Page 10

JULIAN

W ith my cell in Deacon’s hand, and the look of shock turning into complete mortification, I know exactly who’s name is on the screen. The incessant buzz is the only sound between us as he looks at me expectantly, wanting and deserving an explanation.

“She’s been texting me,” I reveal, my voice gentle as I deliver the news. I reach for the phone, decline the call, and switch off my phone, just to ensure we’re not interrupted.

His gaze drifts to Reese before landing back on me, somehow keenly aware of the reasons his mother has now chosen to reach out.

“Come here.” Slowly, I sit up, careful not to wake Reese, knowing it’s inevitable at this point, and make room for him beside me. It takes a minute for him to rejoin the conversation, his mind derailing, his thoughts floating to somewhere I’m not. As he finally settles next to me, I hand him our daughter, who curls up perfectly against his chest, knowing she’ll be the calm to his storm.

“I should’ve told you.” A hand lands on my thigh, silencing me. I know I haven’t done anything wrong, but his touch and close proximity are a relief all the same. I thread my fingers through his as he sinks into the couch, tips his head back, and closes his eyes.

“I’ve been thinking about her all day today,” he eventually confesses. “Thinking, maybe I do want to speak to her now that we have Reese…” His voice trails off, replaced with a deep inhale and a loud exhale before continuing. “But when I saw her name on the screen, everything came rushing back.”

“We don’t owe her anything,” I remind him. “ You don’t owe her anything.”

He tips his head to the side, finally looking at me, his blue eyes looking sad and desolate in a way I haven’t seen in years.

“Have you spoken to her?” he asks.

Reese predictably starts to wriggle in his hold before I can answer, and I have to wonder how much of this Band-Aid we can rip off all at once, or is it determined to be the wound that keeps on bleeding.

“I haven’t spoken to her,” I tell him truthfully. “She’s texted. More than once,” I inform. “If she’s calling, I’m assuming she’s getting sick and tired of waiting for me to respond.”

“She wants to meet Reese, doesn’t she?”

My teeth tug at the skin of my lips as I nod, my anxiety over all of this finally rising up to the surface.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The question is valid, but I’m certain he isn’t going to appreciate my answer. “Because I didn’t want to,” I say too bluntly. “Hasn’t she ruined enough?”

“So what I want for Reese doesn’t matter?”

“That’s not at all what this is, and you know it.” My voice is low but stern as I continue. “But this is exactly my point. There’s nothing about the mere mention of her that doesn’t bring you anguish, and I think it’s okay for me not to want that for you and our daughter.”

“You still should’ve told me,” he says, his jaw clenched.

I know he’s right, but my instinct to protect our family only has me seeing red. I know there is a middle ground, I know there is a space for us to talk about this rationally, but I’m not the same person I was the last time we spoke to Elaine. I’m not the same person I was when we got married. I am both of those men and so much more.

I’m full, with more love and more loyalty, and there is no way this woman is getting to them without going through me. If that means fighting with Deacon to protect them both, then I’ll do it. In every lifetime they will come first, and I know despite his confusion and anger, he knows that.

He knows me .

A small, melodic sounding whine leaves Reese’s mouth, interrupting us and effectively putting our conversation on pause.

“I’ll get her a bottle,” I tell Deacon as I rise up off the couch.

With the bottle already prepared and in the fridge, it only takes me a few minutes to heat it up and check the temperature on the inside of my wrist. When it’s ready for Reese to eat, I stride back into the living room, the sight of Deacon smiling playfully at our daughter as he changes her diaper, stopping me in my tracks.

This is what I want to keep, selfish or not. I want to live in this bubble with him and her and have nothing else taint that. My eyes land on the uneaten sandwiches, and I tell myself this can wait.

Elaine Sutton can fucking wait.

Handing Deacon the bottle, I gesture to our food. “Can we at least eat lunch first and finish this conversation later? I don’t want it to go to waste.”

Seeming a little bit calmer, he nods, and I take it as my cue to head back into the kitchen and grab us both a soda. Sitting side by side, I eat my sandwich first while he feeds Reese. Besides her cute little suckling sounds, we sit in complete silence. It’s not awkward or tense, but it’s that moment of quiet that speaks the loudest. Our anger and hostility isn’t at one another, it’s at finding ourselves in another impossible situation, all these years later, at the hands of Deacon’s mother.

It takes about the same time for me to finish my sub as it does for Reese to finish her bottle.

“Let me burp her,” I offer. “And you can eat.”

When he hands me Reese, I put her over my shoulder and begin rubbing circles in the center of her back while Deacon takes his turn to have lunch. Just as we settle back into the silence, a loud belch breaks through the invisible, mesh-like wall between us, making us lock eyes and laugh.

“Are we okay?”

Reaching for me, he skates his fingers down the length of my jaw.

“I love you,” he says, and the anxiety in my chest loosens ever so slightly. “We’re always going to be okay,” he assures me. “Nobody gets to rock our boat. Nobody gets to have that power over us.”

Especially not her.

Leaning into his touch, I hear what he doesn’t say, and wholeheartedly agree. “I should’ve told you about it,” I admit. “I just don’t know what this means for us, and I was scared.”

When Deacon remains silent, I push and try to bring up something he said earlier. “You mentioned wanting to speak to her again. Does that still stand?”

Blowing out a long breath, he bends over and places his empty plate on the coffee table. He delays the conversation by reaching for his soda, and I watch him take small sips and stare into the empty space directly in front of him.

Giving him the time he so obviously needs, I mosey through the usual steps after a feed, checking Reese’s diaper and then putting her down on her play mat. Instead of sitting beside her and reading to her or playing with her, I decide that she’ll be okay while I wait for Deacon to tell me what’s going on in that head of his.

“Daddy will be back,” I say to Reese as I kiss her on the forehead.

Content with the way she’s waving her arms and her legs, I head back over to Deacon and try to get to the bottom of what we’re both feeling. Squeezing between the table and the couch, I kneel in front of him and intertwine my fingers with his. I bring them to my lips, kissing each of his knuckles. “Talk to me.”

For the first time since he saw his mother’s name on my cell phone screen, it feels like the fog hanging over him might have finally lifted.

“Tell me,” I urge. “Where do we go from here?”

I catch him glancing at Reese before darting his gaze back to mine, that paternal instinct now ingrained in every moment.

“I think of how much I love her.” He pauses, his throat bobbing, and I watch the struggle of what he wants to say next play out on his face. “And how much it would kill me if I existed in a world where she did not.

“And I have to give credit where credit is due, because how my mother lived through it is beyond me. But…” He closes his eyes and shakes his head vehemently, almost like he’s trying to rid himself of something. “But then I think of how much I love that little girl and how I would rather die than make her feel a sliver of the way my mother made me feel.”

Despite the fury racing through my veins, there is a bruised, tender part of my heart that throbs and aches whenever I think of our past and everything Deacon and I had endured, separately and together, and right now every ounce of pain it feels is for him.

“And I want what she has with Vic’s kids,” he confesses. “Otherwise, it’s just one more thing I miss out on. Something Reese misses out on.”

Even though the distance between us is minimal, I climb up onto the couch and straddle him, cradling his face in my hands.

“Whatever you want, we’ll do,” I tell him, despite every molecule in my body opposing contact with her. I could acknowledge that this is a decision Deacon needs to make, with no input from me. I can’t give him my opinion or sway him. In good times and bad, when it’s hard and easy, this is the exact moment marriages are made of.

“When she calls you next,” he says, tears spilling from his eyes and landing on my hands, “tell her if she has any hope of meeting Reese, she needs to talk to me first.”