He has the grace to look chastised. “You never even told me.”

“I would have told you, but you wouldn’t see me. Wouldn’t answer my calls. I had to go by myself to get it taken care of. And you …” My voice breaks again, shredding. “You just went on with your life, like I didn’t matter. Like I’d never mattered.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say about it. That I’m sorry? Okay, fine. I’m sorry I was an asshole to you back then, but I’m not sorry we didn’t have a baby together before we were even old enough to vote. I’m not.” His shrug is huge and exaggerated. “If that makes me a bad person, I guess I’ll live with that, too. But why do you think I’ve been hanging around here? The real reason? Why do you think I’ve been spending so much time with Eli—”

“Shut up! You shut up.” I draw out the words, a long hush of sibilance cut off with a snap of my teeth. “You stay away from my son. You understand me? I don’t want you messing with him.”

A different dim room, another bottle of wine, another open-mouthed kiss and hands on me. More secrets. More regrets.

“I remember that night, Jewelann, and yeah, I flunked out of med school, but I still know how to count. Alllll the way up to sixteen.”

“Shut your mouth,” I whisper.

Christian moves toward me. “I can’t regret that you got rid of the first baby we made together, but I’m here so I can get to know the one you kept.”

CHAPTER
33

“ELI IS NOT yours. I know my son,” I spit, “and he is nothing like you.”

“You sure about that?”

I swallow bitter tears, but none slip from my eyes. I know my son, all right, better than anyone else ever could. I know him, and love him, and I will do whatever it takes to keep him healthy, happy, and safe. I am not, however, entirely certain of the exact night he was, or was not, conceived. And wasn’t that why I’d had the baby in the first place? A possible second chance to have a piece of the man I loved and hated and loved, over and over again?

“One hundred percent,” I tell him.

“He has my eyes.” Christian’s smirk infuriates me.

“He has his father’s eyes, and his father looks a lot like you. I’ve been told I have a type.” I sneer the last word. “It’s not proof of anything.”

We stare at each other for a few seconds before Christian, with a heavy, burdened sigh, flops onto the couch. He leans back, both hands over his eyes. “What if I want proof?”

“Why? Why would you—”

“I like the kid, even if he’s not mine,” he says. “But if he was mine, that would change everything, wouldn’t it?”

There’s a split molecule of a second in which I allow myself to entertain the idea that maybe he’s being sincere. That after all this time, there might truly be something real between us. I blink, though, and it passes.