brighter by the second. I smiled and lifted myself off the bed. “Okay.”
By the time I got out of the long shower, though, while the hot Thai food was waiting in containers on the table, Sebastian made an unexpected announcement.
He looked upset. “I have to head to the restaurant. The chef called in sick and the substitute has never worked with us before. I have to make sure he knows what he’s doing, oversee things.”
“Oh no. Does that happen often?”
“Only a few times before. It always works out in the end, but it’s nerve-racking.”
This sucked.
“Okay . . . um, well . . . can I do anything?”
“Birdie isn’t supposed to be home for a while. But you can hang out here or head home. Whatever you prefer.”
“Will you let me know if you need me to head back here for her or something if you can’t make it back in time for her tomorrow?”
“Absolutely. Thank you for offering to do that.”
After he left, I couldn’t help wondering if there was more to his departure than the story he had given me. I knew that was probably ridiculous paranoia. It just seemed like the entire mood changed after I admitted to him that I’d donated my eggs. I could see how that might freak someone out. I remember watching stories on the news about sperm donors whose children came to find them years later. One guy had, like, twenty kids. My situation was different, of course. I didn’t do it for money. It was to honor my mother and help one family in need. But still, maybe he’d had some sort of a delayed reaction to my admission.
Anyway, I was probably reading into it too much. I tried to put it out of my mind for the rest of the day.
CHAPTER 25
SEBASTIAN
I was being ridiculous.
Right?
To suspect such a thing would be absolutely crazy.
It had honestly taken a while for my mind to conjure up the wild theory that
Sadie’s news brought about. First, it shocked me to hear what she’d been through, how scared she’d been, and how it led her to make that very bold decision to harvest her eggs at such a young age. But it wasn’t until she mentioned the egg donation that the alarms started going off inside me.
It was hard to fathom where my mind was going with this. And yet . . . how could it not? How could I not wonder? There was a very good chance that all of this was just one big coincidence. But what if it wasn’t?
Pulling on my hair as I sat alone in a café around the corner from Bianco’s, I honestly had no idea what to do. I’d felt bad lying to her about the situation at the restaurant, but I had to be alone to process this. She would have definitely suspected something in my behavior if I’d stuck around.
Think.
Think.
Think.
Okay. When we had been given the information for our donor, all they gave us was a profile of her looks, health, and general background. But . . . they’d also told us that our eggs came from a woman who had donated them at no cost to help another family. I suppose that could be a coincidence, too. But the articles. Why did Amanda have them? And how could she even have found out the donor’s name? The process was supposedly completely anonymous. And why not tell me if she somehow found out? And why save the articles and not do anything else about it? What was the benefit in that?
Maybe Amanda just liked those articles.
Maybe this was all one big coincidence.
Maybe I really needed to let this whole thing go.
Forget I even thought it in the first place. But how? How could I just move on from this without knowing for certain if there’s any correlation?
What if Sadie ended up being Birdie’s donor? Wasn’t that an intrusion on Sadie’s privacy? She didn’t intend to ever find out whom she had donated to. It wasn’t fair to bring this upon her. My God. This is so fucking crazy.
Burning up, I took off my jacket and rested my head in my hands. There was no way I could broach the subject to Sadie without proof. I’d once mentioned that Amanda and I had some fertility help, but I had yet to even tell her that we’d had to use a donor egg because of the cancer treatments. Eventually, I would’ve told her and then what? She might have wondered the same thing I was wondering right now. Eventually, we’d have to face it.
If Amanda hadn’t saved those articles, none of this would even be happening. But it was too suspicious not to consider. There was no way I could alarm Sadie without proof, though. I needed to figure out a way to confirm things beforehand.
“Daddy, why are you looking at me funny?”
I hadn’t even realized I’d been staring so intently at my daughter as she sat across from me eating her pasta the following evening. All day, I’d been looking for signs of Sadie in her. They had the same blonde hair, but Birdie’s face, well . . . it was mine. She looked just like me, so her facial features weren’t going to be able to give me much of a clue.
“I’m just thinking about how beautiful you are,” I said. “And how lucky I am to have you. That’s all.”
“Oh.” She twirled her spaghetti. “When are we gonna see Sadie again?”
“Not tonight. But hopefully soon. Actually, Magdalene is coming over in a little while to babysit you so I can pay Sadie a visit.”
“Why can’t she come here?”
I had no good answer for that.
“We can do dinner some night this week here, okay?”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
Several minutes passed before she called me out again.
“Daddy . . .”
I blinked out of my daydream. “What, sweetie?”
“You’re looking at me funny again.”
I sighed. “I am, aren’t I?”
Not only was Birdie sensing that something was off, but I couldn’t risk fucking everything up with Sadie if all this worrying was in vain. Would I be staring at her like this, too? I needed to figure out a way to keep my cool with her tonight.
After Magdalene arrived, I headed over to Sadie’s apartment as fast as I could.
