by Mia Ford
As he storms out, and he slams the door behind him, the tears flood from my eyes. I fall to the ground and I cry and cry and cry. I think I must leak all the water in my entire body out of my eyes. I can barely control myself, my shoulders shake, the bones in my body rack, I’m a freaking state.
Just as it was finally getting started with me and Kade, it got shattered all over again. Fate has leapt back in and destroyed us again. Only this time it’s for good. If Kade doesn’t want Logan, then he doesn’t want me either. We’re done. I cannot believe it, I can’t believe that he has turned us both away, I never thought that he would be that sort of man. He’s surprised me with his behavior, but I suppose I have with mine as well. We’ve both turned out to be not the people we were supposed to be which is a shame. The only person who is going to be hurt in all of this is Logan. He doesn’t deserve either of us to be such terrible people. He’s such a sweetheart, he deserves the best in life and he doesn’t have it from either of us.
Oh God, I feel so terrible for my boy.
31
Kade
The fact that my suspicion was correct eats me up, I can barely stand it. My head churns with the information. I get Lucie’s explanation, but it still stings a lot. I wasn’t good enough for her back then, she didn’t tell me because she didn’t think that I could handle it, and she didn’t tell me now either. She obviously still doesn’t think that I’m the sort of man who can hack being a father. That utterly sickens me.
I stare at my house, knowing that I should go back there to fill my mom in. I’m sure she’s on the edge of her seat, needing to know the truth about her grandchild’s identity but I cannot face her yet. I just can’t hack the idea od seeing her and telling her that we’ve all lost out on four long years. It may even be worse for her because she’s been around and not known or maybe it’s better because at least she saw him grow up.
Fuck this, I think with a desperate shake of my head, Fuck all of this. Fuck everything…
I can’t handle it, I feel the old me creeping back up, the version of myself I pushed back a long time ago. I need to block life out, I need to just forget, I need to not be me, so I turn my back on my house and I head towards the bar instead. There’s one not too far from here at all and I know that I won’t be able to chill out until I feel that familiar sensation of alcohol sliding down my throat. I don’t even need something expensive, anything will do by this point. As long as it shuts off my racing brain it’s all good. I have to be okay by Monday morning, that’s it. I have all of tomorrow to recover from whatever mistakes I make.
I shove my hands into my pockets and I walk towards the bar with my head on the ground. I don’t want anyone to stop my right now, there isn’t a single face in the world that I want to see right now. The one person that I usually want to hang around with all the time is the person who’s made me feel this way.
Urgh, Lucie, I think with angry burning hot tears in my eyes. How could you do this to me?
I step foot into the bar and I inhale the musky scent of alcohol, loving the way it floods me with relief. This is exactly where I need to be right now. I move towards the bar and I make myself smile at the guy working behind there. “A beer, please,” I grumble pitifully. “I don’t care what. Anything, whatever.”
“Coming right up, buddy,” he replies in an easy going tone. At least this isn’t someone I know. It means I don’t have to talk. I am really not in the mood for small talk, not even to be polite. “Here you are.”
I hand him some cash and take a giant swig of the booze. As it slides down my throat I start to realize that maybe I’m not upset with Lucie like that. I mean I am, I do think that she should have told me a lot sooner, but really, I’m angry at myself. If I hadn’t been such a crappy, immature person, then she would have told me. If I hadn’t been so cold to her on the day when she came to see me in my room then maybe things could have been different. If I hadn’t been kicked out of college then I definitely would have found out…
The thought of Lucie, alone, finding out that information makes me shudder. As hard as this is for me, it must have been so challenging for her. Then she’s raised our son alone, never telling anyone about my identity. Instead of making me look bad, she made herself look bad. All of our families thought that she’d had some sordid affair with someone that she had to keep a secret. Her mother must have gone insane.
