who could physically be with her and be there for her, and I was terrified to have a baby and raise it by myself.”
Her words set off a bomb of anger inside me. I don’t care what her reasons were. She had no fucking right to do what she did. None. “I didn’t choose the band over you,” I spit out at her. “I was never given the luxury of a choice. And now you’re telling me you took even more choices away from me.”
“It’s not like that,” she cries, and despite the anger that’s starting to permeate my blood, I can’t help but feel for her when I see the desperation in her eyes.
But just because I feel for someone I’m in love with doesn’t make what she has done okay.
“It’s exactly like that,” I yell at her, drawing the attention of the bartender. “I need to get the fuck out of here. I can’t do this shit.”
I grab the bag of food I don’t even want anymore and stalk out of the restaurant.
Is she fucking kidding me with this shit?
That kid she was holding is mine?
The second I looked into her eyes, I felt like I was looking into a mirror, and it was because I was looking at a small, female version of myself.
Of course she’s mine. Of fucking course. She has my goddamn eyes. She has my nose and my lips. She’s mine and I have a daughter who has been living her entire life without knowing me...without me knowing her.
I throw the food on the passenger seat of my truck. I’m sure salsa will spill everywhere, but I’m not hungry anymore and honestly it’s the least of my worries at this point.
God dammit.
I slam my hand on the steering wheel, and then I do it again and again and again. I need to get the fuck out of here.
My phone starts ringing. I ignore it.
I fire up my truck and peel out of the parking lot. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t be here. I don’t know what I’m feeling or how to process what she just told me.
I don’t know anything anymore.
I head toward home simply because I don’t know where else to go, but when I get there, I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to see Tommy or Brett or their smirking faces. I don’t want to tell them what I just found out, at least not until I can understand it and figure out how I feel about it.
Anger rips through me.
She’s yours.
She’s yours.
She’s yours.
The words replay over and over in my mind.
I abandon my food and take a walk around my neighborhood.
I have a daughter.
I try to focus on the enormous mansions or the landscaping or the cars in the driveways or the cobblestone sidewalks or anything else in the entire world, but I can’t.
I have a daughter.
Just a couple weeks ago we found out one of our band members is having a kid. It made me think about my own life and my values and where I wanted to end up.
I want kids.
I have one.
I want a wife.
Nope, don’t have one of those.
I want Dani.
I did. Not anymore.
How could I ever be with someone who kept something so significant from me? She took the choice away from me, and I hate her for that. It’s unforgivable.
And yet...I ran out. I walked away.
I had to.
I’m a celebrity. People know who the fuck I am, and if I stood in that restaurant another second, if I gave into the lashing I was ready to verbally give her, the news would’ve hit the media faster than she could text her husband to let him know their secret’s out.
We’ll talk about it later. We have to...because now that I know, I have rights.
And the real shit-kicker in all of this is that the only thing I wanted as little as an hour ago was to know that Dani would be a permanent part of my future.
Now I want nothing to do with a woman who could be so fucking deceitful, and yet she’ll be a permanent part of my life because we share a child.
I need to sit down.
Holy fuck.
I have a kid...one that someone else has been raising. One who has been calling someone else daddy.
I crumble to the ground in the middle of the sidewalk five houses down from my own.
And it’s then that it all plows straight into me, and I start to cry right