Page 12 of My Ex’s Dad (Scandalous Billionaires #1)

“I was sixteen, and it’s a long story. The thing that hurt wasn’t that I felt targeted or used.

It was that she threatened to tell some pretty nasty lies to anyone who would listen if I didn’t pay her every month and stay away from her child.

She wanted my money, not me. Her family would have liked the connections, but she found a way to be free and live her life without answering to anyone.

She didn’t, to the best of my knowledge, help her family out at all. They’re old money, and they’d run out.”

Okay…what? How did I not know any of this? I’ve never met Reginald’s grandparents.

My lunch is totally forgotten, and I feel sick to my stomach. I can’t imagine how I would feel if someone treated me that way.

“That’s…I’m so sorry that happened to you. What makes it even worse is that she doesn’t care about helping her family. I always knew she was self-absorbed, but that’s an entirely new level. I wish Reg knew.”

“I don’t want him to know these things,” Warrick says sharply.

He scrapes a hand over his bearded jaw, the facial hair bristling against his fingertips.

He moderates his tone, glancing over at me sheepishly.

“He needs to formulate his opinion himself, and it’s hard to do that with family.

I thought maybe he’d see it as he got older and would want to reach out, but even so, there are things he should never know. ”

“You were young when you had him.”

“Yes. We were both sixteen.”

Not only can I not imagine someone using me like that, wounding me, but I would never have recovered if it happened to me so young. I can’t even comprehend bringing a child into the world at that age. I can barely even think about doing it now, and I’m twenty-four.

He looks like he’s fighting a battle with himself. Just when I think that’s it, he’s not going to go on, and we’re dropping the subject, he does.

“I thought I was in love. I was sixteen, so what did I know? We dated for a while. We were teenagers, and I thought she felt the same way about me. We did what people called fooling around , I suppose, but it was never that kind of fooling around.”

I’m not the only one who is scarlet anymore.

“I was scared of disrespecting her. I might have been a teenager, but I was also infatuated with her. I thought she’d hung the entire galaxy.

I wanted to wait until marriage. I was probably the only sixteen year old who even considered such a thing.

She…” He has to look away, fixing his eyes firmly on the kitchen windows that overlook the sprawling backyard.

“She told me one day, months later, that she was pregnant. It wasn’t possible.

But she didn’t try to convince me it was possible or anything.

She had a plan, and that plan didn’t involve my innocence or the facts.

Only the things that could be perceived as.

She went right to my parents and said I’d taken…

taken advantage of her. Then, she demanded they pay to keep her quiet.

She’d already told her friends and her family that she was having a baby, and I was the father, but she said she’d keep quiet about the other stuff if she got a big payout.

The thing about old-money families is that they care primarily about their reputation.

Even if we were new money, threats of that nature wouldn’t have just ruined my life and tainted my family. It would have destroyed the business.”

Ugh, that sick feeling is growing more and more legit with every passing second. I’m worried I have gas issues now, and I certainly haven’t eaten any cabbage.

“My parents wanted us to get married, but she refused. She rode it out until Reginald was born and then demanded additional payments to keep her quiet. If I lawyered up to try and fight her, she’d make sure I never saw him again.”

“Oh my god!” I yelp like I just set my palm on a hot burner.

“You believe me?” he asks. His whole body is on lockdown, so tense and stiff that it’s like he’s been cryogenically frozen and would shatter with a single touch. I can tell how much that question costs him. It flays me wide open, seeing the painful vulnerability on his face.

“Why would I not believe you?”

He shrugs like it is nothing. “My own parents didn’t.”

That injustice tears my chest in half. I can’t even imagine something like that happening to me, not just that kind of accusation but any accusation, and having my family not be there for me. There’s nothing they haven’t stood behind me on, including, most recently, almost becoming fish food.

What Warrick is truly saying slowly trickles past my immediate anger and astonishment.

