The Baby Pact (Babies and Billions #5) - Holly Rayner Page 0,44

an old television that wasn’t connected properly, he thought, or the shapes in one of those paintings that was designed to make you un-focus your eyes and look for the hidden image. He had always needed the shape of the baby itself pointed out to him.

But today he saw the baby immediately. It was unmissable.

It was ninety percent head, the rest of the body barely a shape at all. Zach stared, mesmerized, then carefully covered the baby’s head with his thumb, marveling at the fact that he was able to obscure it completely.

It’s so small.

He made a cradle with his arms, estimating the size he believed a newborn baby would be. Here was the size his baby would be when he held it for the first time. But right now it was tiny, as small as a peanut.

It has such a long way to go.

He felt a small smile begin to creep across his face.

Whatever had happened with his father and Rhea’s family, it was the past. This baby, and the feelings that existed between the two of them now—those things were the future.

He couldn’t expect Rhea to get over what had happened so easily. But after all, she had reached out to him when she’d learned she was pregnant. He needed no further evidence that she did want to move beyond their fathers’ conflict.

He had pushed her away.

That might have been the biggest mistake of my life.

But he would get her back. She was still carrying his child, and she was still his best friend and the only woman he had ever truly loved. He wouldn’t allow this piece of their history to tear them apart.

He hit reply to her email.

What could he possibly say in an email that would sum up everything he needed her to hear?

Finally he typed: “I’m sorry. Let’s talk?”

He pressed send. Hopefully it would be enough to compel her to listen to an in-person apology.

Chapter 15

Zach

Zach spent the next few days feeling as though he had slipped back in time. He checked his phone obsessively, anxious to hear from Rhea, but there was no reply to his message by text or by email.

He tried again, of course, sending additional messages, making it as clear as he could to her that he wanted nothing more than to apologize. He left her voice messages indicating that he wouldn’t rest until he had the opportunity to beg her for forgiveness. He wrote a long email expressing that he knew he had been wrong to treat her the way he had when she’d come to tell him about her pregnancy. He texted her every morning with some variant of “I hope you have a good day, and I hope today is the day I hear from you.”

He was met with nothing but silence in return.

It was just like it had been before he had learned she was pregnant.

He was unable to relax, unable to settle to anything. What did it mean that she was refusing to speak to him? Had she made her decision? Had she already deemed him unworthy of forgiveness?

Or was there still a possibility that he might win her over, if he found the right words to say?

If she’s not going to forgive me, she ought to at least tell me!

It was a thought that visited him at his darkest times, but he did his best to force it away. He couldn’t allow himself to become angry with Rhea. If she had decided to keep away from him, that was no more than he deserved after the way he had treated her. He hadn’t earned the right to be a father to their child. She had come to him hoping for someone who would be on her side, and he had been cruel and accusatory.

I let the conversation focus on my father when I should have been thinking about our child.

He was still struggling to deal with what he now knew his father had done. Lincoln had been his only family for so long. Zach had looked up to him, loved him, trusted him. Now he was working to reconcile those feelings with a new knowledge he couldn’t deny.

His father had been a thief.

Maybe it had only happened once. Maybe it had been a moment of weakness. But it was a difficult thing to forgive. It had been a betrayal of Rhea and her family, and now its repercussions were affecting Zach in an extreme way.

But his father was gone. Zach couldn’t confront him about