Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
“You’re the least selfish person I know,” she says softly.
“Maybe I just hide it well.” I mean it as a joke, but it doesn’t sound like that. “I’ve been pretty selfish with you.”
“Not with Abi. Not with Scarlett.”
I shrug. I don’t particularly want to talk about my ex-wife while Shay is in my arms, but there’s still so much of our pasts we haven’t hashed out. If she wants to talk about this now, we will. “I’ve had my moments, but don’t paint me as a martyr just because our situation is unconventional.”
Turning in my arms, she presses her palm to my chest, as if trying to measure the beats of my heart. “When did you find out Abi wasn’t yours?”
“When Abi was sick, I wanted to see if I was a match to donate bone marrow. Most of the time, parents aren’t a match, but I wanted to try anyway. Scarlett panicked that it was like a DNA test or something and they’d tell me I wasn’t Abi’s father.” I close my eyes as I remember her stopping me on my way out the door. Her panic. Her tearful confession. The way she begged me not to leave her. “She told me she’d lied because she’d wanted to give her child the best, and she believed I was meant to be Abi’s father.”
“What did you do?”
“I grieved a little, I guess. Now it truly doesn’t matter to me. She’s my daughter, but when I first discovered she wasn’t biologically mine, I had to rearrange my perception of everything. Including my marriage and how hard I was willing to bend to make it work and how long I was willing to continue what felt like a ruse at that point. Scarlett and I were married in name only. When she moved back in after Abi’s diagnosis, I insisted she sleep in a different room until we figured out what we really wanted. The day of her confession, I went from wanting to stay married for my three-year-old daughter’s sake to wanting to stay married because I was afraid she’d take Abi away from me if we divorced. What claim did I have if she wasn’t even my blood?”
“That’s awful.”
I stroke Shay’s hair and twist to press a kiss to her forehead. “I don’t think she would have. Hell, she barely fought me for primary custody when we finally did divorce.” I sigh. “Scarlett knew—knew before she even held Abi for the first time—that I was the best choice she could make for her daughter. While I resent the lies and manipulation, I understand that Abi was always her priority. Just like she was mine.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
When she doesn’t immediately ask, I say, “Of course.”
She worries her bottom lip between her teeth and watches me for a long time before speaking again. “Do you ever think about the decision you made when you found out Scarlett was pregnant?”
My breath catches in my chest. Painful. I think about my decision to stay with Scarlett a lot, but in the context of Shay, I think about it almost compulsively. If I could rewrite the past, I would’ve found a way to be Abi’s father without marrying Scarlett. But even from this vantage point, I can’t see how that would’ve happened. Scarlett didn’t want to be alone, and if I’d known Abi wasn’t mine before she was born, I wouldn’t have felt so determined to make us a family.
Shay studies my face. “I’m not judging your decision either way,” she says, misinterpreting my silence as defensiveness. “I just wonder if you’ve ever considered how you could’ve handled it differently if you’d known the truth. What would you have done if you’d known Abi wasn’t yours?”
My chest tightens.
“I don’t mean about us,” she says in a rush. “I mean, do you think you would’ve married Scarlett?”
I pull back so I can see her face. “But there was an us.”
“Barely.” She looks away when she says the word, and I wonder if it feels like as much of a betrayal to her heart as it does to mine.
I take her chin in my hand, guiding her to meet my eyes. “Not barely.”
“It was one night in Paris, Easton.”
“Does that make it any less real?” I take her hand and press it to my chest. “Does what I felt here not count because I only got one weekend to touch you? To hold you? What we had was real. Maybe it didn’t last long, but it was the most honest thing I’ve ever felt for any woman. Even when I thought Abi was my daughter, you were part of the equation. It wasn’t an easy choice.”
“But what if I hadn’t been in the picture and you’d known she wasn’t yours? Would you have stayed? Would you have wanted to be Abi’s father?” Her face falls. “That’s not a fair question, is it?”