He’d passed a couple of gyms between his apartment and Lizzie’s place. He could get some workouts in. Hell, he could walk down to Rainey Street, check things out. He was a little old for party streets, and was working nights when things would really get going, but there’d be good eats among the historical homes turned bars.
What he couldn’t seem to do that Saturday afternoon was get visions of Lizzie out of his mind. Or that...sense of her out of deeper parts of him. That sense...it was like she had some kind of power over him.
He couldn’t have that.
Couldn’t allow it. Or let himself get pulled under by it.
He’d just never have imagined how difficult it was to walk away from her.
Wealth came with privilege. And it came with detriment, too.
Which was why he had his two weeks away every year. And why he’d been so vulnerable to having the companionship of a woman who had no idea that he was rich.
Leaving the bar after an afternoon practice session on Saturday, he forced himself back to the hotel, rather than taking the walk back toward Lizzie’s that his body was ordering him to take.
Just to see...
He’d been honest with her, confessing his lies, but telling her how much he’d cared, too.
He got that she didn’t trust him. But if his leaving her with no way to contact him had bothered her that much, it meant she cared, too, right?
After his lies, he could see her being hesitant, perhaps wondering if he’d lied about other things with her, too. He could see her pulling back, but her sending him away...it wasn’t sitting right. In the first place, if he didn’t matter, if she was truly over “them,” what would it hurt to chat? She’d been in such a hurry to get rid of him.
But it wasn’t even her opposition to hanging out with him that was haunting him. What kept coming back to him, over and over throughout the day, was that odd look of fear that flashed in her eyes a time or two as they’d talked.
In all of his years, all of his relationships, Molly included, the one thing he’d never done was scare a woman. What on earth did she think she had to fear with him?
Carmela had said he’d messed her up. Lizzie had clearly been put out by him disconnecting the phone number he’d left her.
She’d had to have called it to know that.
Was it possible that she’d felt the same strong bond between them that his crazy self was telling him he’d felt? Did such a thing even exist outside the movies?
Had he broken her heart? Was that what she feared? Being hurt again?
Why had Carmela come to see him? What had she expected him to find?
Back at the hotel, his mind still reeled with questions. Almost to the point of obsession. He had to get her out of his system.
He had to know, to understand, what had really gone on between them, or not.
* * *
“So?” Carmela’s question shot at Lizzie from the direction of the couch as she came from the bedroom she shared with Stella, having left the baby sleeping in her Pack ’n Play for the fifteen to forty-five minutes she’d stay there.
There’d been no time to talk earlier that day. The second Carmela had pulled up, Lizzie had taken the keys from Carmela and left. She’d run her own errands, going across town to get toothpaste and other incidentals so that she had no chance of running into Nolan Fortune. She’d thought about just keeping right on driving, into the next town, the next state.
“So, what?” she asked now, not even trying to hide her defensiveness. Carmela had stabbed her in the back, going behind her back as she had. She wanted to stay mad about that.
Anger was easier than the other debilitating emotions that had been threatening to suffocate her on and off all day. Not the least of which was a desire to see Nolan again. To find out what parts of him were real. To find out if he’d really cared.
“What did Nolan say when you told him about Stella?”
“I didn’t tell him.” And now came the really hard part. “You had no right to send him here, Carm. Or really to go see him at all. Not to talk about me. Stella is my daughter. The choices made on her behalf are mine to make. Period.”
Every nerve in her body was shaking. She’d never talked to Carmela like that in her life and didn’t want to be doing so now. In fact, she wouldn’t have been if she didn’t feel like a rat trapped in a corner, fighting for the right to breathe.
Expecting to see shock, and possibly hurt, on her best friend’s face, telling herself she was ready for the fight, Lizzie was shocked when Carmela looked down at the architectural tome of a book she’d been reading, and said, “I know.”
The beautiful amber-haired woman turned those gray eyes back on Lizzie with contrition, not the authoritative stare Lizzie had been expecting. “That’s why I took her with me this morning,” she said. “That and because just being with her makes me feel good. But...I worried all last night, and knew that I couldn’t just let you open the door to him with Stella right there.”
Lizzie sat down in the corner of the couch, turning toward her friend. “You could have told me this morning that you’d invited him over and let me decide whether or not to be here.”
Carmela nodded, her brow furrowed. “I know. I thought about that, too. I just really thought, once you saw him, or he saw you, things would work out. I really thought that, deep down, you wanted to see him. Until you took Stella and left like that. I’ve been sick ever since. Please forgive me, Liz? It’s just... I care so much...for both you and the baby. I see how much you’re struggling—to pay bills, to find energy some days—and...it’s not right. The guy might be a starving artist, but he should at least be helping you pay some of her expenses. How are you ever going to get ahead, or find happiness, if you’re always running to catch up?”
Anger didn’t have a chance with the love pouring out of Carmela. Truth was, it probably hadn’t had a chance, anyway. She’d known that Carmela had only done what she did out of caring so much for her and Stella.
