Just For You

by Mia Ford

  Almost right away I reply, I don’t want anyone to think that’s the case. I would even prefer people to know the truth. ‘Oh no, that isn’t the case. I didn’t leave college because of Lucie! :)’

  I smile to myself and drop my phone on the sheets, but shockingly almost moments later, I hear it ping once more, a message from Rhiannon. I grab it eagerly wanting to know what will come next. I still don’t quite know where this is going to lead, I haven’t yet fully made up my mind one way or another.

  ‘Oops, sorry I’d had a bit to drink last night, I was out with some friends and I think I got all mixed up. That’s right, you didn’t leave because of Lucie. She left because of you. Dur! Haha.’

  Huh? I screw my nose up in confusion. Lucie didn’t leave because of me, she left because of the baby. I don’t know if she told her friends though about the baby, but they must have knows about the guy. I know that I should just leave it alone and stop digging, but I’m so close I can taste it.

  ‘I thought that she left quite a while after me? Because of some bad break up?’

  Urgh, I hate myself. I’m an idiot. Why am I doing this? What’s the problem with me? A sadness overcomes me as I stare at the screen, feeling like an absolutely asshole. This isn’t something I should be doing.

  ‘I know it’s been a fair few years, but I know one thing for sure. Lucie only had one bad break up and it was you.’ My heart sinks, my head spins. ‘I’m not being a douche, I know that we all made mistakes…’

  I can’t read anymore, I leap up from my bed and I race down the stairs to find someone, anyone who can help me with this. Luckily, my mom is sitting at the table with her morning cup of coffee clutched between her fingers. I race over to her and practically shake her as I try my hardest to get my words out.

  “Mom, mom, mom.” She looks stunned, which is hardly surprising. “I need to talk to you…”

  “What’s going on?” she gasps in a panic. “What is the matter with you, Kade?”

  “When did Lucie get back from college?” I can barely contain myself. “Like, how long after me?”

  “Erm?” She knots her eyebrows together. “I can’t really remember, why? What’s this all about?”

  “Mom, I need to know when she came back. Was it a long time after me or not?”

  Mom folds her arms across her chest and gives me a curious look. Why can’t she just see that what I really need is for her to just give me the answers that I so desperately need? Can’t she see how freaked I am?

  “What’s going on with you and Lucie? Because I saw you all playing in the yard last night…”

  “Yeah, we hung out. We played in the yard. Whatever.” I shake my head in dismay. “What I need to know, Mom, and this is very important, is when Lucie came back from college. How long after me?”

  “Erm?” She taps her chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know. She came back because she was pregnant…”

  “Yeah, I know that, but when? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?” I throw my hands up. “When?”

  “It wasn’t long. I can’t remember exactly when, why are you asking me this all of a sudden?”

  My head falls into my hands. I start to think about all the things that I haven’t noticed before. The look of Logan, the way that Lucie keeps going really strange every time I mention his father, the way that he behaves… even the fact that Lucie is, and always has been, a ‘good girl’ type. I don’t think she would be the sort to leap into bed with someone else so soon after me. I just can’t imagine it. But I can’t see her keeping something so huge from me either. She isn’t the sort. Well, as far as I know anyway.

  “Mom, I know you don’t understand, but I really need to know when. How can I find out?”

  “I don’t know, if you’ve forgotten me and your father were very wrapped up in trying to sort your life out. I know that there were some issues with the Smith family but I couldn’t concentrate too much on that…”

  “No, I know, I understand that.” Again, I’m the thing getting in my own damn way. “I’m sorry about all of that still. I guess I’m just trying to figure some things out.”

  “What, son?” Mom asks me curiously. “What are you trying to figure out? I want to help.”

  I decide to go to a different tact. “Mom, did you ever find anything out about Logan’s father?”

  “No, it’s something that no one knows. She wouldn’t even tell her own parents… why do you know?”

