claimed the chaise lounge in my living room. Elle’s chosen throne. I said nothing. Didn’t yell. Didn’t get mad.
I brought her the photo albums Mom had put together. The ones from when Bast was little.
“Let’s see what the kid’s been up to.” I opened the first album. “Here’s Sebastian on the day he was born. You probably never saw him in the incubator or on the oxygen. Remember? Because you told the nurses you never wanted to see the brat. You wanted the nightmare to be over.”
Victoria stiffened. “Lachlan, I had just given birth.”
“That doesn’t excuse you. Look at him.” I pointed to the picture of my premature son. “Sick and underweight, because you refused to eat towards the end of the pregnancy. You didn’t want to show.”
“I was a teenager.” Victoria slammed the album shut. “I was scared.”
“Yeah? So was I.” I opened the next album, lingering on a picture of me holding Bast when we finally got home. “Here’s his crib. I had it in my room so I could switch off with my Mom on feedings and changings. This was his first bath. He peed all over me, but Mom said I did the same thing to her during my first bath. Here’s him in his bouncer—he loved that fucking thing. Cried like a banshee the day it broke. Mom and I had to search the couch cushions and in the seat of the car to scrape together enough money to buy a new one.”
“What’s your point, Lachlan?”
“The point? The point is that here…” I showed her a picture of my smiling, exhausted mother bouncing a three-month-old on her hip. “This is his mother. This is the woman who raised him. Who fed him. Who changed him, swaddled him, sacrificed her sleep, her time, her life to raise a baby that wasn’t hers. He was happy and healthy because of the work she did.”
“I’m not here to apologize for the past,” she said.
“Wouldn’t forgive you if you tried.” I grinned and flipped the album to when Bast was a bit older. “We took this when he said his first word. Know what it was?”
Victoria scowled. “Momma?”
“Lockin. I was his first word. That was the greatest moment of my life.”
I flipped the pages, proudly displaying picture after picture of Sebastian’s smiling face. Elle could have framed him better or used brighter lighting or posed him just right, but nothing was as beautiful as his smile, even taken on grainy cell phones and disposable cameras.
“His first steps,” I said. “His second Christmas. His third birthday. Everything.”
“Our child is beautiful.”
“No. He’s not our child. You’re not his mother. That’s the way it stays. I won’t let you confuse him, and I won’t let you get anywhere close to him.”
“I’m just trying to do the right thing,” she said.
I slammed the book on the coffee table. She jumped.
“Bullshit. You’re trying to get money.”
“You’re being absurd.”
“Why else would you wait until I signed with a professional football team to decide you wanted to play mommy? You’re looking for an easy way to get paid, and you’d ruin a little boy’s life to do it.”
“He deserves to know his mother.”
I lowered my voice, growling the threat. “You want to fight me on it? Fine. Sue me. Then you’ll be front and center to all the money you’ll never get.” I leaned over the chair, inches from her face. “I will spend every last cent to my name on the best goddamned family practice attorneys in the country. You will never take him from us. I will make it so that Sebastian never even knows your name.”
Victoria swallowed, her confidence breaking.
“Maybe he’ll never know that I’m his father…but I will do everything in my power to protect my son.”
“You’re overreacting.”
Never. Not when it came to Bast. “Do you even want him?”
“Do you?”
“More than anything in this fucking world.” I towered over her. “I love him, and if you loved him too, you’d give him up.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’re gonna see a different side of me. Something ugly. Not nearly as charming. Fair warning.”
Victoria exhaled. She tensed, and I really wasn’t looking forward to pressing any assault charges if she dove for me. But even she had some common sense.
She nodded, her eyes hard. “Fine. Keep the kid, but you’re making a mistake.”
“Made a lot lately—what’s one more if it protects him from you?”
The words she spat were colorful as she slammed the door behind her. I’d have a nice key scratch in my