I held up a finger. “Nash, I’m warning you not to fuck with my child. He is mine.”
He stared at me for several seconds. “This isn’t over,” he growled and walked out of my office.
My shoulders sagged. “Holy shit,” I murmured. That was not what I was expecting. I was shaken to the core.
Chapter 69
Nash
I stared at the water sloshing against the edge of my pool. I was lost in a daze. My entire world had been turned upside down last night.
I still couldn’t believe it happened. It was crazy. Absolutely crazy. This kind of shit didn’t happen in real life. I would think it was restricted to movies. It was happening to me. I had a son. An eight-year-old son on his way to being a teenager. Eight years gone.
The doorbell rang. I knew it was Davin. He’d been trying to reach me all morning. I was avoiding him. I was trying to hide from the world. I wanted to process my thoughts without anyone yapping in my ear. He rang it again. I made no move to get out of my chair.
A moment later, my security alarm was going off. “Dammit,” I muttered.
“Hey!” I heard Davin shout.
I reached for my phone, pulled up the app for the security system, and quickly entered my passcode to shut the thing off. He stepped onto the patio. “What the hell?” he snapped. “I’ve called and I know you heard me ringing the bell.”
“I told you I wanted to be alone.”
“You didn’t sound good last night,” he said and sat down in the chair beside mine.
“I’m fine.”
“What happened? Did you lose a few million?”
“I wish,” I muttered. “That would be a lot easier to deal with.”
“Okay, then what? And dude, seriously, don’t ignore me. I’ll break a window next time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“Spill,” he said. “I will bug you until you tell me.”
“He’s mine,” I said.
“He’s yours?” he asked.
“Jace. Her son. My son.”
His mouth fell open. “No shit! He’s really your kid?”
I nodded. “Yep. I asked her. She tried to tell me it didn’t matter.”
“What didn’t matter?” he asked with confusion.
“She says it doesn’t matter. She wants nothing from me. She said this changes nothing when it comes to our relationship.”
“Rewind and tell me what happened,” he said. “This does not sound like a normal conversation.”
I blew out a breath. Maybe he could help me understand it. We’d walk through it together and he could tell me what I was missing. “I asked her if Jace was my son,” I said. “Her exact words were, it didn’t matter.”
“It didn’t matter?” he repeated.
“Yes. I asked why she didn’t tell me. She said because we were broken up and I was married. I asked why she didn’t tell me when we hooked up again the second time. She just said Jace was hers. Basically, she put in the work and that was that. I didn’t get a say.”
He shook his head. “Wow.”
“No shit, wow. What am I supposed to do?”
“Does she want you to be in his life?”
“I’m going to assume no, but why does she get to decide that? I’m his father. Fuck, just saying that aloud trips me out.”
“You told me things didn’t end well the first time,” he said.
“No, they didn’t. I dumped her and got married three months later after I told her I didn’t want to be tied down. It was a dick move. I know that. I’ve apologized for it.”
“I’m assuming she was pregnant when you broke up with her? Was there any breakup sex?”
I shook my head. “No. Never. You think she was pregnant when we broke up? Why in the hell wouldn’t she tell me? I wouldn’t have married Mel. Or even if I did marry Mel, I would have been in Jace’s life.”
“Did she know that?”
“No, because she never gave me a chance.”
“I think she didn’t want to obligate you,” he said. “You’ve said you don’t want kids and the whole family thing. If you’ve said that to me a hundred times, I imagine you’ve said it to her a few times. I wouldn’t want to be with anyone who was only with me out of obligation.”
“It isn’t about her or me. It should be about him. I didn’t get to be in his life.”
“But would you have been in his life even if you did know?” he questioned.
“I’ll never fucking know, will I?” I snapped. “She took away the choice.”