And maybe she did plan to tell me today. It makes sense that she would wait, I suppose, until she knows for sure that I’m going to stick around. There isn’t any point in stirring up all of our lives, Logan’s life, if I’m just going to vanish again. Not that I will, being a father actually means something to me.
My God, I’m a father and I’m sitting in a bar, planning to drink the entire day away. That’s pathetic, I have a lot of lost time to catch up on, Yet here I am, with only a glass of amber liquid for company…
Still, even knowing that Lucie has probably been through, thinking about my son who I now know exists, even considering my mother isn’t enough to drag me from this bar stool. My head is screaming at me to stop acting like an idiot, but my body doesn’t want to hear it. It has a plan to forget and that’s all it wants to do. I should be stronger, much stronger, and I should listen to the sensible side of myself, but I can’t.
“Another one, please,” I demand towards the bar tender. “And a shot of whiskey too. Keep them coming.”
“Shall I open you a tab?” he asks, sensing what sort of customer I’m going to be today.
“Yep, that’s a good plan.” I drain the glass and bang it down. “I’m going to be here for a long time.”
I half expect him to ask me why, but thankfully he doesn’t. I can keep my issues inside until I’ve killed to many brain cells off. Then, if I can’t hack being around my family I’ll get a motel for the night, sleep in peace until I’ve somehow managed to get myself in a much better frame of mind. If that’s even possible…
* * *
At some point during the day – or maybe evening by this point, I’m not longer sure of the time and I can’t see straight enough to tell – the bar has become jam packed. There are bodies everywhere, almost crushing together with the need to get to the bar as soon as they can. I don’t mind it actually; the noise and the constant distractions are turning off the buzzing in my brain much quicker than the booze.
Maybe this is what I should have been searching for instead of alcohol… but the beer is helping me out a whole lot, I have to say. It has me warm and fuzzy inside rather than cold and incredibly sad.
“Hey there, champ,” a woman with a ‘bride to be’ sash draped across her demands my attention.
“Oh… hi…” I don’t know what she wants, but I’m still not quite in the frame of mind for small talk.
“So, as you can tell, it’s my bachelorette party.” She wiggles, showing off her sash and what I can now see is one of those tacky veils on her head. “And one of my dares is to cheer up the unhappiest man in the bar.”
“Oh yeah?” I do what I can to make myself sound interested. “And who is that exactly?”
“You, silly.” She smacks me hard on the shoulder. “So, do you want to kiss, or something?”
“Aren’t you getting married?” I ask her wryly. “Surely that’s out of the question.”
She gives me a one shouldered shrug. “I’m still a free woman legally until tomorrow, so it’s okay.”
Right, that doesn’t really sit well with me. If she’s committed to someone, even if they aren’t married just yet she is still his and I’m sure she wouldn’t like it if he went around kissing other women. But, I can’t be bothered to throw a moral lecture her way when I’m in such a dumb mess myself.
“I’m fine, thank you for the offer though. A kiss won’t solve my problems.”
“No?” She doesn’t take the hint at all and she sits beside me. “Why? What is your problem? It involves a woman, you don’t need to tell me that much. It’s written all over your face.”
“Is it that obvious?” I chuckle. “Am I one of those saps who everyone feels sorry for?”
Yeah, you kinda are.” Her brash attitude stuns me, but probably in a good way. I think I might need a shock. “But that’s okay, I think we’ve all been that person from time to time. What’s going on?”
I sigh, still not wanting to talk to talk to anyone. But at the same time, I kind of want to get a little bit of this off my chest. Maybe it’s the booze talking, but I want to unload on this stranger. She’s about to get married, she understands love – sort of, I mean she did offer to kiss me a moment ago – and she’s friendly.
“What do you do when love isn’t enough?” I ask her. “I mean, like I love this woman. I’ve been in love with her for years, and I think she has me as well. She’s loved me for even longer than I’ve loved her, I think, but she’s always been smart like that, way more switched on that me.” I let out a self deprecating laugh. “But she kept something from me. Something huge, something that affects my whole life. How do you forgive something like that?” I toss my hands up in the air in despair. “You can’t forgive, can you?”