“You’re not Reg’s dad,” I whisper-yell.

He shakes his head. “I’m not. But Candice refused to let anyone know who the father truly was, including the man himself. I’m the only father Reginald is ever going to have. The saddest part is that I always wanted to be a good dad, but she kept me from seeing him.”

“But…but why would she do that?”

I have to stop and remember this is the same woman who repeatedly placed plastic surgery pamphlet suggestions in my bag.

A woman who is so superficial that it’s glaringly obvious from the first second of meeting her just how little care and regard she has for anyone else.

I thought Reginald was the exception to that, and for his sake, I tolerated her, but now I’m hearing she created an entire world for herself based solely on using and hurting others.

“She saw Reginald as hers. I was just the means to an end. She never wanted to share. I guess in that way, she did have some motherly instincts.”

“She does love Reg to a fault.” I’ll cede to that.

But I’m realizing just how unhealthy that is.

“I didn’t for a second think Reg and I would ever get married.

I think I always knew we were a bad match, but even if we were a great one, I don’t think I could have handled having her as a mother-in-law. ”

“She did relent as far as to give me two calls with Reginald a year.”

Two? This man’s own mother and father didn’t believe him.

He’s lived his life with this horrible black cloud hanging over his head.

He was hurt and used. Even after all of that, he was willing to claim and raise a child that wasn’t his, and then Candice had the lady stones to keep him from seeing Reg?

I have no real way to even comprehend something like that.

“As far as anyone knew, Reginald was mine, and I think her family finally got through to her. A boy needs his dad. But she did say if I ever poisoned him against her, I could kiss my comfortable life as I knew it goodbye.”

“That’s horrible. It makes me...oh my god.” I bow my head, drawing in long gulps of air. “I think I’m the one who needs an antacid.” But not really. Nothing is going to touch the nasty sensation burning up my throat.

“I wasn’t afraid for my reputation. My parents were, though.

I bowed to their wishes and let them dictate how things went until I had a degree and my own money.

By then, I’d settled for two phone calls a year and a few updates and photos from Candice.

Reginald appeared to be doing well. He was a happy, healthy child.

I didn’t want to fuck up his life, and by then, I don’t know… maybe that’s all I would have done.”

“I don’t think so.” Shit. My cheeks are wet. I didn’t even realize I was crying. “I think he needs to know the truth.”

“Maybe. In time. But that would involve having a relationship with him that was well established, and I can’t do that because he is where he is, and I am where I am.

He needs to mature, and he needs to want to know me as a person.

Even if it was his decision, I truly believe Candice would try and ruin it with lies.

I don’t want to tell Reginald what really happened.

If he believed me—and he has no reason to—he would hate his mother, and for that, he would only hate me too.

He hates me already, and all I’ve wanted is to try to get to know him. ”

I’m melting on the spot, sinking into a pile of sorrow.

I have to get myself under control. The last thing anyone wants is to be pitied.

Warrick has done what he could, salvaged a life out of a mess that wasn’t his fault.

He’s tried to be a good person and do the right thing in a situation that’s so very wrong, and that’s commendable .

“I don’t think he hates you,” I offer, though it’s never going to be nearly enough. I swipe at my wet cheeks. “I think apathy is probably closer, and that’s the opposite of hate.”

I want to do something, but I’m in no position to offer comfort.

I have to just stand here and offer useless platitudes, even if it does seem like this man needs a hug in the worst way.

We’re not friends. I can’t cross a line, even if that line is just basic humanity.

All I can do is try to be supportive while trying not to give him false hope.

My heart hurts so much for this man, and he’s little more than a stranger. I’m also burning with fury on behalf of all the people out there who get blamed for things they didn’t do and for all the people who have been victimized for real and will never come forward.

This world is so painful. It can be full of people who do horrible things to each other.

But I don’t want it to just be that. I’ve known so much love from my parents, from my granny, from my aunts and uncles, and my friends. My existence was far from lonely, but even though he had all the money in the world, I don’t think that’s been true for Warrick.