  She leans forward across the table, her eyes spiking with excitement. This seems to be something that she’s been trying to work out for years and now she might actually be able to crack that code. She won’t be happy when she does. If I’m right, and I’m not totally convinced that I am just yet, then she’s about to discover that she’s lived next door to her grandchild for years and never known. How will she take that?

  “Mom, I’m trying to work out who the father is, and I think I might know.”

  She purses her lips tightly together and she gives me a funny look. “I know that there must be something going on with you and Lucie at the moment, we’ve all seen it, but I don’t think you’ve got to start digging around. There must be a reason that Lucie doesn’t want anyone to know and I don’t think you should push it.”

  I can’t stand it anymore, I feel like the words are about to explode free from me. “Mom, me and Lucie had a… very short… fling.” Urgh, I hate calling it that, but I suppose it was. “In college, just before I left… that’s why I want to know how long it was after me that she came back. Okay?”

  I slump forward and rest my head on the table. I hate myself for being that person, and I’m also not very happy that I’m in this mess. Mom is going to crucify me when she clocks onto the truth.

  “So, what you’re trying to tell me…” Mom asks slowly. “Is that you and Lucie had a fling, back in college, presumably one where you didn’t used protection, and then you left… followed by her… and she was pregnant.” She sucks in a couple of panicked breaths. “Pregnant with Logan… by you.”

  “Well, I don’t know that for sure, that’s what I’m trying to work out right now.”

  Mom leaps up from the table and she runs from the room. I have no idea what she’s doing, so while I wait I pour myself a cup of coffee. I take a slow sip but I spit it out rapidly, unable to keep anything down. I’m really trying not to do anything rash right now which is so bloody difficult when my head is everywhere.

  I could be a father… Logan might be my child… I could have been a dad for four whole years…

  “Look.” Mom hands me a photo album which I open with confusion. “I didn’t notice it before but now that you’ve said it I can see the similarities. You and Logan… you as a kid. You’re exactly the same.”

  I glance through all the pictures, growing increasingly panicked for the moment. Mom is right. We do look really similar. We could be the same child. Me and Logan… when I said that me and Kade were practically the same, I didn’t know how much I meant it. But we are. We are exactly the same. It’s like looking at a mirror version of myself. He is mine, he’s mine, I’m his father. That’s just… I don’t know what it is.

  My chest gets tight, panic tears through my body, I almost can’t breathe. I clutch onto my chest, gasping, rasping. I think Mom is talking to me, words dance around my ears but none of them sink in. My brain buzzes far too loudly for anything to sink in. I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that I’m a dad and I didn’t know anything about it. She could have told me, I could’ve known all this time. My life could have been totally different. I could have been… well, I don’t know, I could’ve been a family man.

  “Son, you don’t know for sure yet…” Finally, my brain calms down enough for something to creep in. “You can’t jump to these conclusions until you’ve asked her.”

  “What do you think about this?” I pant at Mom. “If he does turn out to be mine?”

  She shrugs and gives me a funny look. “Mom’s only do things for their children that they th
ink is right. Maybe it’ll hurt me a little to learn that’s the case, but I know that Lucie will have her reasons.”

  I don’t know if I can be as forgiving as Mom, not right now. I feel like my blood is boiling. When I think about all the chances that Lucie has had to speak to me, over the last five years, and now since I’ve been back, and she hasn’t, I feel sick with rage. The only excuse is that I’ve somehow managed to get it all kinds of wrong. If I’m not Logan’s father that will be fine, but if I am…

  “We will have time to make up for all the lost time anyway,” Mom continues. “I would love to have him as a grandchild, he’s a great kid. Actually, maybe it would be a good thing to have…”

  “Mom, just stop.” I can’t listen to this. “Don’t get carried away, we don’t know anything yet. I need to speak to Lucie directly before we plan for anything. And that’s exactly what I intend to do right now.”