“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” she replied scathingly. “Of course you can. You said this girl is smart, didn’t you? So, if she’s that clever then she obviously did it for a good reason. Did you think about that?”
“I did.” I nod enthusiastically, glad to have a positive answer to something. “I really did.”
“Yeah, so you know. You know what you need to do. Whatever is going on, sitting in a bar with a face like thunder isn’t going to fix it.” She pats me on the back. “Just call her, make it right.” For the first time since I set foot in this bar, a genuine smile crosses my face and the bride to be cheers. “Yeah, look girls I made him smile and I didn’t even have to kiss him. You bitches all owe me drinks.” Just as I’m about to lose hope and give up on everything that she just said to me, she pats me on the back and leans down to whisper only for me. “Seriously, call her. You’ll regret it forever if you don’t. the path of love never runs smooth.”
She’s right, I know she is. I shouldn’t give up everything out of anger. If I don’t contact Lucie now then I might lose the opportunity to be a dad to Logan. That’s something I’ll definitely regret. My pride isn’t worth losing everything for. I think I can get over what has happened, especially if I make the most of now. I might have missed out on a lot, but I might’ve missed out on it anyway. I might have left to go abroad anyway. In a way, Lucie took that guilt away from me because she made the decision for me, she took on the burden.
I do want to call her, I need to speak to her, so I grab my cell phone out of my pocket and I scroll through the numbers. It takes me a while, I think I might be a little more intoxicated than I first thought, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I finally know what’s right. I have finally made a choice and this time it’s definitely the right one. If I don’t forgive, I’ll be bitter and twisted forever, and if I do I can start again, have a chance. I can be the person that Lucie and Logan need me to be.
32
Lucie
Ring, ring… ring, ring… ring, ring…
I stare at the phone screen, trying to work up the courage to answer the call. This is the last person that I thought I would hear from today, so this call is absolutely terrifying. After everything that happened earlier, I thought that we were set with where we stood on things, but now… well, now I’m not so sure.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Mom asks me curiously while making a cup of tea. “Who is it?”
I stare up at her through my eyelashes with wide, panicked eyes. “It’s him, I whisper. “Kade.”
“Oh…” She doesn’t know what to say either, which is probably because I explained the entire argument to her just after it happened. She knows how furious Kade is about me keeping the secret. “I see…”
“What should I do?” I beg her. “Should I answer? What if he yells at me some more?”
“He might do,” she replies, sounding as helpless as I feel. “But he might be calling to apologize. As scary as it is, I suppose you do owe him the chance to say whatever he needs to say. Even if you don’t like it.”
I nod, agreeing with her even if I really don’t want to and I head towards the front door. I need to be alone when I take this call, since I don’t know what I’m going to face. I need the privacy of outside. I don’t hit the answer button until the cold air washes over me and it makes me absolutely wide awake.
“He… hello?” I stammer. At first, I don’t hear anything but a lot of background noise. “Hello?”
“Hello? Lucie? Is that… that you?” My heart sinks, he sounds wasted. I’ve been getting myself all sad and worked up all day and he’s been out partying like he used to all the time. “I need to talk to you.”
As he hiccups, I roll my eyes. I thought that he’d changed, that was the whole point of this. He was supposed to be more grown up and better. It seems that I’ve been duped again, led o believe that he’s a much better man and it was all to get me into bed again. As soon as it started to get heavy, he reverted to the real him.
“Don’t you think that’s something that we should do in the morning? When you are sober…”
“Oh no, don’t be like that. I’m not… erm, I am not in the place where I will still be a dick. I get… understand what I did earlier was stupid. I should have…” He trails off, and for a moment I think he’s gone. “Oh, yeah, sorry, Lucie, what was I talking about then? Something I’m supposed to have done, right?”