He needs someone. Something…

“You should get a pet,” I blurt.

Like he’s followed every single silent thought, he offers a half smile, but it doesn’t chase away the shadows in his eyes. “I have one. A dog. He’s in the garage.”

“Oh my god! Warrick!” I flap my arms like a bottom-heavy chicken that’s trying to take flight. “You…you didn’t tell me about a dog! You can’t just lock an animal in the garage when it’s this hot! No one’s fed or given him water. Oh god. Oh no.”

“Wait.” He shoves back his chair and puts both hands up like he can stop me from hyperventilation. “I’m sorry. It’s not a real dog. It’s. Not. A. Real. Dog.”

“Okay. Holy shit,’ I rasp. I have to fan myself. I need air. I need to get it in front of my face faster with my hand. That’s a thing, I swear.

“Now I’ve almost given you and your granny heart attacks. It’s a robot dog. He’s not done yet. He’s a project I’ve been working on in my spare time,” Warrick says.

“Right. Because you’re a mechanical engineer, and doing really hard and impossible things that go way beyond mental math is fun for you.”

His smile doesn’t grow, but it doesn’t fade. I guess I’d call it half a smirk, and my god, it looks good on him. It does wonders to transform his face. It makes his eyes a little bit…twinkly. Twinkly on this man is dangerous. “Something like that. Would you like to see him?”

“I would love to see him.” I don’t think I can finish off my sandwich right now, so I put it in the fridge. “Warrick?”

“Hmm?”

I wipe my sweating palms on my flowy black dress. “I’ll never tell anyone what you told me. It’s not my story. I just wanted you to know that I can keep a secret.”

“I’m sorry I’ve burdened you with that. I don’t know why I told you all of it.” He does seem genuinely confused, and the longer we stand here, the more I can feel his distress growing.

It makes my heart go skittering madly in my chest to think that he might never have told anyone else any of this, and now he just opened up to me. It wasn’t like I prodded him into it by telling him that I’d heard rumors and wanted to know what the real story was.

“It’s okay,” I choke out, trying to be reassuring because, truly, it is. I mean, it’s not. Not one single bit. “Thank you for trusting me with your truth.”

“Now that you know the sordid past stuff, here’s some lighter stuff for the present. I’m good at math. You already know that. I also like robot dogs.” He half frowns. “I guess you know that too. I’m an air conditioning nerd.” His aggravated pause nearly makes me laugh. “And asparagus is delicious.”

I can’t help it. I give in to the urge to laugh, and once I do, I laugh so hard that I snort a little. That was not at all what I expected. None of this was or is.

He waits until I’m not making piggy noises before he continues.

“My parents have this expectation of what I should be as a son, and I’ve never liked to fall in line.

I apologize in advance if they ever drop by unannounced.

It happens from time to time. They’re basically insufferable.

I love them, but they’re not easy. Also?

My first tattoo was kind of an I can do to my own body what I wish thing, but then I liked them.

The long hair and the beard just pushed it a little further, and then I couldn’t give it up.

My god, I don’t know why I’m telling you this either.

” Holy fuck, his cheeks get the slightest bit pink, and it hits me all at once, all over.

“I apologize again for the info dump that you absolutely didn’t need. Let’s go check out the dog?”

“You should probably always refer to it as a robot dog. Just to prevent further heart palpitations.”

He picks up the remaining triangle of his sandwich. I’m glad he still has an appetite.

No, what I’m really glad about is that after everything that happened to him, he was still brave enough to make a life for himself.

He doesn’t seem like a person who just endures because he has to.

He has his scars, and they’re not apparent or obvious, but I can tell by the way his eyes light up over his project that he also has his passions.

And it makes me warm and gooey from my toes to my eyeballs.

“I’ll make a note of that,” he promises as he leads the way.