AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Charlie sighed. “I think we just lost our best candidate.”
3
Sam
“Mama, look!” Max held up an adorable crayon drawing that he had worked on at preschool. It was an explosion of color with no discernable shapes, but I loved it anyway.
“It’s very beautiful. Did you draw this for me?”
Max nodded, beaming up at me with pride. “For you!”
“Thanks so much, honey. I love it. Can you put your backpack and your picture in your room?”
“‘Kay!” My son ran off toward the kitchen, holding his picture out in front of him in both hands, his backpack bouncing along on his back.
Max and I lived with my grandmother in a rent controlled three-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side. She’d lived here for decades and lucked out on this amazing place. Nana took me in when I was only two after my parents tragically died in a car accident. I grew up here, knew the neighborhood like the back of my hand.
It was always a dream of mine to get a good, stable job so I could finally buy my grandmother a nice house somewhere out in the suburbs so she could live out the rest of her retirement in peace. A sort of ‘thank you’ for everything she’d done for me.
Of course, I could probably kiss that dream goodbye now that I’d stormed out of my interview like a chicken with her head cut off.
I didn’t mean to rush out like that, but I was just so shocked that something in my brain must have fried. My fight or flight instincts kicked in, and I defaulted to getting the hell out of there.
It had been years since we’d seen each other last, but it was impossible to mistake his sky-blue eyes and chocolate brown hair ? features he shared with his son.
Kristoffer and I… It wasn’t anything complicated. My college roommate dragged me out to celebrate Valentine’s Day only to dump me at the bar after hitting it off with some random girl. Kristoffer ? Kris ?watched the whole thing unfold. He bought me a drink out of sympathy, and we had a couple of laughs. He was just as hot then as he was now. After a bit of liquid courage, we wound up checking into a hotel.
God, he knew how to fuck.
I’d never been taken so hard and so sensually before. I knew even before the night was out that he was going to ruin every other guy for me who came after him. I didn’t expect anything from our brief liaison. We were just two strangers looking for a bit of company on a day meant to celebrate love. We shared one magical, sweaty, sexy night together.
In the morning he was gone. No long-winded goodbyes, no empty promises, no way to contact him. I told myself that it was fine. I wasn’t looking to date anyway, not when I was so busy in the middle of my third year at college. There was nothing wrong with letting a one-night stand be a one-night stand.
I discovered that I was pregnant with Max roughly a month later.
I tried looking for him then. Retraced my steps the night we met, explored the area to see if he maybe lived nearby. I even went down the rabbit hole, searching Facebook until the wee hours of the morning. In a city of almost eight and a half million people, even I knew only a fool could be optimistic.
“Sam?” Nana called from down the hall. She was trying to put a load of laundry through the washing machine. “Would you mind helping me get the detergent down from the shelf?”
I snapped back to reality, forcing myself to clear my mind. I hurried over, lifting the big bottle for her. “I thought I told you to leave this for me,” I said, not unkindly.
“You’ve had a rough day, dear. Why don’t you take it easy for the rest of the evening?”
I’d told Nana everything the second I got home. She was pretty much my best friend. I talked about my encounter with Adam in the bathroom. The way he was so damn powerful and sexy when he dismissed everyone except for me. Getting to meet Liam and Charlie, who were just as delicious to look at as Adam. Liam was dark and mysterious. Charlie was sweet and gentlemanly. I was hot and bothered my entire meeting ? though I definitely left that detail out when I recounted everything for my grandmother.
“You really saw Max’s father today?” she asked me in a whisper.
My heart was still racing. “Yes, I did.”
“And you didn’t tell him about his son?”
“There was a lot going on, Nana. I panicked.”
Understatement of the year.
Could anyone really blame me for making a break for it? I was surrounded by four sinfully gorgeous men, one of whom was my unsuspecting baby daddy! I wasn’t sure where to go from here. It wasn’t like someone had written a step-by-step instruction manual on how to go about this sort of thing. No, I just needed time to figure out what I was going to say and do.
“What if he freaks out?” I mumbled. “What if Kristoffer wants nothing to do with us?”
