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Each key from the piano hummed around me, vibrating the walls, and filling the space.
For once, I wasn’t doing it as a distraction. I was doing it because Iwantedto, because Icould, and because I had nothing else to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon since Ava was at her father’s. We’d agreed to hold off on telling him until we could figure out the best way to go about it, and for now, that was okay with me.
Gentle footsteps climbed the stairs, and just as I finished up the song I was playing, Lucas’ little head appeared in the doorway.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah, bud.”
I pushed my glasses up my nose as he slipped into the room quietly, his bare feet padding across the floor. He crossed to me, still half asleep from when he’d taken a nap unprompted in the middle of a movie earlier, and practically crawled up into my lap.
He fit in just as snugly as he used to when he was half as big as he was now.
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him in tight, resting my head on top of his. “What’s up, Luc?” I asked, shifting slightly so I could lean back against the wall to my left.
“I missed you this week,” he mumbled into my chest.
It cracked me wide open.
I’d spent so much time in the office. At the bare minimum, it had worked out to roughly twelve hours a day—and most of the days were longer than that. Damage control was eating my time, devouring it and throwing it away. Even with Michael working around the clock to help me with every individual thing I needed to deal with, it hadn’t been enough to make it to bedtime twice with Lucas.
“I missed you too.” I squeezed him tighter. “I’m sorry. I promise I’m trying to get to a point where I don’t need to work as much.”
“Can you get there faster?” His little face peeked up at me, and the pout on his lips broke my fucking heart in two. “Please?”
I pressed a kiss against his forehead. “I’ll try,” I said. “I will.”
Part of me, for a single fleeting moment, wanted Andrew to succeed in turning the board against me. At least then I could have enough time for my fucking kid.
We sat in relative silence, him just resting in my arms as I thought about every option I had in terms of freeing up time. I’d had one single evening alone with Ava this week outside of the night I’d come home late after inviting her over, and it cut far too deep that she was the only removable factor right now. I could have gone to work today, could plan for tomorrow, just to get through the damage control as quickly as possible—but that seemed like taking time away, not adding it.
I didn’t have good options here. I hated all of them.
Lucas reached out, idly fiddling with the keys on the piano and playing a little sequence I’d taught him earlier this year. I watched him, studying him, but then he stopped.
“Is Ava gonna be my new mommy?”
I stilled.
“What?” I breathed.
Lucas poked his head back up, questioning eyes meeting mine. “She was here the other night.”
“For dinner? I just thought it would be nice since you guys got along so well in the Hamptons.” I swallowed down the acid rising from my gut. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long…”
“No,” he said, shaking his head and scratching his chin against my chest. “I heard her two nights ago. I went to pee and saw you guys on the couch.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Two nights ago. If we were on the couch…
There wasn’t a chance he’d seen anything bad. I’d been smart enough about that to keep things confined to my locked master bedroom, but we had been drinking, and I knew damn well that I’d kissed her more than a handful of times. She’d had her legs in my lap at one point, and at another, she’d been leaning back on me, her hand in mine.
God, I was a fucking idiot.
“What did you see?” I asked, trying my absolute damnedest to not show a hint of panic. But his head was against my chest, and there wasn’t a chance he didn’t hear how quickly my heart was beating.