  I jump up and I storm from the room, needing to calm down this thumping sensation inside my entire body. Now the happiness has gone, but I still need to speak to Lucie. This time, I won’t leave until I find out the truth once and for all. I shouldn’t have dug around, but she’s got some damn explaining to do.

  30

  Lucie

  I don’t feel as good as I should this morning, I feel all off kilter. I know that it should be a good thing that me and Kade finally hooked up, but while this secret is still hanging over my head, I can’t relax. Today, somehow or another, I’m going to have to find a way to tell him and I’m sacred as hell.

  I watch Logan playing on the carpet as cartoons flicker on the television behind his head. My poor little boy is about to have his world shaken and he doesn’t even know it yet. Because once Kade knows, eventually I’m going to have to tell him as well. This is the father who has always been away on business. He likes Kade, sure, but I don’t know how he’s going to take that information. It’ll be a shock for sure.

  Knock, knock. I don’t even acknowledge the door, if it’s the post man then Mom will get it. I have my head filled with other stuff today. I have to work out how to reveal my biggest secret. Urgh.

  “Lucie?” Mom calls, forcing me to get up after all. “Lucie, can you come here please?”

  I move towards the front door to see Mom with an incredibly worried face. When I spot who’s behind her I can understand why. Kade is glowering with rage, which scares the shit out of me. Maybe he knows, maybe somehow someone has told him. Not that anyone knows, so that shouldn’t be possible.

  “Are you okay?” Mom mouths desperately at me. “Do you need me?”

  “Erm, Logan is in the living room…” I reply loudly. “If you don’t mind…”

  She leaves me and Kade behind and he continues to glower at me. This is bad, it’s really bad. I don’t like it one bit. I’m going to have to take this conversation far away from Logan. If this is what I fear it’s going to be, and I’m not going to get to do this in a calm and considered way, then we have to do it privately.

  “Do you want to come up to my bedroom? So, we can have a talk, or whatever?”

  He doesn’t answer me, but he follows me inside. We walk up the stairs in a thick stilted atmosphere, my heart racing painfully in my chest the entire time. I can feel the hate burning off of him hard. He definitely knows, he really does get it this time, which is utterly terrifying. It makes me all cold inside.

  Once inside my bedroom, I close the door behind us and I turn to face Kade. I fold my arms across my chest and I wait for him to yell at me. He doesn’t, but his face does turn a funny shade of red as the rage consumes him. It’s almost as if he’s so wrapped up in his anger that he doesn’t know how to let it out.

  “I’m sorry, Kade,” I try. “I never meant for you to find out like this, I didn’t want…”

  “So, it is true then?” he demands. “It’s true. You know if I didn’t reach out to Rhiannon then I never…”

  “Wait, stop! Rhiannon? Who do you mean by that? My friend from college? That’s so invasive…”

  “Well, you weren’t going to tell me!” He’s indignant, like he doesn’t get what he’s done.

  “I was going to tell you in the right way!” I explode. “In my own time. I know this is big news, but that’s why I wanted to do it right. I wanted to check that you really were more grown up now before I said…”

  “Oh, so you might not even have told me? I could still not know now? If you didn’t deem me good enough?”

  This isn’t going as I want it to or not, but right now I’m too fuming to care. He went behind my back and spoke to someone that I haven’t talked to in years instead of coming directly to me. Yes, he’s asked a bit, but not about himself. I never would have lied if he did. I couldn’t have done that to him.

  “Why did you ask Rhiannon? She doesn’t even know anything. She never knew I was pregnant.”

  “No, but she told me when you left and it wasn’t long after me and that was enough for me to start working stuff out.” He yanks his hands through his hair and gives me a desperate look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I tried.” I throw my hands in the air in despair. “I really did try to do so but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get hold of you, you were gone. You have already left the country by the time I found out, what could I do?”

  “You could have told me! There were ways. There were always ways. This is something that I would have wanted to know. Was I not good enough to find out? Yes, I was immature, but still.”

  “It wasn’t like that, I was trying to protect you, I wanted to protect Logan too. I was young myself.”