“I am happy, Carm,” she said, speaking the truth that came from the very depths of her. “Stella gives me a joy I didn’t even suspect existed. Yeah, I get tired, but I smile a lot, too.”
“I know.” Carmela smiled, and Lizzie grinned, as well, glad to have her friend back. Aunt Betty loved her. Lizzie and Stella would always have a home in Chicago in her old room in her aunt’s apartment if she wanted to move back. But her aunt had a full life with someone else. Had a right to that life. Especially after being saddled with Lizzie without warning when her parents had been killed.
Ever since Lizzie had left for college, and met her freshman roommate, Carmela, she’d leaned on her aunt less. And Aunt Betty’s life choices had included Lizzie less and less.
“Tell me what happened with him,” Carmela said when Lizzie continued to just sit there.
“He told me the truth,” she said, scared to death to say more. To make it more real. It was as if, once someone else knew, there’d be no going back.
What panicked her most was the fear that there was already no going back. Even if Nolan stayed away for the next thirteen days, or decided to ditch his holiday runaway hobby and hightail it home immediately, for fear that Carmela would spend the next two weeks hounding him, she could no longer be the woman she’d been before he’d knocked on her door.
Stella’s father was tangible now.
It didn’t change their day-to-day lives. She was praying that it didn’t change anything for them. But she couldn’t shake the fear.
“I know his real name. Where he’s from,” she said slowly as Carmela sat, completely silent for once. And then it occurred to her. “Did you already know? Did he tell you?”
“No.” Carmela’s head shake was definitive. “We didn’t chat,” she said now, her tone making clear that if there were sides to be drawn, Carmela and Nolan weren’t on the same one. “I simply told him he needed to
come see you and gave him a window of time in which you’d be home this morning.” That last was said with a pleading look.
“He’s ungodly rich, Carm. Like in, probably famous among moneyed people. I’ve never heard of him, but his family owns a frickin’ investment bank!”
“What bank?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. I didn’t ask. I haven’t Googled him yet.” She clamored around, looking for a way out. She didn’t want to know which bank. Didn’t want any of it to become more horrifyingly real.
Money meant power.
Which made her feel powerless.
While so many of her college friends were out partying on their parents’ dime, Lizzie had been the student who’d had to work two jobs on campus, in addition to a fast food job, just to pay for incidentals and books. She was the one who’d be paying for the next ten years on all of the school loans she’d had to take out just to get through college.
Nolan’s family owned a bank, while she owed a bank close to a hundred thousand dollars in student loans.
Not that she cared, personally. She and Nolan weren’t a thing. But there was Stella...
Carmela seemed to ooze energy all of a sudden as she slid a little closer to Lizzie, leaning forward, her face alight as she said, “This is so great, Liz! DNA can prove paternity and you’ll be home free!”
No! No. No. No.
She couldn’t shake her head enough. Or stop the sudden tears that sprang to her eyes.
“He can’t know about her,” she whispered when Carmela stilled.
“He has to know about her, hon, he’s her father.”
She shook her head again, everything inside her crying out against the words Carmela had put into their living space.
“He’s not named on her birth certificate. He wanted nothing more to do with me or the consequences of those two weeks last year. He deliberately disconnected the phone number he gave me, Carmela, leaving me no way to contact him. To include him in any decisions. I did this. I made the choice to have her. He’s an unknowing sperm donor. That’s all.”
Carmela’s silence was almost as painful as her words had been.
“He has a huge family.” Lizzie said the words that had been giving her cold sweats since Nolan Fortune had announced his identity on her doorstep. “What if they want her? What if they sue for custody? I’d never have the money to fight them. They could take her away from me!”
“Aw, sweetie.” Carmela scooted closer, took one of Lizzie’s trembling hands and held on. “He can’t take her away from you, even if he wanted to! You’re her mother!”
She shook her head. “You don’t know that,” she said. “There’s a different set of rules for rich people. Really rich people. Look at that kid in Texas who was driving drunk and killed those people and didn’t even spend one day in jail because his family had power. It happens all the time. Read the news. Or just look at my past. The Mahoneys got what they wanted. They took my family, Carm. You don’t know the insidious way money draws people to it, or makes them agree with those who have it. Besides, look around us. We give her a couple of rooms. Cheap floors. Box-store clothes. Public school is the only thing her future holds with me. They could probably give her the moon, if she wanted it. Or a trip to it at least.”
Her last words hung there like a thick haze in the room. Lizzie had been hearing renditions of them in her mind all afternoon.
They always stopped right there. With that trip to the moon.
Just...
“And what about all that, hon?” Carmela’s soft question came after minutes of silence. “Wouldn’t you like your daughter to have those things? Doesn’t Stella deserve the chance at every opportunity her father’s family could give her?”
No! She meant to shake her head, but just started to shake instead.