When she opened the door, I got the unexpected urge to pull her into my arms and just hold her. Because no matter what the truth was, I cared so much about this woman. I didn’t want her to end up feeling hurt or violated. Any decision she had made in the past was out of the goodness of her heart, and I knew that.
“What’s that for?”
Speaking into her neck, I said, “I was just thinking about how crazy I am about you. I also want to apologize for having to abruptly end our date yesterday.”
“You never have to apologize for something like that. You have so much going on. Honestly, I admire how you handle it all.”
Pulling back to look in her eyes, I said, “You know what, Sadie? I was handling it before you came along, going through the motions of life with little to look forward to for myself. Handling it all is so much easier when you have someone by your side, someone who brings you joy. Don’t ever doubt what you’ve brought into my life. I know we haven’t been together that long, but I haven’t been this happy in a very long time.”
She looked like she might cry. “You know you don’t have to say stuff like that to get in my pants, right?” She playfully smacked my shoulder. “Seriously, though, thank you for saying that. I feel so lucky to have met you. This is the first time in ages that I wouldn’t change a thing about my life.”
Cupping her face in my hands, I leaned in and took her mouth in mine and closed my eyes, cherishing every movement of our tongues, every taste. I didn’t want anything to change. Everything was perfect just the way it was, without anything happening to turn both our worlds upside down.
Impulsively lifting Sadie up, I carried her into her room and placed her on the bed. She reached over to my waist, undoing my buckle and throwing the belt to the side. My rigid cock sprang forward as I pushed my boxers down and lowered myself down to her. Within seconds, she’d spread her legs wide open for me and I was inside her.
Sex with Sadie was different each and every time. Sometimes it was rough, other times slow and sensual. This time was pure passion, a manifestation of the words I’d just admitted to her minutes earlier. The feel of her warm flesh against my bare cock as always was almost too much to bear. I lasted all of a few minutes before I lost control, emptying my cum inside her faster than I wanted.
“Shit. I’m sorry,” I said as I continued to move back and forth inside her.
It pleased me to feel her muscles tighten around my cock seconds later. There was nothing more beautiful than feeling her come all around me.
With my dick still buried inside her, I muttered against her neck, “What did I ever do before you?”
“I hope you never have to remember.” She smiled.
We held each other for a long time, and Sadie actually nodded off soon after that. She must have had a long day. My plan had been to return home by eleven, at which point I’d call an Uber to take Magdalene home.
It was 9:00 pm now, and I had no idea how long Sadie would be asleep. I knew this might be my only opportunity to do something I really needed to—as wrong as it felt and as much as I didn’t want to have to do it.
Slowly and carefully lifting myself from the bed, I walked over to her kitchen and looked around. I found a stash of Ziploc bags and took two out of the box.
Quietly venturing into her bathroom, I swiped her toothbrush before placing it into one of the bags. Opening the drawer below, I grabbed a wad of hair off her brush and placed it in the other bag. My understanding was that hair needed to be pulled from the root for DNA testing, so I doubted it would take but hoped that at least the toothbrush would suffice.
Jesus.
Am I really doing this?
I felt like a thief.
A piece of hair and a used toothbrush might not be of any monetary value, but what I’d done was stealing nonetheless—I’d stolen Sadie’s right to privacy. And I’d felt like shit since the moment I’d done it.
Standing in the post-office lobby, I hung my head as I leaned on the counter and blew out a shaky breath. I’d just mailed off the DNA testing samples I’d collected and couldn’t possibly walk home yet. My head pounded, my chest felt tight, and I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Normally, I’d take Motrin for a headache, but I didn’t deserve any relief. I was a piece of shit who deserved to feel like someone had chiseled into his temples.
Even though I’d been sick about what I’d done since yesterday, it still hadn’t stopped me from being the first one in line at the post office when it opened this morning.
When Sadie had told me about her egg donation, she’d said she never wanted to know who the recipients of her generosity were. In fact, she’d made sure the entire process was anonymous before going through with it. And for some reason, I didn’t think she’d ever had contact with her own birth parents. At least she’d never mentioned it. So I was pretty sure she didn’t want to know if she had children out there.
But I had to know.
Plus, what were the odds that Sadie was our donor? The fertility center had never even told us what state the person was from, only that she was a US citizen. There are over three hundred million people in this country. I’d have a better shot of winning the damn lottery. Sadie would probably think I’d lost my mind for even thinking it was a possibility—three hundred million people in the country, and my daughter just happens to write her biological mother a letter. The more I thought about it, the more I realized she’d probably be right—I was a little nutty for even considering it could happen.
The fucked-up thing was that I’d never once wondered about who my daughter’s biological mother might be before the other day, even though I knew she was out there somewhere. I’d thought a lot about that over the last forty-eight hours. Why was I so compelled to know now when I hadn’t been the least bit interested in knowing just a few days ago? The answer was obvious—because it was Sadie. But what was I hoping for with these results?