“Kade, this isn’t something that we should be talking about while you’re drunk in a bar. This is a child’s life that we’re talking about here. You might not like what I’ve done, but I only wanted to protect him.”
“You don’t understand.” Clearly the words that I just spoke didn’t go in at all. He seems to be at that drunken stage where things just wash over you. “I meant it when I said that I love you.”
I slide my eyes closed, unable to deal with that part of things right now. I need to work out what his intensions are with Logan first. His love for me can’t be the most important thing anymore. I might like it to be, but it isn’t. It’s all about my son. The sooner he realizes that, the better for all of us.
“This isn’t about that, though, is it?” I let one single tear roll down my cheek. An intense feeling of sadness threatens to destroy me. “And if you think it is then I really can’t speak to you because I have another priority.”
“No, I know, this is about… this is about Logan, I know that, of course I know that. It’s just… it isn’t easy to find out like this and I know it must have been hard for you too, but you got to be there from the start.”
“This needs to be something that we talk about face to face and while you are sober…”
I’m disappointed that he’s acted in this way and that he’s contacted me to let me know that he’s being an idiot. It isn’t right. Surely, he understands, even through his intoxicated brain that this isn’t right. Is he doing it to upset me further? To let me know how little he respects and cares about me? I don’t get it.
“No, no, I need to talk about it now,” he replies breezily. “I didn’t get to say what I wanted to before.”
“You said plenty, thank you very much,” I say bluntly. “I think you made your feelings very clear.”
“Yeah, okay, so I wasn’t the best.” He shrugs as if this makes it okay. “I was a bit thick, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t get to talk now, does it? I should still get to… get to… get to…”
He’s forgotten where he’s going with this, again. This conversation is getting a little tiresome if I’m honest. I already know that it can’t end up in a positive place, so I don’t know why I keep letting it happen. I need to find a way to politely put a stop to it so that we can have a much more civil conversation tomorrow.
“If you would like to come around in the morning, then I will have all the time you like…”
>
“I won’t be there tomorrow.” His tone is a bit bratty. “I’m staying in a motel tonight.”
I screw up my nose in confusion. “A motel? Why? Who with?” I suppose it isn’t really any of my business, I’m the one who’s done all the lying here, but I still want to know. A lot depends on it.
“Who with? I don’t know, probably by myself. It isn’t like I get a lot of offers these days.”
“Offers?” I actually feel a bit sick at his words. Is he actually being serious? He’s making comments about his lack of sex life while out drinking and staying in a motel God knows where. Talk about no respect.
“Oh, I don’t know, you know what I mean, don’t you? Yeah, you know.” I don’t know, but I’m not in the mood to get into an in depth conversation with him about this. All I really want to do is get him off the phone. “Anyway, I’m going to keep away while my head is all a mess, but then I’ll come and see Logan…”
“Woah, wait.” I need to put a stop to this before he ends up doing something really dumb. “You can’t come and see Logan, not until we’ve sorted this out. I need to know that you’re not going to dip in and out of his life. When you come into it, I want to know that it’s going to be forever. It has to be done right.”
My forehead burns with anger. I’m hot headed and crazy, but Kade needs to stop acting like this. He cannot fuck with a child’s life at whim. He can feel however he wants about me, but it’s different with Logan.
“You shouldn’t keep me away from him.” His tone turns grave now. It strikes a horrible coldness into my heart. “Now that I know about him, I want to be in his life. I want to be… hold on a moment.”
He talks to someone and I soon notice that it’s a woman’s voice. Alone, in a motel, my ass. He really is back to his old tricks, he’s out with other women, moving on as quickly from me like he does every single time. I should have known that he hasn’t changed. I really wish that I’d kept my mouth shut. As she giggles and he talks to her in what sounds like a muffled, flirty voice, my anger bursts off the scale. Again, I’m the one left breaking my heart over him, and again, he doesn’t give a shit at all.
