Page 6 of Rescuing Carolyn

When I was done, I returned inside and went to the living room. Overhead, I could hear splashing and voices. How many bath times had I missed—been denied? I’d been out of the country for months, until after my son’s birth, but I could have been here before tonight. Could have seen a picture of Austin at least.

I prowled the room. Framed photographs stood on the mantel and bookshelves. Most were of Austin. None were of me and Carolyn. Was she planning to conceal from Austin who his father was? But just from looking at the pictures, Austin’s heritage was clear. With his blue eyes and dark hair, Austin looked just like me and my brothers had at that age—and there were plenty of people in Springwell who would have recognized the resemblance right away. Frankly, I was surprised that no old high school buddy or busybody neighbor had gotten in touch with me or my brothers to let us know. Gossip tended to run strong in towns like ours.

Upstairs, footsteps moved into a back room, probably Austin’s bedroom. I should know that, know where my son slept at night, but she hadn’t let me. By the time Carolyn came down the stairs, it was all I could do to hold on to my anger. I will not be like my father, I reminded myself. No matter what, I will not follow in his footsteps.

She’d changed into snug-fitting jeans and a flowy purple top that I remembered her wearing one time when we went for a picnic. I could almost taste the strawberries we’d shared. They’d been so sweet on her lips when we’d kissed…but not as sweet as the taste of her when I tugged her panties off and slid my tongue up between her thighs. We’d been newly engaged back then, and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other for love or money. We’d been so happy. Or at least…I thought we were. Maybe I’d been wrong about us even then.

“Is he mine?” I asked before she could say anything.

Her eyes flashed. “I think you know the answer.”

“So he is.” I’d known it since I saw Austin at the jewelry store, but it still hit me hard, and the dam inside me broke. Words poured out, though I was careful not to shout. “God, Carolyn, did you hate me so much that you didn’t want to tell me? What were you going to do, pretend he didn’t have a father? Erase me from his life?”

“Don’t turn this around on me. I never hated you,” she hissed, then glanced up the stairs as if she was afraid Austin might have heard.

“You did,” I countered. “You kicked me out of your life, remember?”

“I hated what you did. I hated that you were gone so much.” She spoke quietly but vehemently. “I never hated you. Even when I should have.”

“If that’s true, you would have told me about him.” I scrubbed one hand over my face in frustration. “Come on, Carolyn, you’re one of the few people in the world who knows the full story of everything that happened with my parents. Do you think I wouldn’t want to be here for my own child after what I went through? After what you went through?” Carolyn and I had both been abandoned by a parent. We had that very sorry fact in common.

She flinched at my words, but her chin was up, and she pressed her lips together, making her dimples pop out. “Use your common sense, Zach. Would I let a child feel abandoned by either parent? I can’t believe you’d think that of me.”

“Then why didn’t I know about him?” I was struggling to understand the situation and getting nowhere.

“Are you really going to claim that none of my messages reached you? Really?” she shot at me as she dropped onto the couch’s center cushion.

“What messages?”

“The twenty I sent,” she stated, the pitch of her voice rising. “I called and texted, over and over again. I never heard a word in reply. Nothing even acknowledging that you knew I was pregnant.”

I froze. “You…you called and texted my phone?”

She threw me an exasperated look. “Of course I did. How else would I have reached you?”

All the righteous indignation bled out of me in an instant. “Carolyn…the number you have for me isn’t mine anymore. After we broke up, I—” I’d been a complete wreck, actually, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit that. “—I was in a pretty bad mood for a while, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the guys picked up on it. So then Jonesy?—”

Carolyn groaned. “Oh God, no story that started with ‘So then Jonesy…’ ever ended well.”

In spite of myself, I couldn’t help chuckling. My teammate Dennis Jones was the ultimate prankster. He was a hell of a lot of fun, but the fallout of his plans got really damn messy more often than not.

“He wanted to cheer me up. So he snuck into the ladies’ rooms at half a dozen bars around base and wrote ‘For a good time, call…’ with my name and number. Before long, I was getting twenty, thirty calls a night, all night long. Finally, I had to change my number.”

“…Oh,” she said, her voice quiet. Her shoulders slumped and she curled in on herself a little. “So you…you really didn’t know.”

“I really didn’t know,” I agreed, going over to sit beside her. “I swear, if I’d had any idea, I’d have moved heaven and earth to be here for the two of you.”

She nodded rather than answering and let out a little sniff that I knew meant she was trying not to cry. I felt lower than pond scum. I always hated it when I made her cry. More than anything in the world, I wanted to pull her into my arms, comfort her—but she wouldn’t want that from me. Not anymore. I searched for something to say to distract her.

“When’s his birthday?”

“June fourth. He was born at three in the morning.”

I’d still been out of the country on a black-ops mission at the time of the birth. The mission had stretched longer than anticipated, and I hadn’t returned to the States until nearly Christmas, months after Austin entered the world. Truth was, even if she’d had the right phone number for me, there’s a good chance she wouldn’t have been able to reach me. It was exactly that type of mission that had caused her to end our engagement. It didn’t matter how good things were when we were together. She couldn’t handle all the time that we had to spend apart.

But I wasn’t a SEAL anymore. I was a civilian now, which meant that I could be there for her and Austin around the clock, if she’d let me.

She looked down at her hands, one clasped in the other. She no longer wore the engagement ring I’d given her, but I was as connected to her as any man was to a woman. We shared a child. That had to count for something.

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