“Money’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” She said aloud the arguments she’d come up with to appease the other side of her fighting self. “A lot of rich kids grow up entitled. They have skewed senses of value. Of their own value. They miss out on a lot of important life lessons, like compassion for others, or an understanding of what it means to fend for yourself. Or the sense of satisfaction you get when you provide for yourself. They don’t know the priceless value of sincere laughter. Or...or how a lifetime could be built in two weeks...”
Damn Nolan Fortune and his fake alter ego. He’d been out for a two-week escape. Had embarked on a holiday fling knowing it was no more than his little secret.
His little secret had created her little secret, and even if she wanted to tell him now...how could she? Oh, by the way, I failed to mention earlier that I gave birth to your daughter a few months ago.
He’d hate her.
And why should she care?
How could it possibly matter anymore what he thought of her? Yeah, believing that he’d cared as much as she had, that they were something different and deep and meaningful, was a nice fairy tale. And if, for a short time, she’d hoped that it could last, that hope was long dead.
The man was probably richer than the Mahoneys. There was no way she wanted him now.
“I want her to care more about the trials and joys of the majority of the people in society than she does about what designer brand she’s going to wear to dinner,” she finally answered.
“You’re her mother. You’ll teach her that.”
“And you think, if she’s growing up in their world, that she’ll care what I have to teach her?” Lizzie had seen a fast-forwarded mental image of that, too. Her parents had been drawn to the Mahoneys’ wealth and they’d been adults. How could she even hope that Stella, an innocent child, could remain immune? She could just see it, her own daughter eventually pitying her, looking down on her, the lowly public school teacher who’d gotten herself knocked up by someone she hardly knew during a holiday fling. Nothing in Lizzie’s home would ever equal the grandeur and luxury that teenager would know in a mansion. Hell, they might give her some Mercedes sports car for her sixteenth birthday, and Stella wouldn’t even be able to drive it to Lizzie’s neighborhood without worrying about having it vandalized or stolen.
If she even wanted to be seen in such a plebeian neighborhood.
When the voices in her mind got too loud, she repeated much of it to Carmela, who listened, and then said, “You sound like a reverse snob,” she said.
Yeah, maybe she did. But... “You can see it happening, though, can’t you? There’s a good chance.”
“It’s possible he won’t want to have anything to do with her,” Carmela said. “A good chance he’d just want to pay you off so that his family never found out about his trek to the common people—or his illegitimate child. You’d get to keep Stella all to yourself, and get financial freedom—enough to ensure that she gets whatever education she wants.”
She’d thought of that. Was already certain that she wouldn’t take a dime of Nolan’s payoff money for herself. But if he wanted to set up a trust for Stella...
“I don’t love the guy, Liz. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I can’t stand him. But he has a right to know that he fathered a child.”
She was still debating that point. Would Nolan have wanted her to have the baby? Or would he have tried to force her to abort their fetus?
Carmella gave her hand a squeeze. “Stella’s going to want to know who her father is, hon. And when you tell her, you know she’s going to look him up. Want to contact him. Even if you tell her she can’t, she’d more than likely do it behind your back. He’s her father. A part of her.”
Yeah, yeah, Lizzie’d been there, too, during her mental battles. Knowing her daughter would need more someday. And every time she thought about it, she ended up at another dead end.
Oh, God. What was she going to do?
With a throat that felt thick with tears, she said, “Have you ever heard of joint parenting between an
überrich parent and a lower-middle-class parent working out?” she asked.
“Maybe in fairy tales,” Carmela said, her tone mellow now, too, her expression sad.
“And that’s when the princess is poor and secretly longs for a knight in shining armor to save her from the drudgery. But I’m not that. The thought of living a privileged life—having everyone paying attention to what you do, shining a light on any mistake you might make...having to do your hair every time you go out...having to live up to expectation, to keep up appearances, having to disguise yourself if you ever just want to feel regular, and doing things, accepting invitations, so as not to offend someone else important, not ever knowing that thrill you get when you earn enough money to buy something you really want—I’m not that.”
Her list went on and on. Most of it she’d learned when her mother’s high school friend returned to Chicago, but some were opinions she’d had strengthened through observations she’d made in life, too.
“I like being anonymous,” she said. “It gives me the freedom to truly make my own choices based on what my heart tells me. To live authentically. That’s what I want for Stella. To be able to truly follow her heart...not to have to live up to standards others set for her. That’s the only way she’ll be able to reach her true potential.”
“So what’s your heart telling you now?” Carmela’s words put a stop to the thoughts clamoring in Lizzie’s brain. Everything stilled. Almost. Everything but the fear.
Lizzie tried to listen to her heart. She’d been trying all day.
She took a deep breath and shuddered because...
“My heart tells me that I don’t want Stella to grow up with only one or two people—me or you—to catch her if she falls,” she said. “What if something happens to us?” She’d been an only child of a couple whose parents were all gone. “As you say, the Fortunes might not want her, but Nolan says he has a bunch of siblings. Stella has aunts and uncles. More than just one. She might have cousins. She has grandparents.”
Stella had a big biological family.
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