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“Seems empty,” Keegan notes. “Are we gonna risk it?”

“Yes. Let’s hope it stays this way.”

I lift the latch and push open the wrought iron gate. The playground is more for elementary-aged children, but I couldn’t chance the larger public playground, so we’ll have to make do with this. The moment I unbuckle Fen from his pushchair andset him on the ground, he takes off with a gleeful laugh trailing behind him.

Keegan chases after him, making silly sounds and faces that delight him to no end. She helps him climb up the playscape and sets him on her lap, then they go down the slide together. My chest squeezes at the sight of them, similar to the way it did the other day when she was feeding him.

I can’t make sense of it.

I never have this feeling when I watch him with Tinsley.

Keegan and I take turns with him on the playscape, going over bridges he loves to jump on since it bounces him and being held as we zip down the slides. He’s too small for the swings, so we don’t even attempt that, and after an hour, he finally crashes, mumbling “Dada” and holding his chubby hands up at me, demanding I pick him up.

I lift him into my arms, and he doesn’t waste a second before he cuddles himself into my chest and burrows his head beneath my chin. Keegan points to a bench, and we walk over and take a much-needed seat.

“Wow,” Keegan muses, collapsing against the wood. “How did my parents do that with twins?”

I give an exaggerated shudder that makes her laugh.

“We had help,” she explains. “The best nanny ever. My dad’s a doctor, and my mom is, or I should say was, a school nurse at the prep school we went to for high school. Plus, we had my aunt Layla living with us for a while, and she helped out a lot too.”

“So you’re saying I should get on the ball and start searching for a nanny?”

“I’m saying despite what we tell ourselves, we really can’t do it all without help.”

I believe that. I’ve lived it. I just don’t know how to do that with this.

Silence settles between us as Fen’s breathing grows deep and even. I could put him back in his pushchair and take him home for a proper nap, but I’m not ready to leave Keegan yet. I like being out here with her. It makes me feel like the old me for a change.

She winces. “Sorry if that came out preachy. I didn’t mean for it to. I’m just saying it’s okay if you do get help. You don’t have to feel so alone.”

“I know, and thank you for that. When I was in London, I had so much going on all at once. We’d just found out about him, and the DNA results took two weeks to come back. In that time, my mum was there, and she did so much to help. I was bitter,” I admit ruefully. “I was angry and bitter that not only did I not know about him until he was dropped on Mum’s doorstep, but I hated that he’d been abandoned. With that, I didn’t allow myself to start to bond with him right away.”

I glance down at him, feeling a familiar pang of guilt when I think about how I was with him at first. So cold and standoffish, I’d hardly look at him, so afraid to fall in love as I’ve always been. When my father walked out on us when I was nine and my brothers were small, my mother told me one universal truth. A life code if you will. A rule to follow at all costs.

If you don’t want to experience real pain and crushing heartache, never need anyone and never allow yourself to fall in love. And if you do, always love yourself more than them.

After watching Mum suffer the way she did, trapped in heartache and loneliness and poverty, working too many hours and raising three boys all on her own, that rule became my compass. I never got close to women and never envisioned having a family. Then my child was suddenly there, abandoned as I’d been, and from the moment I knew he was mine for sure, I couldn’t help but love him and want everything for him that I never had.

I broke the code.

I need him like nothing else, and I love him far more than I love myself.

But with that comes the fear. Fear that he’ll be taken, and I’ll lose everything. Fear that the world will get to him, or I’ll fuck everything up.

“Now that’s all changed. He’s mine, and he’s my world. I just wish I knew who his mother is and what happened to her. For all I know, she could come back at any moment and demand I return him or try to fight me for custody or money or both.” This is easily my biggest fear. Way more than social services or anyone else. It’s part of the reason I’ve tried to hide out, hoping Vander could discover something about her.

“I think that’s understandable.”

I sigh. “In London, I was filming and distracted by that. Tinsley and my mum were always there. It was so much easier. Now we’re here, and I start filming next month, and I have to, very soon, tell the world about my son when I don’t have a clue who his mum is or even when he was born. How do you trust a nanny,a stranger, when all of that is going on?”

She stares out toward the empty playground for a very long moment. “Honestly? I have no idea. I’m a Fritz, so I get it. Not on that scale, but, well”—she shifts uncomfortably—“you already know about my money, and people come after that. Maybe that’s why I was so into Alden. He didn’t pose that risk to me. I didn’t have to question if he liked me for me or if he liked me because I’m Keegan Fritz, billionaire heiress.”

“He’s a prat, love. Any guy who doesn’t love you like you’re a million of the best pieces combined into one is an undeserving prat.”

“Well, that undeserving prat doused me in coffee this morning when he came to my building to talk to me.” She twiststo face me, propping her leg and bending her knee on the bench between us. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always,” I say, shifting so Fen is covered from the sun glaring down on us.