Page 48 of Playboy Husband

CALLUM

Ididn’t give her time to run or myself time to think.

I just wrapped my fingers in a gentle grip around her wrist and pulled Maisie down the hall into the bedroom I had been assigned.

Immediately shutting the door behind us, I leaned back against it, desperately needing something solid to hold me up for just a minute.

Getting through the afternoon and then the flight had been hell, but seeing her once we’d gotten here, the guardedness in her eyes combined with the genuine joy at having been reunited with both Brody and me, it wrecked me.

She spun to face me, those green eyes wide as she hugged her arms around herself.

Her hair was pulled into a sleek, dark ponytail, and ironically, she was wearing an old Cal Poly hoodie.

So many emotions ran through me at once that I felt like someone had chucked my heart into a washing machine and put it on the spin cycle.

Maisie didn’t seem to be faring much better. Her narrow shoulders were shaking. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before just one word came out. “Callum.”

“I think I might be Brody’s father.” Over the last few hours, I’d thought about so many different ways to say those words, but in the end, they’d just come out blunt and straightforward.

Maisie froze so completely, I didn’t even think she was breathing anymore, but then I saw her swallow. She blinked hard a few times in quick succession, and though her mouth opened and closed again, she didn’t say a word.

I dragged a hand through my hair, pacing before I stopped in front of her. My heart was doing things any cardiologist would probably pay to study given how crazy it was going in my chest, but despite the blood roaring in my ears, I had to get it all out.

“Today, at the barber’s, I noticed that he has a cowlick. In the same damn spot I do. He grins the same way Sterling used to when we were kids, with his nose wrinkling just a little bit.”

Her lips parted, but I pushed on, desperate to lay out all the facts to her. “Just a few seconds later, I saw it. His birthmark. I have the same one. Also in the exact same spot, and here’s the kicker, my father and Sterling have it too.”

Her hands trembled as she clasped them together. Black spots were popping up in front of my eyes. I took a deep breath, uncertain if I’d done that at all since I’d started, but I carried on anyway. “And the timing. God, it lines up, doesn’t it? That night was just about eight years ago now.”

A bark of bitter laughter shot out of me completely of its own accord, so much guilt and shame flooding my senses that I turned my back on her and scrubbed my hands over my face.

“I’m so sorry, Maisie. I should’ve seen it earlier.

I know it was a one-night stand and that there’s probably another guy who could be his dad, but I’m sure of this.

I’ll do a DNA test. I’m so, so sorry you had to go through all this alone. ”

“You don’t need a DNA test,” she said quietly, her hand landing on my shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. “You also don’t need to apologize. Brody is yours, Callum. I’ve known it his entire life. Since before he was even born.”

The floor tilted under me. I shook my head, trying to catch up. My eyelids screwed shut, but I leaned into her touch. Just for a moment. Letting her ground me as much as anything could right then. “What?”

“There was no one else, Callum.” Her voice cracked on my name, her hand slipping away. “It was only you.”

All I could do was stare at the ancient stone wall I was facing. The truth wrapped around my chest like a vise, sharp and suffocating.

Brody was my son. Mine.

And she’d known?

The words looped in my head. Incredulity and disbelief swirled through me so intensely that I couldn’t even feel my fucking legs. When I finally managed to turn around, I just stared at her, waiting for the ground to stop shifting under me or for my lungs to fill with air.

Neither of those things happened. Nothing made sense right then.

I looked into her teary green eyes, and it suddenly hit me all at once.

In quick succession, I cycled through all five stages of whatever the fuck this was.

For so many years, I’d been joking about probably having a whole string of children out there I didn’t know about, but now that it was actually happening, the reality was too much to bear.

Every birthday I’d missed. Every scraped knee I hadn’t been there to patch up. I regretted every last minute of it now. His first words. First steps. God, what I would’ve given to have been there.

Guilt came hot on the heels of regret. All this time, I’d been living my life while she’d been raising him on her own.

I thought about how scared she must’ve been when she’d found out she was pregnant and about all those long nights she’d had no one to help her when he’d been a newborn.

I thought about every opportunity she’d had to trade to raise our baby.

She had given up on her Olympic dreams to dive into motherhood.

Fuck, if only I’d figured it out sooner. That was the shame talking. I couldn’t believe I’d been spending time with the kid for months, noticing the similarities between us, and I’d never done the math. Somehow, it had all gone way over my head.

The anger, however, that was what stuck for now. Hot and blinding, it turned my voice raw and my insides to ground beef. “Why didn’t you tell me? You were pregnant with my kid and you didn’t… you didn’t say a word. Why? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. Resignation, fear, and profound sadness haunted her gaze like she’d rehearsed this moment a thousand times and still hated every second of actually having to go through it.

“I’ve already told you that, Callum. Remember when we talked the other night?

I told you that one of the main reasons I didn’t tell Brody’s father was because he wouldn’t have believed me. That’s still true.”

I flinched. The words stung worse than any hit I’d ever taken. “What the hell do you mean I wouldn’t have believed you? How do you know if you never even fucking tried?”

“You were Callum Westwood,” she snapped. “Campus playboy. The guy who never had the same girl twice. You have every right to be angry with me for not telling you sooner after you came back into my life, but let’s not pretend you would’ve cared back then.”

“How can you say that? How can you possibly think I wouldn’t have cared?”

“Would you have?” she shot back. “You know as well as I do how you would’ve reacted if I’d shown up at your door months later and told you I was pregnant.

Assuming you even remembered me after all the girls you’d probably had between the time we were together and when I found out, you would’ve laughed it off.

