Page 268 of The Billion Heirs Boxed Set

The door opens.

Chance—big, strong, muscular—walks in holding a bouquet of something I don’t recognize.

“Hi, kitten.”

My heart lurches at the sight of him, then I start to worry. This is the moment I’ve been dreading… forever. Will he take Grady away? “What are you doing here?”

“I shouldn’t have run off. I’m sorry.” He clears his throat and glances at Grady. “And I didn’t come up here earlier. I mean, I did, but I didn’t come into the room. He—” Chance glances at our sleeping son. “He doesn’t know me. And…I didn’t want to scare him.”

“He’s sleeping, Chance. He needs his rest.”

“I know. I don’t want you to wake him.” Chance sets the flowers down and walks toward Grady. Stares down at him in awe. “Damn. That red hair.”

“You sure can’t claim he’s not yours,” I say.

He glares at me. “I would never!”

“Shh. Don’t wake him. And…” I sigh. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“It sure was. All of this has been uncalled for. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“The letter,” I murmur.

He tugs off his hat and runs a hand over his head. “That fucking letter.”

I still can’t believe my mother wrote it. That Jonathan Bridger forced her hand the way he did.

Chance pulls up a chair and sits at Grady’s bedside. He fingers a lock of his son’s red hair. “He’s beautiful, Avery.”

I nod. “He is. He’s everything to me.”

“He is to me too. Now that I know he exists.”

Without meaning to, I choke out a sob. “I’m so sorry.”

“I didn’t come here to yell,” Chance says. “Or to make you feel guilty. I’ll never understand how all this happened to us. How my old man could be such an unfeeling sociopath, playing around with people’s lives.”

I say nothing.

“If I’d known…” He shakes his head.

“Your father fixed it so you’d never know,” I tell him. “My mom told me everything.”

“How could a father hate his own son so much?” Chance looks at the ceiling.

“It wasn’t you he hated. It was me, Chance. He didn’t want us together. He thought I was trash.”

“He was trash, but I knew the man. He didn’t hate you, Avery. Who could hate you? He didn’t know you. All he knew was that you made me happy, and he took you away from me because of that alone.”

I don’t have the stamina to argue the point. While I agree that Jonathan Bridger had no love for his son, I also believe he didn’t want his son with the likes of me. What does it even matter at this point? It is what it is.

I glance at the flowers. They’re odd, and something I’ve never seen. The bright orange blooms look like they’d be more at home on the head of a tropical bird than in a bouquet. “What are those?”

He chuckles. “Ugly, aren’t they? They’re called birds of paradise. You’re supposed to bring flowers when you come to the hospital, but what the hell kind of flowers do you bring to a guy? So I went into the gift shop downstairs, and this is what they suggested.”

“You didn’t have to. Grady hates flowers.”

“So did I at his age,” he replies. “Damn. I know absolutely nothing about my own son.”