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“I…” I hang my head. “I feel like a piece of shit. I felt nothing when I looked at that monitor. I felt nothing when I heard the heartbeat. I felt nothing when she told me I was going to be a father.”
“You were blindsided. For someone who has never wanted children, I can imagine it will take a while for you to get to a point where you are excited and happy.”
“You think it will happen?”
She nods. “Even if it takes till delivery day. I think once you look at her, hold her, you’ll know and you’ll feel it. If she is yours, that is.” She looks over at me. “Are you still doing the paternity test?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure there’s a point to do so anymore.” Her brows furrow in confusion. “After you left, she confessed that the last month we were together, she didn’t have an IUD in.”
“What?” Her expression mirrors mine when I found out.
“Yeah, that was my response. Apparently, it expired and she didn’t have a new one put in because she said she was getting older and her chance at becoming a mother was diminishing.”
“So she traps you?”
“I know, it’s fucked. She said that the night it happened—” I cringe mentioning it and I see Brontë’s eyes drop from me down to the ground. “We broke up and got back together a few times, always around arguments regarding her wanting more than I was willing to give. She said that the last time we got back together before we permanently broke up, we had a drunken night together where I wasn’t careful, but truthfully, I don’t remember that. I don’t know if it was because of the alcohol I don’t remember or because it didn’t happen.”
“So you still have doubts that she’s yours?”
I rub my hand over my jaw, the scruff of not shaving for two days rough against my palm. “I guess I do.”
“Did she say she wants to try and work it out with you? Be with you now?”
I look at her and nod my head yes.
“Beckham.” I look over at her. “You have to demand a paternity test. You can’t possibly go into something this life-altering and not do your due diligence. You’re so thorough with doing that in business, but this, you just shrug off and believe her? A woman who lied to you about contraceptives and then attempts to manipulate you into being with her?”
“This probably makes me even shittier, but I fear that if it does come back as my child, I’ll just look like a deadbeat trying to get out of responsibility. And what if my daughter finds that out someday? That I denied her and demanded the courts to prove she was mine? What kind of relationship would I have with her?”
She reaches out and gently places her hand on mine. “Coming from someone who had a deadbeat dad who came back into my life, she’d forgive you.”
I let her words sink in as I stare down at her hand on mine. I reach over and take it, holding it with both of mine, dwarfing her tiny fingers. I bring it to my lips, planting several small kisses against her cool skin.
“Is there any hope?” I look over at her, the wind blowing a few tendrils of her hair around her face. “Any chance that we can be together again?”
She looks at me, her eyes filled with tears already, and she slowly shakes her head no.
“I can’t,” she whispers.
“Why?” I want to beg and plead.
“Because I don’t want a fling.” She slowly removes her hand from mine. “I don’t want a secret hookup on your desk or in your car. I want more. I want it all. I want a relationship with you and happily ever after, and I know you can’t offer me that. I fell, wholeheartedly, Beckham. I loved you and I know I shouldn’t have, but I’m not sorry and I only have myself to blame.”
My eyes shoot up to hers and I reach out and grab her hand again.
“You loved me? As in did? You don’t love me anymore?” My heart feels like it’s cracking, crumbling inside my hollow chest and it’s going to kill me.
“Please,” she says, her lower lip trembling as she shakes her head. “Please don’t make me answer that if you’re no longer mine.”
“I understand. I won’t press the issue again.”
I release her hand slowly as she walks away, taking my heart with her.
Chapter 19
Brontë
I wanted him to run after me, to chase me down and tell me that he was still mine.
