told you couldn’t see me, again, huh?”
I laughed. “It wasn’t like that, but if we’re being honest…” I let the thought just hang there between the two of us.
“It would have happened even if you weren’t busy, right?”
“Eventually,” I told him and then pulled the envelope out of my bag and held it out for him to take.
“What’s this?” I could see the fear register in his eyes and wondered if he thought, like I did the day Avalyn’s attorney showed up at my door, that I was serving him with divorce papers.
“The results to see if you fathered her baby.”
“Results? The baby’s been born?”
“That’s what I’ve been busy with all week.”
“You were taking care of the baby I had with another woman?” He looked horrified at the thought.
I sat beside him on the bed and made him take the envelope fully. “I helped deliver the baby, offered some of my pumped breast milk for the little guy, and then I handed him off to MiMi from the S.H.E MC to care for him until we knew for sure. I didn’t want to get attached if he wasn’t yours.”
“You didn’t want to get attached?” His question held a bewildered edge to it. “Ever, I don’t know…” Then it seemed to dawn on him what else I’d been saying. “It’s a boy?”
I nodded my head. “How about, before you panic over anything else, open the damn results and see if he’s yours or not?”
“You already know, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I thought you should be the first person to know.”
“What the hell did I ever do to deserve your love?”
“You saved me,” I answered simply.
“And now you’re saving me right back,” he responded in a whisper as he removed the test results from the package. I watched as his eyes skimmed the page, saw how his hands shook, his eyes flared and widened drastically when he got about halfway down and then he glanced up at me and grinned. “He’s not mine,” was the first thing out of his mouth. “But there’s something interesting about his DNA that the club might be able to use.”
I leaned over to take a peek, but he slipped the papers behind his back and leaned in too so that we ended up meeting in the middle. “I’m sorry,” he said into my lips, his warm breath was a caress there that I had been sorely missing all these months. “I missed you,” he finally said before kissing me again. “Even when I couldn’t remember things, I dreamed of you and the girls almost every night,” he admitted. “It was so bittersweet because they were the best thing about my life, those dreams, but I couldn’t remember. I thought you guys were just made up in my head at times.”
“That’s really hard to hear,” I told him honestly.
“I know it is, but I want to be honest with you about everything. You’ve been so strong and taken care of our family. Durbin told me about Lucy,” he finally said.
“Durbin did? What about everyone else?”
“You weren’t the only person I was avoiding, sweetheart.”
“Aw, Deck, that makes me incredibly sad. You’ve been here three weeks now and the only person you were talking to that whole time was Durbin?”
“Pretty much,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to process everything, how to handle it all. I know it wasn’t fair to you or anyone else.”
“It’s fine. What’s done is done, can we not spend time dwelling on it? I feel like we lost enough and that’s not something I’m willing to compromise on.” He tipped his head in agreement as I stood up and started to walk to the door.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“There’s someone here who wants to meet you,” I told him as I cracked open the door and took our son from Kane’s hands. My big brother placed a kiss on my forehead and then walked away.
“Yell if you need me, I’m going to give you guys some privacy,” he called back over his shoulder. Then I walked back to the bed and stood in front of Deck while he took in the fact that I was holding our son. The tears were quick to shimmer in his eyes as he cataloged every little detail about our son.
“He’s so big,” Deck cried. “I missed it all.”
“No, you missed a small chunk, babe. That’s why we need you to fight and come back to us. So, you don’t miss any more.”
He was quiet for a