nephew. Eli had mentioned having a sister.
"Promise, daddy. Promise. Promise," the little boy demanded as he tugged at Eli’s pant leg.
Well, that answered that question. Son.
Jack stared at Eli and then looked at the boy.
Eli looked down and he nodded. "Promise, baby. I promise."
When the silence stretched, Eli finally said, "Damon, baby, this is daddy’s friend Jack."
Damon finally looked up at him. "Jack." The kid said his name, and he lost a little piece of his heart.
Jack smiled. "Hi, Damon."
“I colored a picture,” Damon held a paper up to him.
Jack looked at it. "Wow, purple horses. That’s amazing!" He made a neighing sound. "So pretty." He smiled at the boy’s proud expression, then looked at Eli. "I’m sorry for just showing up."
The double doors swooshed, and the man he’d originally met with entered.
"Uh oh!" was all he said before turning back the way he came.
"Excuse me!" His phone had been vibrating in his pocket the past few minutes, and Jack couldn’t ignore it anymore. "I have to take this. Give me a second."
"Sarah," Jack answered the phone, his voice tight.
"We need you back here, ASAP. The contract, both parties, they’re freaking out. You’ve got to come back in." Sarah talking in broken sentences told Jack all he needed to know, but he didn’t want to be interrupted at this particular moment..
"Can’t it wait till tomorrow?" Jack looked back at Eli.
"No. The partners they want you back here now," Sarah insisted.
He didn’t want to leave. He needed to talk to Eli and figure this out.
"Fine. I’m on my way," He sighed.
He looked over at Eli. "I have to go back to the office. I’ll call you when I’m finished, okay?"
Eli gave a faint nod but otherwise, didn’t show any other emotion.
"Great. Great. I’ll see you later." Jack waved and hurried off. This was the downside of mergers. Both sides tried to drag it out. and it just meant more work for him. Then again, he should be glad for the billable hours.
Eli never told him he had a son. That was why he ignored Jack’s calls. Did he not think Jack was good enough for the family part?
He looked back at the bakery. Part of him hoped Eli would come running out the front door and say... something. Tell Jack he’d always planned on telling him about Damon. And then they would work things out. But he waited for a few minutes before getting in his car, and that didn’t happen.
Maybe this new thing they were building, their budding relationship, didn’t mean as much to Eli as it did to Jack. It was still fairly new to both of them, but Jack had seen Eli and he’d known right from the beginning.
He’d known.
He wasn’t willing to give up. So he would give Eli a moment, but if he thought him having a son would scare Jack away, he would prove him wrong.
14
Eli
Jack had been calling since the night before. But he’d been ignoring the calls, mostly because he wasn’t sure what he was going to say.
Eli looked down at the cake and his heart broke a little more. He could feel tears building in his eyes again, and he quickly flicked one that escaped away. All he could see was the disappointment on Jack’s face every time he shut his eyes.
This was his lie biting him in the ass. But his heart hurt thinking about this being the end.
Still, Jack bolted after finding out he had a child, saying he had something to take care of at work… he’d been scared it would happen, but there’d been a small voice at the back of his mind telling him Jack was not that kind of guy… he wasn’t the guy who walked away when he learned Eli had a child.
The cake was done and Jack should be there to pick it up at any moment. Unless his brother does. Normally, if a celebration was on Saturday, Eli would keep the cake in the refrigerator and allow the Saturday employee to handle the pickup or delivery. But this cake, this time, Eli chose to be there.
Despite knowing how awkward it would be to see Jack, it beat the alternative. Him just gone from Eli’s life completely.
The sound of the bell rang through the bakery, it was the one his employees used to notify him that a customer had arrived. He released a breath. Chances were, it was Jack. All the other pick-ups for the day had been done, and the others had been