Said it wasn’t yours. I’d already decided I was having Brody.

My only option was to leave before you had the chance to resent me for it.

I wasn’t going to beg you to care or to believe me. ”

Her words sliced right through my soul, the gashes deep and brutal.

She was just being honest. I could see from the protective fire in her eyes that this was her truth.

That was how she had felt. I staggered back a step, trying to process while also trying to swallow the taste of bile and rage that burned at the back of my throat.

Frankly, I didn’t give a shit about her truth right now.

I was seeing red. She’d made assumptions about me, and because of that, I’d missed out on the first seven years of Brody’s life.

Those pictures I’d seen the other night flickered through my mind like an old movie, of him as a baby, his fist curled against her collarbone.

Because of her, I’d been deprived of ever having a moment like that with him. I thought about the pictures of his face smeared with gooey baby food and realized I would never get to feed him. Never see the look on his face the first time he tasted eggs, or pumpkin, or even a damn lemon.

“Who are you to get to decide that for me?” My voice thundered around the room, louder than I’d intended for it to be, but I couldn’t help it.

I’d never felt anything like this and the storm inside was taking over.

“That wasn’t just your decision to make, Maisie!

He’s my son, too. Mine. And you didn’t even give me a chance—”

“You didn’t even really know me back then, Callum.

I knew you, though. Or at least, the version of you that you chose to show people.

” Her tears were flowing in little rivulets down her cheeks, her entire body trembling, but she stood her ground.

“You were reckless, untouchable, and sleeping with half the damn campus. How was I supposed to believe you’d suddenly care about me, or, more importantly, about a baby you definitely wouldn’t have wanted back then? ”

“You didn’t know me,” I bit out, my chest heaving. “You knew what people said. You knew the stories, but you never gave me the chance to prove you wrong.”

Her face contorted, anguish etched into every line. “What was I supposed to do? Throw myself at your feet and let you laugh in my face? Or no, better yet, wait for you to accuse me of trying to trap you? Of trying to get money out of you?”

Somewhere deep down, her words struck a chord, but my insides were so twisted up that I couldn’t untangle any of it right then.

“Okay, so instead, you lied to me. These last couple months, every time I saw Brody, you looked me right in the eye and you didn’t say a damn word. Do you have any idea how that feels?”

She hugged herself tighter, head angled back to keep her eyes on mine. Her voice became raw and pleading. “That wasn’t about you, Callum. It was about Brody. About protecting him. And sure, it was about protecting myself too. My whole life had changed overnight.”

She threw her arms out to her sides. “Look at all this. Look at what you and your family have and take for granted. Do you really blame me for being afraid of your reaction when you found out?”

My heart pounded, my being torn into two. There was fury at what she’d hidden from me, but there was also guilt because she wasn’t wrong about who I’d been. The betrayal cut too deep, though.

“You should have told me,” I ground out, every word as sharp as a shard of glass. “From the beginning, you should’ve told me. No excuses. No what-ifs. I deserved to know and he deserved a father who actually knew he existed.”

Maisie shook her head. “I was barely twenty, Callum. I was scared. Alone. I was doing the best I could. I didn’t trust you, and I didn’t trust myself to handle what would happen if I did tell you and it all went sideways.”

I stared at her, breathing hard while all those emotions fought for dominance. Anger, grief, regret, love, and a fierce, terrifying protectiveness for the boy who would soon be asleep just down the hall.

Brody. My son.

Maisie scoffed and angrily swiped her tears. “I also didn’t want to lose you, Callum. I didn’t expect you to be who you are. I didn’t expect to l—”

Her voice cracked, and before I could get another syllable out, she turned and bolted.

“Maisie!” I lunged after her, but she was already gone, her footsteps fleeing down the hall.

Everything in me wanted to go after her, but instead, I stopped dead, my chest still heaving. Fury and hurt boiled in my veins. My fists clenched at my sides. I could chase her down, corner her, and demand the answers I thought I deserved, but what good would it do?

She was crying because of me. Again.

My thoughts spun like a hurricane and I started pacing the room, not even noticing any of the lavish opulence I knew I was standing in. All I could see was Brody’s grin at the barber, the cowlick, the birthmark.

My son.

My blood.

Seven years of first steps, first words, victories, and tantrums I’d missed because she hadn’t told me.

Because she hadn’t trusted me.

But she hadn’t been wrong.

The realization slapped me in the face. She had been right.

I had been such a selfish bastard back then, every bit the reckless playboy she’d accused me of being. If she’d come to me about this, I would have laughed. I would have denied it and told her the baby wasn’t mine.

Hell, I probably would’ve told her to take care of it and walked away without looking back. I definitely would’ve offered to pay for it just on the off chance that it was mine. My stomach turned, the shame so thick that it threatened to choke me.

I dropped onto the edge of the bed. My elbows dug into my knees as I pressed my palms against my eyes so hard that sparks danced behind them. God, it was so much easier to just blame her. I wanted to do it so damn badly, but I couldn’t escape the truth clawing at my throat.

Back then, I hadn’t been the man I was now.

She hadn’t robbed me of fatherhood. I had done that all by myself just by being the self-absorbed asshole she’d known in those days.

A guy who had let his dick and his competitive spirit rule him.

Who’d lived and died by the puck, never missed a party, and had hounded anything in a skirt.

The castle creaked and settled around me as the night got colder outside. My mind wouldn’t stop whirring even after I’d stopped pacing. Eventually, I climbed into bed, but I didn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was Brody’s face and Maisie’s tears.

I loved them. Both of them. Fiercely and with everything in me. Right then, I just didn’t know if that was enough.