  “Argh!” he yells out in frustration. “I cannot believe this. I can’t believe that this is happening. Of all the things that I thought might happen in my life, I didn’t expect this. And I never thought it of you as well. I didn’t think that you would ever be the sort of person who would keep something like this a secret.” He gives me a look and it’s one of pure hate. He actually seems to despise me which makes me shudder. We’ve gone from telling each other that we’re in love, all the way to hate. “I can’t believe that you did this.”

  I suck in a breath, trying to find a way to explain. “Kade, I didn’t do it to be spiteful, I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t want to derail the path that your life had taken so I took it upon myself to tell no one. I was so young and it just seemed like the right choice at the time. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing for me to do, and if I made a mistake them I’m really, truly sorry. I never wanted to hurt anyone…”

  For a second, I think I might be about to get through to him, but then he explodes again.

  “But I’ve been back!” he shouts. “I’ve been back for ages. You could have told me.”

  “But like I said, I wanted to check. I wanted to know that this wasn’t going to turn into something horrible.”

  Tears fill my eyes at the same time they do his. This is not where I wanted this day to end up. This is all so very wrong. “We told each other that we love each other last night, and now I learn this.”

  “I was going to tell you today. That was my plan,” I insist, desperately wanting him to understand. “I’ve just been sitting downstairs working out how to tell you in a way that doesn’t cause… well this!”

  “That’s so convenient. Just as I’m calling you out on your behavior, you were going to tell me.”

  “I was, I swear.” I fall back onto the bed, wishing I could change everything. I want to go back to last night when everything was absolutely perfect. “I promise you, I wanted to tell you everything.”

  Kade paces the room, shaking his head every so often. I can see the frustration and the anger rolling off of him in waves. All I want to do is leap up and hold him, but I know that will send him over the edge. The way that he’s feeling right now will send him right over the edge. I have done the worst thing to him that anyone ever could. I can’t blame him for feeling like he does but I need him to understand.

  “Please, Kade,” I beg him. “Please try to
understand why. I didn’t want this to turn out like this. I just wanted to have a calm conversation about it. As far as I knew, you weren’t ever coming back. I didn’t think that you would. You were off travelling the world, doing goodness knows what… and back then, back when I found out, I was all messy myself. I didn’t know what to think. You know, I had a huge decision to make, I didn’t even know what to do about the baby that was growing inside of me, it was all so hard.”

  “But you knew,” he says, not letting me off the hook that easily. “You knew about Logan, you were given the choice. I didn’t know. My family didn’t know. We have a child in our midst and none of us knew.”

  I glance towards my bedroom door, really hoping that Logan can’t hear us, I don’t want him to find out in this way, but Kade seems to take my glance to mean something else. His shoulders hunch up around his ears.

  “Do you want me to go? Is that what this means?” The anger bubbles, I can see it inside of him. “You want the inconvenient ex who has just come back into your life to vanish? Then fine, I’ll go.”

  I leap up as he storms towards the door and I grab onto his arm. If I let him go now while things are so up in the air then I might not ever get the chance to speak to him again. I cannot leave it like this.

  “No, please, Kade. Don’t storm out. Let’s talk about this. Let’s discuss it properly.”

  He gives me the coldest look that anyone has ever given me before. The sad part is, I know that I deserve it. “Lucie, you lost the chance to speak to me about this a million and one times.”

  I fall back, hit words hitting me in the chest like bullets. He really does hate me now, and not only that but he knows and he doesn’t want to spend any more time with Logan. He doesn’t want to talk to his son, he doesn’t want to try and be a father, I guess this is my worst nightmare coming true. This is why I’ve kept it inside and I haven’t told him, because now me and Logan have both been rejected which is the worst thing ever. He doesn’t want either of us. The truth is now out and he doesn’t want to know. It’s the toughest pill that I have ever had to swallow, it sticks painfully in my throat, leaving me speechless.